That is an old, old story, that of the fair Emily stirring feud between Palamon and Arcite. It has been acted out many a time since Beaumont and Fletcher lived and wrote their twin-thoughts and won their twin laurels; but the bars that shut the kinsmen in their prison-walls, the ivy-leaves that filled in the rents of their prison-stones, were not more entirely and blissfully innocent of the feud going on within, and the battle foaming near them, than the calm, complacent soul of Lady Marabout was of the rivalry going on close beside her for the sake of little Montolieu.
She certainly thought Philip made himself specially brilliant and agreeable that night; but then that was nothing new, he was famous for talking well, and liked his mother enough not seldom to shower out for her some of his very best things; certainly she thought Goodwood did not shine by the contrast, and looked, to use an undignified word, rather cross than otherwise; but then nobody did shine beside Philip, and she knew a reason that made Goodwood pardonably cross at the undesired presence of his oldest and dearest chum. Even she almost wished Philip away. If the presence of her idolized son could have been unwelcome to her at any time, it was so that night.
"It isn't like Philip to monopolize her so, he who has so much tact usually, and cares nothing for girls himself," thought Lady Marabout; "he must do it for mischief, and yet that isn't like him at all; it's very tiresome, at any rate."
And with that skilful diplomacy in such matters, on which, if it was sometimes overthrown, Lady Marabout not unjustly plumed herself, she dexterously entangled Carruthers in conversation, and during the crash of one of the choruses whispered, as he bent forward to pick up her fan, which she had let drop,
"Leave Flora a little to Goodwood; he has a right—he spoke decisively to her to-day."
Carruthers bowed his head, and stooped lower for the fan.
He left her accordingly to Goodwood till the curtain fell after the last act of the "Barbiere;" and Lady Marabout congratulated herself on her own adroitness. "There is nothing like a little tact," she thought; "what would society be without the guiding genius of tact, I wonder? One dreadful Donnybrook Fair!"
But, someway or other, despite all her tact, or because her son inherited that valuable quality in a triple measure to herself, someway, it was Goodwood who led her to her carriage, and Carruthers who led the little Montolieu.
"Terribly bête of Philip; how very unlike him!" mused Lady Marabout, as she gathered her burnous round her.
Carruthers talked and laughed as he led Flora Montolieu through the passages, more gayly, perhaps, than usual.