The Gorgeous Isle

"He'd admire her all the more. Look at the other beaux. Wait until Miss Percy is in the high tide of a London season. You forget that if girls are always on the catch, men are always ready for a change."

Miss Bargarny's black eyes were in flames, but she dared not provoke that dreaded tongue further. She forced herself to smile as she turned to Anne, standing abashed during this discussion of herself, and longing to be alone with her chaotic thoughts. "Confess, dear Miss Percy, that you did not talk about yourself, but about that most fascinating of all subjects to man, himself. I believe you have the true instinct of the coquette, in spite of your great lack of experience, and that is a coquette's chiefest sugar-plum."

"I believe I did talk about himself--naturally, as I have always been a great admirer of his work, and the very inexperience you mention makes me seize upon such subjects as I know anything about."

Lady Mary went forward and put her arm about her new friend's waist. "Let us take a turn in the orchard before it is time to retire," she said. "I long to talk to you about our new acquaintance. Try to devise a plan to bring him here daily," she said over her shoulder to the complacent hostess; and to Lord Hunsdon, "Will you come for us in a quarter of an hour?"

It was only of late that Lady Mary had determined to lay away in lavender the luxury of sorrow. When a woman is thirty ambition looms as an excellent substitute for romance, and there had been unexpected opportunities to charm a wealthy peer during the past five weeks. She hated poetry and thought this poet a horror, but he was an excellent weapon in the siege of Hunsdon Towers. She was not jealous of Anne, for she divined that Hunsdon's suit, if suit it were, was hopeless, and believed that her new friend's good nature would help her to win the prize of a dozen seasons. So she refreshed her complexion with buttermilk and spirits of wine, and made love to Anne; who saw through her manoeuvres but was quite willing to further them if it would save herself the ordeal of refusing Lord Hunsdon.