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"She wouldn't thank you for the compliment," said Lady Lyle with a spiteful grin. "I daresay not," responded the Doctor blandly, "but I imagine she has very little personal vanity. Her mind is too preoccupied with something more important than the consideration of her own good looks." "And what is that?" inquired Lady Fulkeward, with some curiosity. "Ah! there is the difficulty!
And Courtney gave the answer vaguely, for the waltz was ended, and the Princess Ziska, on the arm of Gervase, was leaving the ball- room. "She's going," exclaimed Lady Fulkeward. "Dear creature! Excuse me I must speak to her for a moment."
"Most assuredly." "So am I. That absurd Chetwynd Lyle woman came to me this evening and asked me if I really thought it would be proper to take her 'girls' there," and Lady Fulkeward laughed shrilly. "Girls indeed! I should say those two long, ugly women could go anywhere with safety. 'Do you consider the Princess a proper woman? she asked, and I said, 'Certainly, as proper as you are."
"Madame la Princesse Ziska" began Gervase, addressing his unfascinating object with apparent indifference to his hideousness. The Nubian's grinning lips stretched themselves wider apart as, in a thick, snarling voice he demanded: "Votre nom?" "Armand Gervase." "Entrez!" "Et moi?" queried Fulkeward, with a conciliatory smile. "Non! Pas vous. Monsieur Armand Gervase, seul!"
She told me I must not speak not yet. She said she would give me her answer when we were all together at the Mena House Hotel." "You intend to be one of the party there then?" said Helen faintly. "Of course I do. And so do you, I hope." "No, Denzil, I cannot. Don't ask me. I will stay here with Lady Fulkeward. She is not going, nor are the Chetwynd Lyles. I shall be quite safe with them.
His sister Helen has never married. Lord Fulkeward proposed to her but was gently rejected, whereupon the disconsolate young nobleman took a journey to the States and married the daughter of a millionaire oil-merchant instead.
A vague sense of gloom and oppression stole over Gervase as he surveyed the outside of the particular dwelling Fulkeward pointed out to him a square, palatial building, which had no doubt once been magnificent in its exterior adornment, but which now, owing to long neglect, had fallen into somewhat melancholy decay.
Then it was that Sir Chetwynd Lyle, with his paunch discreetly restrained within the limits of a Windsor uniform which had been made for him some two or three years since, paced up and down complacently in the moonlight, watching his two "girls," Muriel and Dolly, doing business with certain "eligibles"; then it was that Lady Fulkeward, fearfully and wonderfully got up as the "Duchess of Gainsborough" sidled to and fro, flirted with this man, flouted that, giggled, shrugged her shoulders, waved her fan, and comported herself altogether as if she were a hoyden of seventeen just let loose from school for the holidays.
He strolled down the terrace, and Lady Chetwynd Lyle, turning her back on "old" Lady Fulkeward, went after her "girls," while the fascinating Fulkeward herself continued to recline comfortably in her chair, and presently smiled a welcome on a youngish-looking man with a fair moustache who came forward and sat down beside her, talking to her in low, tender and confidential tones.
Lady Chetwynd Lyle meanwhile flushed with annoyance; she felt that Lady Fulkeward's remark was sarcastic, but she could not very well resent it, seeing that Lady Fulkeward was a peeress of the realm, and that she herself, by the strict laws of heraldry, was truly only "Dame" Chetwynd Lyle, as wife of an ordinary knight, and had no business to be called "her ladyship" at all.
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