'Hallo, Mélanie, what is it?' he said, looking up. 'I have just finished my rubber, and was going to look after you. I was thinking--'
'I have brought your friend Sir Nugent Uffington, milord,' said Mélanie, interrupting him. 'I have introduced myself, and explained to Sir Nugent how glad I am to see him.'
'Here you are then, my good fellow,' said Forestfield, jumping up; 'I didn't catch sight of you at first behind Mélanie's ample skirts. So you have made acquaintance with her already, have you? that's right. I hate most women--I have reason to; but she is an exception to her sex--true-hearted, staunch, and if she did not understand English so well, I would say devilish handsome!'
'There is no woman, I think, who would not understand a compliment, in whatever language it might be paid to her,' said Mélanie, 'and I don't pretend to be any stronger-minded than the rest. One could tell that your friend was an Englishman, milord,' continued Mélanie, with a touch of coquetry which Uffington had not hitherto remarked in her, and which he soon saw was assumed, 'for we have been full five minutes together, and he has not yet said one pretty thing to me.'
'Has he not?' said Lord Forestfield. 'Well, I can understand that. You said all your sweet things years ago, didn't you, Sir Nugent? and a pretty mess you got into by saying them, I have heard.'
Uffington's face grew very dark; his nostrils dilated and his nether lip quivered; but he checked himself sufficiently to say, without any perceptible tremor in his voice, 'I grieve to hear so bad a character of myself from Madame de Nerval; and though I must own to having been silent about her charms, it was not owing to any want of appreciation of them. There is a proverb in our language, madame, in which it says that passions are like streams, "the shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb." I must ask you to think that that is my case, and also that,
"Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit, The charms of beauty I remember yet."'
'That is all rot about your being so old, Sir Nugent,' said Lord Forestfield gruffly; 'I can guess your age pretty well. I had just gone to Eton when that affair of yours with Mrs. Moggs, or whatever her name was, came off; and I recollect quite well all the fellows talking about it, and I wondered--'