The old lady glanced up at him rather listlessly.  She was growing deaf, or feigned deafness.  He said to himself that perhaps she was much older than they knew—­was growing tired.  Her persiflage, which Charles had never much appreciated, was less frequent than of old, and she no longer poured out her witticisms with the placid sweetness of a person offering you bonbons.  There were sentences in her talk—­it was when she spoke of the couple opposite them, who were conveniently out of ear-shot—­which the barrister found deliberately malignant.

“You mean that it is settled?” she asked, affecting to misunderstand some trivial remark.  “Ah, no, but it will arrange itself—­it is coming.  You think she will make an admirable duchess?  She has sometimes quite the grand air.  Have you not found that out?  You know his father is very old; he cannot in reason live much longer.  And such estates!  Personally, too, the nicest of boys, and as proper as if he had something to gain by it.  And yet, in England, a Duke can do almost anything and be respected.  Ah, Mr. Sylvester, you did not use your opportunity!”

“I want one now,” he said rather coldly, “of saying two words to Miss Masters.”

She just raised her delicate eyebrows.

“Will it be very useful?”

Charles flushed slightly, then he frowned.

“It has nothing to do with myself.  I have some news she should hear.  Perhaps you yourself——­”

She interrupted him with a little mirthless laugh.

“I will not hear anything serious, and you look to me very serious.  I am old enough to have promised never again to be serious in my life.”

She submitted, however, to listen to him, seeing that his weighty confidences would not be brooked; and when he had finished—­he said what he had to say in very few words—­she glanced up at him with the same air of impenetrable indifference.

“Come!” she said, “what does it matter to me that you acted in exceedingly bad taste, and repent it?  It made no difference to me—­I am not the police des moeurs.  If I were you, I would hold my tongue.”

Then she added, as he glanced at her with evident mystification, shrugging her shoulders: 

“When one is dead, Mr. Sylvester, what does it matter?”

He turned away rather impatiently, his eyes following the fine lines of Mary’s face, which he saw in profile.

He noticed that she talked with animation, and that Lord Overstock’s expression was frankly admiring.  At last the old lady said: 

“But, yes; you must tell Mary—­by all means.  To her it will mean much.  See, the Marquis is going; if you wish I will leave you alone together.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

“Now, isn’t it a pretty dance?” murmured Mrs. Dollond rapturously, as she sank into a low chair in a corner secure from the traffic of the kaleidoscopic crowd which had invaded Mrs. Lightmark’s drawing-room, and opened her painted fan with a little sigh intended to express her beatitude.