"That's settled, then," said Mr. Ingerstall, hastily devouring a lozenge-shaped cake covered with pink sugar; "and then we'll see, Duchess, whether this gentleman doesn't swear by blessed Paris to the end of his life."
"Oh, really, Mr. Ingerstall, you ought to go to the Morgue instead of to heaven when you die," her Grace rejoined tartly, as she turned with great deliberation to Mrs. Verulam. "What are your plans for the season, Mrs. Verulam? Are you going to Ascot?"
Mr. Rodney looked at his boots and endeavoured modestly to conceal the simple and unostentatious fact that he felt himself a hero. Mrs. Verulam hesitatingly replied:
"I haven't thought much about it as yet."
But this was too much for Mr. Rodney. To be snatched suddenly from the summit of a candlestick and incontinently shovelled away under a bushel is an event calculated to rouse the temper of the very mildest flaneur who ever wore polished boots. Mr. Rodney's fiddle face assumed a sudden look of stern resolution, and in a voice a trifle louder than usual he almost exclaimed:
"Mrs. Verulam has secured through me the finest house in the neighbourhood of the course."
"If you want to go racing, you really ought to run across the Channel and go to Longchamps," began Mr. Ingerstall with intense rapidity.
But the Duchess had had enough of him, and when the Duchess had had enough of anybody, she could be like a park of artillery and a stone wall combined. She could both decimate and offer a blank and eyeless resistance to attack. On the present occasion she preferred to become a stone wall to the chattering artist, and, presenting to him the entirety of her back, she said with animation to Mr. Rodney:
"Indeed! Which house d'you mean?"
"Ribton Marches," that gentleman responded, in a way that was nearly unbridled.