“I don’t wish to continue the discussion. Indeed, I’ve said all that I intend saying. My only regret is that you are heedless of my words—that you are blind to the truth, and have closed your ears to all this gossip.”
“Let them gossip. What does it matter to me? Now to you, of course, it matters considerably. You can’t afford to imperil your official position by allowing all this chatter to go on. I quite understand that.”
“And yet you come here to-night and ask me to take you to the Duchess’s?” he said.
“For the last time, Dudley,” she answered, looking up at him with that sweet, sympathetic look of old. “This is the last of our engagements, and it is an odd fancy of mine that you should take me to the ball—for the last time.”
“Yes,” he repeated hoarsely, in a deep voice full of meaning; “for the last time, Claudia.”
“You speak as though you were doomed to some awful fate,” she remarked, looking up at him with a puzzled expression on her face. Little did the giddy woman think that her words, like the sword of the angel at the entrance to Paradise, were double-edged.
“Oh,” he said, rousing himself and endeavouring to smile, “I didn’t know. Forgive me.”
“You’ve changed somehow, Dudley,” she said, rising. She went near to him and took his hand tenderly. “Why don’t you tell me what is the matter? Something is troubling you. What is it?”
“You are, for one thing,” he answered promptly, looking straight into her splendid eyes. As she stood there in that beautiful gown, with the historic pearls of the Nevills upon her white neck, Dudley thought he had never seen her look so magnificent. Well might she be called the Empress of Mayfair.
“But why trouble your head about me?” she asked in a low, musical voice, pressing his hand tenderly. “You have worries enough, no doubt.”