By which you will perceive that the triumphant crushing of Lady Marabout's Cobra didn't afford her the unmixed gratification she had anticipated.
"I have done what was my duty to poor Rosediamond, and what General Ormsby's confidence merited," she solaced herself that day, feeling uncomfortably and causelessly guilty, she hardly knew why, when she saw Chandos Cheveley keeping sedulously with the "Amandine set," and read in Cecil's tell-tale face wonder, perplexity, and regret thereat, till the Frangipane fête came to an end. She had appeased the manes of the late Rosediamond, who, to her imagination, always appeared sitting up aloft keeping watch over the discharge of her chaperone's duties, but she had a secret and horrible dread that she had excited the wrath of Rosediamond's daughter. She had driven her Ogre off the scene, it is true, but she could not feel that she had altogether come off the best in the contest. Anne Hautton had congratulated her, indeed, on having "acted with decision at last," but then she had marred it all by asking if Carruthers was likely to be engaged to Cecil? And Lady Marabout had been forced to confess he was not; Philip, when pressed by her that very morning to be a little attentive to Cecil, having shaken his head and laughed:
"She's a bewitching creature, mother, but she don't bewitch me! You know what Shakspeare says of wooing, wedding, and repentance. I've no fancy for the inseparable trio!"
Altogether, Lady Marabout was far from peace and tranquillity, though the Cobra was crushed, as she drove away from the Frangipane breakfast, and she was little nearer them when Cecil turned her eyes upon her with a question worse to Lady Marabout's ear than the roar of a Lancaster battery.
"What have you said to him?"
"My dear Cecil! What have I said to whom?" returned Lady Marabout, with Machiavellian surprise.
"You know well enough, Lady Marabout! What have you said to him—to Mr. Cheveley?"
Cecil's impetuosity invariably knocked Lady Marabout down at one blow, as a ball knocks down the pegs at lawn billiards. She rallied after the shock, but not successfully, and tried at coldness and decision, as recommended by Hautton prescriptions.
"My dear Cecil, I have said to him what I think it my duty to say to him. Responsible as I am for you——"
"Responsible for me, Lady Marabout? Indeed you are not. I am responsible for myself!" interrupted Lady Cecil, with that haughty arch of her eyebrows and that flush on her face before which Lady Marabout was powerless. "What have you said to him? I will know!"