As he made his way through the drawing-room he saw Miss Leslie sitting a little apart from the general company in a recessed window. By her side, and playing with her fan, sat young vacuous-faced Lord Penwhistle--vacuous-faced, but enormously rich. "Ah-ha! chère madame, so that's your little game, is it?" muttered Burgo to himself.
A group of three or four men with whom he was slightly acquainted were talking on the stairs. They became suddenly silent when they saw him coming down, and each of them greeted him with a solemn nod as he passed. Burgo felt vaguely uncomfortable, he hardly knew why.
A hansom took him quickly to his club, and there, over a cigarette and a bottle of Apollinaris, he sat down to meditate.
Burgo Brabazon at this time was within a month of his twenty-sixth birthday. He might have been a lineal descendant of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, seeing that, like him, he was "long and lank and brown"; but his was the lankiness of perfect health, of a frame trained to the fineness of a greyhound's, which had not an ounce of superfluous flesh about it. He had a long oval face and clear-cut aquiline features; he had dark, steadfast-looking eyes, with a fine penetrative faculty about them which gave you the impression that he was a man who would not be easily imposed upon; his hair and his small moustache were jet black. He was seldom languid, and still more rarely supercilious, while occasionally inclined to be cynical and pessimistic (in which respect he was by no means singular); but those were qualities of which he could disembarrass himself as easily as he could of his overcoat. He dressed fastidiously, but had nothing whatever of the latter-day "masher" about him, he was far too manly for that. Finally, no one could have had a more frank and pleasant smile than Burgo Brabazon, so that it was almost a pity he was not less chary of it.
It is certainly unpleasant when, after much effort and inward perturbation, a man has succeeded in screwing up his courage to ask a certain question which has been trembling on his lips for weeks, to find himself baulked at the very outset--to be, as it were, dragged ignominiously back to earth when another moment would have seen him soaring into the empyrean. It is more than unpleasant--it is confoundedly annoying.
Till this evening Burgo had had no reason to suppose that Mrs. Mordaunt regarded him with unfavourable eyes. His evident liking for her niece had certainly not escaped the observation of that vigilant matron, and if she had not openly encouraged him, she had certainly given him no reason to suppose that any advances he might choose to make would meet with an unfavourable reception at her hands.
Miss Leslie was no heiress; her sweet face was her only fortune. Her father had been a country rector, and had bequeathed her an income which just sufficed to save her from the necessity of joining the great army of governesses. For a young lady so slenderly endowed with the good things of this world Burgo Brabazon might be looked upon as a very fair catch in the matrimonial fishpond--for was he not his uncle's heir?
"It's all that confounded little Penwhistle," he muttered to himself. "He's evidently entêté with Clara, and Mrs. M. will do her best to hook him. But I flatter myself I'm first favourite there, and if that is so, by Jove! no other man shall rob me of my prize. I'll call to-morrow, and again and again, till I can get five minutes alone with her. I never cared for any one as I care for that girl."
He was still deep in thought when some one touched him on the shoulder. It was Tighe, a club friend, to whom he had lost a hundred or so at cards during the course of their acquaintance.
"You have heard the news, of course?" said the latter.