The gentlemen now expressed their wish to know whether the ladies would not profit by the beauty of the evening to walk out, and the measure being agreed upon, the party was so arranged that Lady Glenmore fell to the lot of Mr. Leslie Winyard, and much as she now felt averse to accept his arm, after the particulars she had just heard from Comtesse Leinsengen, it was impossible for her to refuse without incurring, as she thought, Lady Tenderden's animadversions. Lady Glenmore's silence, however, as they walked along, attracted her companion's particular notice. Something, he conceived, must have occurred, to change her manner so completely since dinner; but Mr. Leslie Winyard was too well versed in intrigue to augur from this circumstance any thing unfavourable to his wishes, because he knew that to have made an impression _quelconque_, was the first step towards attaining his end.
Determined, nevertheless, to ascertain the reason of this alteration in Lady Glenmore's manner, he very cautiously, but very adroitly, contrived to find out that something had been said which she conceived was to his disadvantage; and he could be at no loss to guess of what nature it was, for the affair in which his name had been mixed up, in Comtesse Leinsengen's conversation, was of too recent a date, and too _marquante_, to have escaped the memories even of that thoughtless circle--it was, in short, his last.
With this just apprehension of the fact, therefore, he turned the conversation upon the subject of scandal, which he deprecated bitterly; and, as if instancing the effects of it in regard to a person intimately known to himself, gave a totally different, but very plausible, interpretation of the exact story, which Lady Glenmore had heard detailed half an hour before by Comtesse Leinsengen.
Lady Glenmore had listened to this artful language with considerable interest and surprise. From the generosity of her nature, she felt much pleasure in thinking that the evil she had heard, and which made her uneasy even to be in Mr. Leslie Winyard's society, was totally without foundation. Her manner, therefore, gradually relaxed in rigour towards him; she seemed to have suddenly recovered her spirits, and her conversation flowed naturally without any constraint.