“None?  Were you blind?”

“Not in the least; but you cannot well see a thing making which has been made long ago.”

“What!  Is he her husband?”

“No.”

“Engaged to her?”

“No.”

“What then!”

“Don’t you know already that this is a house of mystery, full of mysterious people?  I tell you this only, that if she ever marries any one, she will marry him; and that if I can, I will make her.”

“Then you are my enemy after all.”

“I!  Do you think that Sabina Mellot can see a young viscount loose upon the universe, without trying to make up a match for him?  No; I have such a prize for you,—­young, handsome, better educated than any woman whom you will meet to-night.  True, she is a Manchester girl:  but then she has eighty thousand pounds.”

“Eighty thousand nonsense?  I’d sooner have that divine creature without a penny, than—­”

“And would my lord viscount so far debase himself as to marry an actress?”

“Humph!  Faith, my grandmother was an actress; and we St. Justs are none the worse for that fact, as far as I can see,—­and certainly none the uglier—­the women at least.  Oh Sabina—­Mrs. Mellot, I mean—­only help me this once!”

“This once?  Do you intend to marry by my assistance this time, and by your own the next?  How many viscountesses are there to be?”

“Don’t laugh at me, you cruel woman:  you don’t know; you fancy that I am not in love—­” and the poor fellow began pouring out these commonplaces, which one has heard too often to take the trouble of repeating, and yet which are real enough, and pathetic too; for in every man, however frivolous, or even worthless, love calls up to the surface the real heroism, the real depth of character—­all the more deep because common to poet and philosopher, guardsman and country clod.

“I’ll leave town to-morrow.  I’ll go to the Land’s-end,—­to Norway,—­to Africa—­”

“And forget her in the bliss of lion-hunting.”

“Don’t, I tell you; here I will not stay to be driven mad.  To think that she is here, and that hateful Yankee at her elbow.  I’ll go—­”

“To Lady M——­’s ball?”

“No, confound it; to meet that fellow there!  I should quarrel with him, as sure as there is hot Irish blood in my veins.  The self-satisfied puppy! to be flirting and strutting there, while such a creature as that is lying thinking of him.”

“Would you have him shut himself up in his hotel, and write poetry; or walk the streets all night, sighing at the moon?”

“No; but the cool way in which he went off himself, and sent her to bed.  Confound him! commanding her.  It made my blood boil.”

“Claude, get Lord Scoutbush some iced soda-water.”

“If you laugh at me, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Or buy any of Claude’s pictures?”