In response to a sign from Slyne she took her place at the flower-decked table. The Marquis of Ingoldsby immediately settled himself at her side; he also was obviously a young man who knew what he wanted, and meant to have that at all hazards and, while the others were seating themselves, he ogled her killingly.
Slyne had sat down at her other hand, leaving Mr. Jobling and Captain Dove to keep one another company behind the great silver centre-piece which adorned the circular table. The marquis, leaning on one elbow, had turned his back on Mr. Jobling, and Slyne turned his on Captain Dove.
"This is a little bit of all right!" his lordship remarked to Sallie, with a confidential grin. "Only—I wish—How is it that we haven't met before, Lady Josephine? But never mind that. Let's be pals now. Shall we, eh?"
"I don't know," Sallie answered at random and since he seemed to expect some reply to that fatuity. She had met a good many men in her time, but never one quite like this Lord Ingoldsby—who actually seemed anxious to look and act like a cunning fool.
A waiter intervened between them. But his lordship waved that functionary away.
"Do let's," he implored with child-like insistence. "It would be so deevy to be pals with you. And I'm beastly dull here, all by myself, don't y'know. So—
"Eh?" He glared at Slyne, who had bluntly interrupted his tête-à-tête. "No, I don't want any oysters—I told that waiter-chap so. And I don't know any 'lady of the camellias.' I can't imagine what you're talkin' about at all, I'm sure."
"I saw her again last night, at the Casino," said Slyne, imperturbably, and went on to entertain Sallie with a long if not over-truthful account of his own over-night's doings there. So that, for all his lordship's lack of manners, it was some time before that spoiled youth again succeeded in monopolising her attention. At every turn Slyne was ready to balk him, and, but for his native self-conceit coupled with a certain blind obstinacy, he must very soon have understood what was perfectly plain to Sallie, that he was there merely on sufferance, to serve some purpose of Slyne's.
"Goin' to be here long, Lady Josephine?" he managed to break in at last. Slyne had turned to give a departing waiter some order.
"I don't know," Sallie answered again, since she could say nothing else.