“I shall make a point of it!” said Lady Millebrook, cuddling down into her warm, scented lair of cushions.
“Of course, the male division of the house-party was made up of golfing enthusiasts,” went on Mrs. Tollebranch. “Major Wharfling, Sir Roger Balcombe, Cadminster, who was as keen as Willibrand in those days, three Guardsmen, and D’Arsy Pontoise.”
“By the way, what has become of Pontoise?” queried Lady Millebrook. “One never meets him now as one used.”
“He scarcely ever leaves Paris, I believe,” returned Mrs. Tollebranch, rather constrainedly. “Since his reconciliation with the Duc, his great-uncle, and his marriage with Mademoiselle De Carapoix, who I have heard is a very strict Catholic and humpbacked——”
“Besides being a great heiress.... Of course, he is kept well within bounds. But what a fascinating creature Pontoise used to be. Bubbling with life, effervescing with spirits. Sadly naughty, too, I fear, for the names of at least half a dozen pretty married women used to be mixed up with his in all sorts of scan.... My dearest, I beg your pardon!”
“I, at least, was not wicked—only weak!” said Clarice, with icy dignity. “And as to there being five others——”
“My sweet, it was the vaguest hearsay. Nothing certain, except that Pontoise spoke perfect English and was a veritable Apollo! I can imagine the rigors of imprisonment in a Border castle in March to have been ameliorated by the fact of his being a guest under its aged roof. Did he play golf?”
Mrs. Tollebranch rose and took a dainty screen of crimson feathers from the high mantelshelf.
“He tried to learn,” she explained, holding the screen so as to shield her delicate complexion from the glowing heat of the log fire. “But the game baffled him. To play it properly, I believe, the mind must be dead to all other interests——”
“And Pontoise’s mind was unusually alive at that particular moment to things outside the sphere of golf,” mused Lady Millebrook. “Golf is a game for husbands, not for——” Her red lips closed on the unuttered word.