“Oh, Cyril, what a sad little face!—and how very——”
“Plain?” suggested Cyril, as she hesitated. “If you saw her, you wouldn’t think so. It’s the expression that is wanting in the photograph.”
“She must have beautiful eyes and hair,” said Lady Caerleon slowly. “But, Cyril, Carlino, think of the difference from Félicia! Do you think Usk would ever care for her? And so badly dressed! I should like to take her in hand.”
“Come,” said Cyril, “this is a ray of hope. Now you realise that she needs comforting and dressing, Nadia, you won’t steel your heart against her for long.”
“I don’t want to steel my heart against her, poor little thing! but you don’t seem to see—I daresay it sounds very selfish, but you feel it too, don’t you, Carlino?—when Phil is so far away, to have to give up Usk too! I know I ought to be willing to do it, if it’s to help some one, but for him to have to go and live in Germany—it would be like losing him altogether.”
“No, no, Nadia,” said her husband quickly, as she turned to him with streaming eyes, “that’s out of the question. Usk has his duties here, and he won’t give them up with my consent.”
“You both seem to have the worst possible opinion of me,” lamented Cyril. “Is it likely that I should deliberately arrange for Usk to become a hanger-on at a petty German Court, where he wouldn’t even be welcomed? No; the Grand-Duchess quite sees that her husband and her daughter agree best at a distance. ‘The young people will live in England, of course,’ she said to me, ‘but they must come and see me in the mountains every year, and sometimes I will come and see them.’”
“Is that Usk coming in?” cried Lady Caerleon, starting up.
“Suppose you break the idea to him, Nadia, and see how he takes it,” suggested Cyril. “No one wants to force him into anything, of course, but I hardly see how he can do better. And you will manage it much more artistically than I should, for with you I began by giving the poor little girl away, which was the last thing I meant to do.”
Lady Caerleon hurried into the house, and the brothers were left together.