“I dare say that is not the only good service she owes you,” observed the dowager, “nor is it likely to be the last. When is your young relation coming back?”
“De Winton, you mean? He’s hardly a relation—a connection at most. I don’t know when he is likely to turn up; I believe he’s on his way to the North Pole at present.”
“Really! I thought there was a magnet drawing him nearer home.”
“What! Franceline, eh? Well, I thought myself he was a trifle spooney in that quarter,” said the baronet, bending down to examine his boots, “but it would seem not, or he would not have decamped; he’s an odd fish, Clide—a capital fellow, but odd.”
“I thought him original, and liked him very much, what little I saw of him,” replied Lady Anwyll. “However, I am glad to hear it is not a case between him and your pretty friend; if there is a thing I hate”—with ten drops of vitriol in the monosyllable—“it’s chaperoning a girl in love. You have no satisfaction in her; nothing interests or amuses her; she is ready to bite the nose off any man that looks civil at her; she is a social nuisance in fact, and I make a point of having nothing to do with her.”
Sir Simon threw back his head and laughed.
“How about young Charlton?” resumed the dowager; “he is the match of the county. Has he gone in for the prize?”
“He’s too great an ass,” was the rejoinder.
“Humph! Asses are proof, then, against the power of a beautiful face? It’s the first time I’ve heard it.”
“The fact is, I don’t think he has had a chance yet,” said Sir Simon; “Bourbonais is peculiar, and does not encourage people to go and see him; he only admits a select circle of old fogies, and I think he fancies Charlton is a bit of a puppy.”