Lord Larrian here burst into a brave old laugh, exclaiming, ‘Oh! good!’

Mr. Redworth knitted his thick brows.  ’I beg pardon?  Ah! women!  Weather and women?  No; the one point more variable in women makes all the difference.’

‘Can you tell me what the General laughed at?’

The honest Englishman entered the trap with promptitude.  ’She said:—­who is she, may I ask you?’

Lady Dunstane mentioned her name.

Daughter of the famous Dan Merion?  The young lady merited examination for her father’s sake.  But when reminded of her laughter-moving speech, Mr. Redworth bungled it; he owned he spoilt it, and candidly stated his inability to see the fun.  ’She said, St. George’s Channel in a gale ought to be called St. Patrick’s—­something—­I missed some point.  That quadrille-tune, the Pastourelle, or something . . .’

‘She had experience of the Channel last night,’ Lady Dunstane pursued, and they both, while in seeming converse, caught snatches from their neighbours, during a pause of the dance.

The sparkling Diana said to Lord Larrian, ’You really decline to make any of us proud women by dancing to-night?’

The General answered:  ‘I might do it on two stilts; I can’t on one.’  He touched his veteran leg.

‘But surely,’ said she, ’there’s always an inspiration coming to it from its partner in motion, if one of them takes the step.’

He signified a woeful negative.  ’My dear young lady, you say dark things to grey hairs!’

She rejoined:  ’If we were over in England, and you fixed on me the stigma of saying dark things, I should never speak without being thought obscure.’

‘It’s because you flash too brightly for them.’

’I think it is rather the reminiscence of the tooth that received a stone when it expected candy.’

Again the General laughed; he looked pleased and warmed.  ’Yes, that ’s their way, that ‘s their way!’ and he repeated her words to himself, diminishing their importance as he stamped them on his memory, but so heartily admiring the lovely speaker, that he considered her wit an honour to the old country, and told her so.  Irish prevailed up to boiling-point.

Lady Dunstane, not less gratified, glanced up at Mr. Redworth, whose brows bore the knot of perplexity over a strong stare.  He, too, stamped the words on his memory, to see subsequently whether they had a vestige of meaning.  Terrifically precocious, he thought her.  Lady Dunstane, in her quick sympathy with her friend, read the adverse mind in his face.  And her reading of the mind was right, wrong altogether her deduction of the corresponding sentiment.

Music was resumed to confuse the hearing of the eavesdroppers.