"I mean," said I, reddening, "and should have said, that the lady does not love me."
"That's better." He laughed, and added, "Pay your court, sir. You are fashioned for it."
"But I do not care to," I said.
"O Lord!" muttered Sir Peter, looking at the great beams above us, "my match-making is come to naught, after all, and my wife will be furious with you--furious, I say. And here she comes, too," he said, brightening, as he ever did, at sight of his lovely wife, who had remained his sweetheart, too; and this I am free to say, that, spite of the looseness of the times and of society, never, as long as I knew him, did Sir Peter forget in thought or deed those vows he took when wedded. Sportsman he was, and rake and gambler, as were we all; and I have seen him often overflushed with wine, but never heard from his lips a blasphemy or foul jest, never a word unworthy of clean lips and the clean heart he carried with him to his grave.
As Lady Coleville emerged from the ladies' cloakroom, attended by her pretty bevy, Sir Peter, followed by his guests, awaited her in the great corridor, where she took his arm, looking up into his handsome face with that indefinable smile I knew so well--a smile of delicate pride, partly tender, partly humorous, tinctured with faintest coquetry.
"Sweetheart," he said, "that villain, Carus, will have none of our match-making, and I hope Rosamund twists him into a triple lover's-knot, to teach him lessons he might learn more innocently."
Lady Coleville flushed up and looked around at me. "Why, Carus," she said softly, "I thought you a man of sense and discretion."
"But I--but she does not favor me, madam," I protested in a low voice.
"It is your fault, then, and your misfortune," she said. "Do you not know that she leaves us to-morrow? Sir Henry has placed a packet at our service. Can you not be persuaded--for my sake? It is our fond wish, Carus. How can a man be insensible to such wholesome loveliness as hers?"
"But--but she is a child--she has no heart! She is but a child yet--all caprice, innocence, and artless babble--and she loves not me, madam----"
"You love not her! Shame, sir! Open those brown blind eyes of yours, that look so wise and are so shallow if such sweetness as hers troubles not their depths! Oh, Carus, Carus, you make me too unhappy!"
"Idiot!" added Sir Peter, pinching my arm. "Bring her to us, now, for we enter. She is yonder, you slow-wit! nose to nose with O'Neil. Hasten!"