d, everybody is talking about it. Pray
tell me. I am dying to know."

Gervase is silent.

"Everybody in the house is sure of it," continues his hostess. "They
don't say so, of course, but they think so. Nina Curzon, who is
_mauvaise langue_, pretends even that she knows all the circumstances;
and it would seem that they are not very nice circumstances. I really
cannot consent to go on in the dark any longer."

"Ask the lady," replies Gervase, stiffly.

"I certainly shall do nothing so ill-bred. You are a man, you are a
relation of mine, and I can say things to you I couldn't possibly say to
a stranger, which Madame Sabaroff is quite to me. If you won't answer, I
shall only suppose that you paid court to her and were 'spun,' as the
boys say at the examinations."

"Not at all," says Gervase, haughtily.

"Then tell me the story."

He hesitates. "I don't know whether you will think very well of me if I
tell you the truth."

"That you may be sure I shall not. No man ever behaves well where women
are in the question."

"My dear Dolly, what unkind exaggeration! If I tell you anything, you
will be sure not to repeat what I say? Madame Sabaroff considers me a
stranger to her: I am bound to accept her decision on such a point."

"You knew her in Russia?"

"Yes; when I was there she was the new beauty at the court. She had been
married a year or less to Paul Sabaroff. I had the honor of her
friendship at that time; if she withdraws it now I must acquiesce."

"Oh!"

Lady Usk gives a little sound between a snort and a sigh.

She is annoyed. The gossipers are right, then. She is sorry the children
have been so much with their friend, and she is infuriated at the idea
of her husband's triumph over her credulity.

"Oh, pray don't think--don't think for a moment----" murmurs Gervase;
but his cousin understands that it is the conventional compulsory
expostulation which every man who is well-bred is bound to make on such
subjects.

"She must have been very young then?" she says, beating impatiently on
her blotting-book with her gold pen.

"Very young; but such a husband as Paul Sabaroff made is--well, a more
than liberal education to any woman, however young. She was sixteen, I
think, and very lovely; though she is perhaps handsomer now. I had the
honor of her confidence: she was unhappy and _incomprise_; her father
had given her hand in discharge of a debt at cards; Sabaroff was a
gambler and a brute; at the end of