"Soames, tell Mason, when Mr. Chandos Cheveley calls, I am not at home," said Lady Marabout at breakfast.
"Yes, my lady," said Soames, who treasured up the order, and told it to Mr. Chandos Cheveley's man at the first opportunity, though, greatly to his honor, we must admit, he did _not_ imitate the mild formula of fib, and tell his mistress her claret was not corked when it was so incontestably.
Cecil Ormsby lifted her head and looked across the table at her hostess, and the steady gaze of those violet eyes, which were Rosediamond's daughter's best weapons of war, so discomposed Lady Marabout, that she forgot herself sufficiently to proffer Bijou a piece of bread, an unparalleled insult, which that canine Sybarite did not forget all day long.
"Not at home, sir," said Mason, as duly directed, when Cheveley's cab pulled up, a week or two after the general order, at the door.
Cheveley smiled to himself as his gray had her head turned, and the wheel grated off the trottoir, while he lifted his hat to Cecil Ormsby, just visible between the amber curtains and above the balcony flowers of one of the windows of the drawing-room--quite visible enough for her return smile and bow to be seen in the street by Cheveley, in the room by Lady Marabout.
"Some of Lady Tattersall's generalship!" he thought, as the gray trotted out of the square. "Well! I have no business there. Cecil Ormsby is not her Grace of Amandine, nor little Maréchale, and the good lady is quite right to brand me 'dangerous' to her charge, and pronounce me 'inadmissible' to her footman. I've very little title to resent her verdict."
"My dearest Cecil, whatever possessed you to bow to that man!" cried Lady Marabout, in direst distress.
"Is it not customary to bow to one's acquaintances--I thought it was?" asked Lady Cecil, with demure mischief.
"But, my dear, from a window!--and when Mason is saying we are not at home!"
"That isn't _Mason's_ fib, or _Mason's_ fault, Lady Marabout!" suggested Cecil, with wicked emphasis.
"There is no falsehood or fault at all anywhere--everybody knows well enough what 'not at home' means," returned Lady Marabout, almost pettishly.
"Oh yes," laughed the young lady, saucily. "It means 'I am at home and sitting in my drawing room, but I shall not rise to receive you, because you are not worth the trouble.' It's a polite cut direct, and a honeyed rudeness--a bitter almond wrapped up in a sugar dragée, like a good many other bonbons handed about in society."