Part 66 (1/2)
”You make me s.h.i.+ver,” said the Duke.
”Or a boat on a lake on a summer evening, or a good lead after hounds with n.o.body else within three fields, or the bottom of a salt-mine, or the deck of an ocean steamer, or a military hospital in time of war, or a railway journey from Paris to Ma.r.s.eilles?”
”Madame Max Goesler, you have the most uncomfortable ideas.”
”I have no doubt your Grace has tried each of them,--successfully.
But perhaps, after all, a comfortable chair over a good fire, in a pretty room, beats everything.”
”I think it does,--certainly,” said the Duke. Then he whispered something at which Madame Max Goesler blushed and smiled, and immediately after that she followed those who had already gone in to lunch.
Mrs. Bonteen had been hovering round the spot on the terrace on which the Duke and Madame Max Goesler had been standing, looking on with envious eyes, meditating some attack, some interruption, some excuse for an interpolation, but her courage had failed her and she had not dared to approach. The Duke had known nothing of the hovering propinquity of Mrs. Bonteen, but Madame Goesler had seen and had understood it all.
”Dear Mrs. Bonteen,” she said afterwards, ”why did you not come and join us? The Duke was so pleasant.”
”Two is company, and three is none,” said Mrs. Bonteen, who in her anger was hardly able to choose her words quite as well as she might have done had she been more cool.
”Our friend Madame Max has made quite a new conquest,” said Mrs.
Bonteen to Lady Glencora.
”I am so pleased,” said Lady Glencora, with apparently unaffected delight. ”It is such a great thing to get anybody to amuse my uncle.
You see everybody cannot talk to him, and he will not talk to everybody.”
”He talked enough to her in all conscience,” said Mrs. Bonteen, who was now more angry than ever.
CHAPTER XLIX
The Duellists Meet
Lord Chiltern arrived, and Phineas was a little nervous as to their meeting. He came back from shooting on the day in question, and was told by the servant that Lord Chiltern was in the house. Phineas went into the billiard-room in his knickerbockers, thinking probably that he might be there, and then into the drawing-room, and at last into the library,--but Lord Chiltern was not to be found. At last he came across Violet.
”Have you seen him?” he asked.
”Yes;--he was with me half an hour since, walking round the gardens.”
”And how is he? Come;--tell me something about him.”
”I never knew him to be more pleasant. He would give no promise about Saulsby, but he did not say that he would not go.”
”Does he know that I am here?”
”Yes;--I told him so. I told him how much pleasure I should have in seeing you two together,--as friends.”
”And what did he say?”
”He laughed, and said you were the best fellow in the world. You see I am obliged to be explicit.”
”But why did he laugh?” Phineas asked.