“Oh yes;—one does everything a little.”
“I am sure you would play well. Why do you not play now?”
“No;—I shall not play now.”
“I should like to see you with your mallet.”
“I am sorry your Grace cannot be gratified. I have played croquet till I am tired of it, and have come to think it is only fit for boys and girls. The great thing is to give them opportunities for flirting, and it does that.”
“And do you never flirt, Madame Goesler?”
“Never at croquet, Duke.”
“And what with you is the choicest time?”
“That depends on so many things—and so much on the chosen person. What do you recommend?”
“Ah—I am so ignorant. I can recommend nothing.”
“What do you say to a mountain-top at dawn on a summer day?” asked Madame Max Goesler.
“You make me shiver,” said the Duke.
“Or a boat on a lake on a summer evening, or a good lead after hounds with nobody else within three fields, or the bottom of a salt-mine, or the deck of an ocean steamer, or a military hospital in time of war, or a railway journey from Paris to Marseilles?”
“Madame Max Goesler, you have the most uncomfortable ideas.”
“I have no doubt your Grace has tried each of them—successfully. But perhaps, after all, a comfortable chair over a good fire, in a pretty room, beats everything.”
“I think it does—certainly,” said the Duke. Then he whispered something at which Madame Max Goesler blushed and smiled, and immediately after that she followed those who had already gone in to lunch.
Mrs. Bonteen had been hovering round the spot on the terrace on which the Duke and Madame Max Goesler had been standing, looking on with envious eyes, meditating some attack, some interruption, some excuse for an interpolation, but her courage had failed her and she had not dared to approach. The Duke had known nothing of the hovering propinquity of Mrs. Bonteen, but Madame Goesler had seen and had understood it all.
“Dear Mrs. Bonteen,” she said afterwards, “why did you not come and join us? The Duke was so pleasant.”
“Two is company, and three is none,” said Mrs. Bonteen, who in her anger was hardly able to choose her words quite as well as she might have done had she been more cool.
“Our friend Madame Max has made quite a new conquest,” said Mrs. Bonteen to Lady Glencora.
“I am so pleased,” said Lady Glencora, with apparently unaffected delight. “It is such a great thing to get anybody to amuse my uncle. You see everybody cannot talk to him, and he will not talk to everybody.”
“He talked enough to her in all conscience,” said Mrs. Bonteen, who was now more angry than ever.
XLIX
The Duellists Meet
Lord Chiltern arrived, and Phineas was a little nervous as to their meeting. He came back from shooting on the day in question, and was told by the servant that Lord Chiltern was in the house. Phineas went into the billiard-room in his knickerbockers, thinking probably that he might be there, and then into the drawing-room, and at last into the library—but Lord Chiltern was not to be found. At last he came across Violet.
“Have you seen him?” he asked.
“Yes;—he was with me half an hour since, walking round the gardens.”
“And how is he? Come;—tell me something about him.”
“I never knew him to be more pleasant. He would give no promise about Saulsby, but he did not say that he would not go.”
“Does he know that I am here?”
“Yes;—I told him so. I told him how much pleasure I should have in seeing you two together—as friends.”
“And what did he say?”
“He laughed, and said you were the best fellow in the world. You see I am obliged to be explicit.”
“But why did he laugh?” Phineas asked.
“He did not tell me, but I suppose it was because he was thinking of a little trip he once took to Belgium, and he perceived that I knew all about it.”
“I wonder who told you. But never mind. I do not mean to ask any questions. As I do not like that our first meeting should be before all the people in the drawing-room, I will go to him in his own room.”
“Do, do;—that will be so nice of you.”
Phineas sent his card up by a servant, and in a few minutes was standing with his hand on the lock of Lord Chiltern’s door. The last time he had seen this man, they had met with pistols in their hands to shoot at each other, and Lord Chiltern had in truth done his very best to shoot his opponent. The cause of quarrel was the same between them as ever. Phineas had not given up Violet, and had no intention of giving her up. And he had received no intimation whatever from his rival that there was to be a truce between them. Phineas had indeed written in friendship to Lord Chiltern, but he had received no answer;—and nothing of certainty was to be gathered from the report which Violet had just made. It might well be that Lord Chiltern would turn upon him now in his wrath, and that there would be some scene which in a strange house would be obviously objectionable. Nevertheless he had resolved that even that would be better than a chance encounter among strangers in a drawing-room. So the door was opened and the two men met.
“Well, old fellow,” said Lord Chiltern, laughing. Then all doubt was over, and in a moment Phineas was shaking his former—and present friend, warmly by the hand. “So we’ve come to be an Undersecretary have we?—and all that kind of thing.”
“I had to get into harness—when the harness offered itself,” said Phineas.
“I suppose so. It’s a deuce of a bore, isn’t it?”
“I always liked work, you know.”
“I thought you liked hunting better. You used to ride as if you did. There’s Bonebreaker back again in the stable for you. That poor fool who bought him could do
