ue
that this majestic woman actually simpered!

"Shall we put two and two together?" said Lady Lundie, with a ponderous
playfulness wonderful to see. "Here, on the one hand, is Mr. Geoffrey
Delamayn--a young single man. And here, on the other, is Mrs. Glenarm--a
young widow. Rank on the side of the young single man; riches on the
side of the young widow. And both mysteriously absent at the same time,
from the same pleasant party. Ha, Mrs. Delamayn! should I guess wrong,
if I guessed that _you_ will have a marriage in the family, too, before
long?"

Mrs. Delamayn looked a little annoyed. She had entered, with all her
heart, into the conspiracy for making a match between Geoffrey and Mrs.
Glenarm. But she was not prepared to own that the lady's facility
had (in spite of all attempts to conceal it from discovery) made the
conspiracy obviously successful in ten days' time.

"I am not in the secrets of the lady and gentleman whom you mention,"
she replied, dryly.

A heavy body is slow to acquire movement--and slow to abandon movement,
when once acquired. The playfulness of Lady Lundie, being essentially
heavy, followed the same rule. She still persisted in being as lively as
ever.

"Oh, what a diplomatic answer!" exclaimed her ladyship. "I think I can
interpret it, though, for all that. A little bird tells me that I shall
see a Mrs. Geoffrey Delamayn in London, next season. And I, for one,
shall not be surprised to find myself congratulating Mrs. Glenarm."

"If you persist in letting your imagination run away with you, Lady
Lundie, I can't possibly help it. I can only request permission to keep
the bridle on _mine._"

This time, even Lady Lundie understood that it would be wise to say
no more. She smiled and nodded, in high private approval of her own
extraordinary cleverness. If she had been asked at that moment who was
the most brilliant Englishwoman living, she would have looked inward on
herself--and would have seen, as in a glass brightly, Lady Lundie, of
Windygates.

From the moment when the talk at her side entered on the subject of
Geoffrey Delamayn and Mrs. Glenarm--and throughout the brief period
during which it remained occupied with that topic--Blanche became
conscious of a strong smell of some spirituous liquor wafted down on
her, as she fancied, from behind and from above. Finding the odor grow
stronger and stronger, she looked round to see whether any special
manufacture of grog was proceeding inexp