Lady Marabout opened her eyes with a jerk that set her feathers trembling, her diamonds scintillating, and her bracelets ringing an astonished little carillon.
"My love, how you frightened me!"
Cecil Ormsby laughed—a gay, joyous laugh, innocent of having disturbed a doze, a lapse into human weakness of which her chaperone never permitted herself to plead guilty.
"Frightened you, did I? Why, your bête noire is as terrible to you as C[oe]ur de Lion to the Saracen children, or Black Douglas to the Lowland! And, really, I can't see anything terrible in him; he is excessively brilliant and agreeable, has something worth hearing to say to you, and his waltzing is——!"
Lady Cecil Ormsby had not a word in her repertory—though it was an enthusiastic and comprehensive one, and embraced five languages—sufficiently commendatory to finish her sentence.
"I dare say, dear! I never denied, or heard denied, his having every accomplishment under the sun. The only pity is, he has nothing more substantial!" returned Lady Marabout, a little bit tartly for her lips, only used to the softest (and most genuine) milk of roses.
Lord Rosediamond's daughter laughed a little mournfully, and played with her fan.
"Poor man! Brilliant and beggared, fashionable and friendless, courted and cashiered—a sad destiny! Do you know, Lady Marabout, I have half a mind to champion your Ogre!"
"My love, don't talk nonsense!" said Lady Marabout, hastily, at which Lady Cecil only laughed still more softly and gayly again, and sprung down as the carriage stopped in Lowndes Square.
"Rosediamond's daughter's deucedly handsome, eh, Cheveley? I saw you waltzing with her last night," said Goodwood at Lord's the next morning, watching a match between the Household Cavalry and the Zingari Eleven.