Harry was very anxious to commence a conversation about Lady Ongar, but he did not know how at first to introduce her name. Count Pateroff had come to him at Lady Ongar’s request, and therefore, as he thought, the count should have been the first to mention her. But the count seemed to be enjoying his dinner without any thought either of Lady Ongar or of her late husband. At this time he had been down to Ongar Park, on that mission which had been, as we know, futile; but he said no word of that to Harry. He seemed to enjoy his dinner thoroughly, and made himself very agreeable. When the wine was discussed he told Harry that a certain vintage of Moselle was very famous at the Beaufort. Harry ordered the wine of course, and was delighted to give his guest the best of everything; but he was a little annoyed at finding that the stranger knew his club better than he knew it himself. Slowly the count ate his dinner, enjoying every morsel that he took with that thoughtful, conscious pleasure which young men never attain in eating and drinking, and which men as they grow older so often forget to acquire. But the count never forgot any of his own capacities for pleasure, and in all things made the most of his own resources. To be rich is not to have one or ten thousand a year, but to be able to get out of that one or ten thousand all that every pound, and every shilling, and every penny will give you. After this fashion the count was a rich man.
“You don’t sit after dinner here, I suppose,” said the count, when he had completed an elaborate washing of his mouth and moustache. “I like this club because we who are strangers have so charming a room for our smoking. It is the best club in London for men who do not belong to it.”
It occurred to Harry that in the smoking-room there could be no privacy. Three or four men had already spoken to the count, showing that he was well known, giving notice, as it were, that Pateroff would become a public man when once he was placed in a public circle. To have given a dinner to the count, and to have spoken no word to him about Lady Ongar, would be by no means satisfactory to Harry’s feelings, though, as it appeared, it might be sufficiently satisfactory to the guest. Harry therefore suggested one bottle of claret. The count agreed, expressing an opinion that the 51 Lafitte was unexceptional. The 51 Lafitte was ordered, and Harry, as he filled his glass, considered the way in which his subject should be introduced.
“You knew Lord Ongar, I think, abroad?”
“Lord Ongar—abroad! Oh, yes, very well; and for many years here in London; and at Vienna; and very early in life at St. Petersburg. I knew Lord Ongar first in Russia when he was attached to the embassy as Frederic Courton. His father, Lord Courton, was then alive, as was also his grandfather. He was a nice, good-looking lad then.”
“As regards his being nice, he seems to have changed a good deal before he died.” This the count noticed by simply shrugging his shoulders and smiling as he sipped his wine. “By all that I can hear he became a horrid brute when he married,” said Harry, energetically.
“He was not pleasant when he was ill at Florence,” said the count.
“She must have had a terrible time with him,” said Harry.
The count put up his hands, again shrugged his shoulders, and then shook his head. “She knew he was no longer an Adonis when he married her.”
“An Adonis! No; she did not expect an Adonis; but she thought he would have something of the honour and feelings of a man.”
“She found it uncomfortable, no doubt. He did too much of this, you know,” said the count, raising his glass to his lips; “and he didn’t do it with 51 Lafitte. That was Ongar’s fault. All the world knew it for the last ten years. No one knew it better than Hugh Clavering.”
“But—” said Harry, and then he stopped. He hardly knew what it was that he wished to learn from the man, though he certainly did wish to learn something. He had thought that the count would himself have talked about Lady Ongar and those Florentine days, but this he did not seem disposed to do. “Shall we have our cigars now?” said Count Pateroff.
“One moment, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly, certainly. There is no hurry.”
“You will take no more wine?”
“No more wine. I take my wine at dinner, as you saw.”
“I want to ask you one special question—about Lady Ongar.”
“I will say anything in her favour that you please. I am always ready to say anything in the favour of any lady, and, if needs be, to swear it. But anything against any lady nobody ever heard me say.”
Harry was sharp enough to perceive that any assertion made under such a stipulation was worse than nothing. It was as when a man, in denying the truth of a
