“Heaps of indigestible things to eat—sweet for choice—and a box at the Gaiety if there’s a matinée; if not, the Hippodrome. But who’s the boy?” asked the male relative.
“Lord Valcourt, Geraldine’s eldest.”
The male relative pursed up his lips into the shape of a whistle, and helped himself to a cutlet in expressive silence.
“Geraldine is devoted to him. He seems to have a delightful nature, to be quite an ideal son!”
“That young—that young fellow!”
“You have met him, haven’t you?”
“I have had that privilege. I was one of the house-party at Traye last September.”
“Geraldine asked me, but of course it was out of the question....”
“Of course, poor Mussard’s death—quite too recent,” murmured the male relative, taking green peas.
Poor Mussard’s charming relict drooped her long-lashed, brown eyes pensively, and the transparent lace, that covered the hiding-place of the heart that had been wrung with presumable anguish eighteen months before, billowed under the impulse of a little dutiful sigh.