“The charm of that story,” said Youghal, “is that it can be told in any drawing-room.”  And with a sweep of his wide-brimmed hat to Lady Veula he turned the impatient Joyeuse into the moving stream of horse and horsemen.

“That woman reminds me of some verse I’ve read and liked,” thought Youghal, as Joyeuse sprang into a light showy canter that gave full recognition to the existence of observant human beings along the side walk.  “Ah, I have it.”

And he quoted almost aloud, as one does in the exhilaration of a canter: 

“How much I loved that way you had
Of smiling most, when very sad,
A smile which carried tender hints
Of sun and spring,
And yet, more than all other thing,
Of weariness beyond all words.”

And having satisfactorily fitted Lady Veula on to a quotation he dismissed her from his mind.  With the constancy of her sex she thought about him, his good looks and his youth and his railing tongue, till late in the afternoon.

While Youghal was putting Joyeuse through his paces under the elm trees of the Row a little drama in which he was directly interested was being played out not many hundred yards away.  Elaine and Comus were indulging themselves in two pennyworths of Park chair, drawn aside just a little from the serried rows of sitters who were set out like bedded plants over an acre or so of turf.  Comus was, for the moment, in a mood of pugnacious gaiety, disbursing a fund of pointed criticism and unsparing anecdote concerning those of the promenaders or loungers whom he knew personally or by sight.  Elaine was rather quieter than usual, and the grave serenity of the Leonardo da Vinci portrait seemed intensified in her face this morning.  In his leisurely courtship Comus had relied almost exclusively on his physical attraction and the fitful drollery of his wit and high spirits, and these graces had gone far to make him seem a very desirable and rather lovable thing in Elaine’s eyes.  But he had left out of account the disfavour which he constantly risked and sometimes incurred from his frank and undisguised indifference to other people’s interests and wishes, including, at times, Elaine’s.  And the more that she felt that she liked him the more she was irritated by his lack of consideration for her.  Without expecting that her every wish should become a law to him she would at least have liked it to reach the formality of a Second Reading.  Another important factor he had also left out of his reckoning, namely the presence on the scene of another suitor, who also had youth and wit to recommend him, and who certainly did not lack physical attractions.  Comus, marching carelessly through unknown country to effect what seemed already an assured victory, made the mistake of disregarding the existence of an unbeaten army on his flank.