"What a peculiarly pretty young woman," says the duke, half an hour after her arrival, staring at her through his glasses. He had been absent when she came, and so is only just now awakened to a sense of her charms.
"Who?--what?" says the duchess, vaguely, she being the person he has rashly addressed. She is very fat, very unimpressionable, and very fond of argument. "Oh! over there. I quite forget who she is. But I do see that Alfred is making himself, as usual, supremely ridiculous with her. With all his affected devotion to Helen, he runs after every fresh face he sees."
"'There's nothing like a plenty,'" quotes the duke, with a dry chuckle at his own wit; indeed he prides himself upon having been rather a "card" in his day, and anything but a "k'rect" one, either.
"Yes, there is,--there is propriety," responds the duchess, in an awful tone.
"That wouldn't be a bit like it," says the duke, still openly amused at his own humor; after which--thinking it, perhaps, safer to withdraw while there is yet time--he saunters off to the left, and, as he has a trick of looking over his shoulder while walking, nearly falls into Dorian's arms at the next turn.
"Ho, hah!" says his Grace, pulling himself up very shortly, and glancing at his stumbling-block to see if he can identify him.
"Why, it is you, Branscombe," he says, in his usual cheerful, if rather fussy, fashion. "So glad to see you!--so glad." He has made exactly this remark to Dorian every time he has come in contact with him during the past twenty years and more. "By the by, I dare say you can tell me,--who is that pretty child over there, with the white frock and the blue eyes?"
"That pretty child in the frock is my wife," says Branscombe, laughing.
"Indeed! Dear me! dear me! I beg your pardon. My dear boy, I congratulate you. Such a face,--like a Greuze; or a--h'm--yes." Here he grows slightly mixed. "You must introduce me, you know. One likes to do homage to beauty. Why, where could you have met her in this exceedingly deficient county, eh? But you were always a sly dog, eh?"
The old gentleman gives him a playful slap on his shoulder, and then, taking his arm, goes with him across the lawn to where Georgie is standing talking gayly to Lord Alfred.