But, bless you, Geoffrey wouldn't mind that, so long as he was giving me pleasure." At which answer the d.u.c.h.ess is very properly ashamed of both her self and her speech.

"I should think very few people would deem it a trouble to serve you,"

she says, graciously. "And perhaps, after all, you don't much care about dancing."

"Yes, I do," says Mona, truthfully. "Just now, at least.

Perhaps"--sadly--"when I am your age I sha'n't."

This is a _betise_ of the first water. And Lady Rodney, who can hear--and is listening to--every word, almost groans aloud.

The d.u.c.h.ess, on the contrary, gives way to mirth, and, leaning back in her chair, laughs softly but with evident enjoyment. Mona contemplates her curiously, pensively.

"What have I said?" she asks, half plaintively. "You laugh, yet I did not mean to be funny. Tell me what I said."

"It was only a little touch of nature," explains her Grace. "On that congratulate yourself. Nature is at a discount these days. And I--I love nature. It is so rare, a veritable philosopher's stone. You only told me what my gla.s.s tells me daily,--that I am not so young as I once was,--that, in fact, when sitting next pretty children like you, I am quite old."

"_Did_ I say all that?" asks Mrs. Geoffrey, with wide eyes. "Indeed, I think you mistake. Old people have wrinkles, and they do not talk as you do. And when one is sweet to look at, one is never old."

To pay a compliment perfectly one must, I think, have at least a few drops of Irish blood in one's veins. As a rule, the happy-go-lucky people of Ireland can bring themselves to believe thoroughly, and without hypocrisy, in almost anything for the time being,--can fling themselves heart and soul into their flatteries, and come out of them again as victors. And what other nation is capable of this? To make sweet phrases is one thing; to look as if you felt or meant them is quite another.

The little suspicion of blarney trips softly and naturally from Mona's tongue. She doesn't smile as she speaks, but looks with eyes full of flattering conviction at the stout but comely d.u.c.h.ess. And in truth it may be that in Mona's eyes she is sweet to look at, in that she has been kind and tender towards her in her manner.

And the d.u.c.h.ess is charmed, pleased beyond measure That faint touch about the wrinkles was the happiest of the happy. Only that morning her Grace, in spite of her unapproachable maid and unlimited care, had seen an additional line around her mouth that had warned her of youth's decline, and now to meet some one oblivious of this line is sweet to her.

"Then you didn't go out much in Ireland?" she says, thinking it more graceful to change the conversation at this point.

"Out? Oh, ever so much," says Mrs. Geoffrey.

"Ah!" says the d.u.c.h.ess, feeling puzzled. "Then perhaps they don't dance in Ireland.

"Yes, they do indeed, a great deal; at least I have heard so."

"Then I suppose when there you were too young to go out?" pursues the poor d.u.c.h.ess, striving for information.

"I wasn't," says Mona: "I went out a great deal. All day long I was in the open air. That is what made my hands so brown last autumn."

"Were they brown?"

"As berries," says Mona, genially.

"At least they are a pretty shape," says the d.u.c.h.ess glancing at the slim little hands lying gloved in their owner's lap. "But I don't think you quite understood the 'going out' in the light that I did. I mean, did you go much into society?"

"There wasn't much society to go into," says Mona, "and I was only fifteen when staying with Aunt Anastasia. She," confidentially, "made rather a grand match for us, you know." (Lady Rodney grinds her teeth, and tells herself she is on the point of fainting.) "She married the Provost of Trinity College; but I don't think he did her any good. She is the oddest old thing! Even to think of her now makes me laugh. You should have seen her," says Mrs. Geoffrey, leaning back in her chair, and giving way to her usual merry laugh, that rings like a peal of silver bells, "with her wig that had little curls all over it, and her big poke-bonnet like a coal-scuttle!"

"Well, I really wish I had seen her," says the good-humored d.u.c.h.ess, smiling in sympathy, and beginning to feel herself more capable of thorough enjoyment than she has been for years. "Was she witty, as all Irish people are said to be?"

"Oh, dear, no," says Mona, with an emphatic shake of her lovely head.

"She hadn't the least little bit of wit in her composition. She was as solemn as an Eng----I mean a Spaniard (they are all solemn, are they not?), and never made a joke in her life, but she was irresistibly comic all the same." Then suddenly, "What a very pretty little woman that is over there, and what a lovely dress!"

"Very pretty indeed, and quite good taste and that. She's a Mrs. Lennox, and her husband is our master of the hounds. She is always quite correct in the matter of _clothes_." There is an awful reservation in her Grace's tone, which is quite lost upon Mona. "But she is by no means little in her own opinion, and in fact rather prides herself upon her--er--form generally," concludes the d.u.c.h.ess, so far at a loss for a word as to be obliged to fall back upon slang.

"Her form!" says Mrs. Geoffrey, surveying the tiny Mrs. Lennox from head to foot in sheer wonderment. "She need hardly pride herself on that. She hasn't much of it, has she?"

"Yes,--in her own estimation," says the d.u.c.h.ess, somewhat severely, whose crowning horror is a frisky matron, to which t.i.tle little Mrs.

Lennox may safely lay claim.

"Well, I confess that puzzles me," says Mona, knitting her straight brows and scanning the small lady before her with earnest eyes, who is surrounded by at least a dozen men, with all of whom she is conversing without any apparent effort. "I really think she is the smallest woman I ever saw. Why, I am only medium height, but surely I could make two of her. At least I have more figure, or form, as you call it, than she has."

The d.u.c.h.ess gives it up. "Yes, and a far better one, too," she says, amiably, declining to explain. Indeed, she is delighted to meet a young woman who actually regards slang as a foreign and unstudied language, and shrinks from being the first to help her to forget the English tongue. "Is there much beauty in Ireland?" she asks, presently.

"Yes, but we are all so different from the English. We have no pretty fair hair in Ireland, or at least very little of it."

"Do you admire our hair? And we are all so heartily tired of it," says the d.u.c.h.ess. "Well, tell me more about your own land. Are the women all like you? In style, I mean. I have seen a few, of course, but not enough to describe a whole."

"Like me? Oh, no," says Mrs. Geoffrey. "Some of them are really beautiful, like pictures. When I was staying with Aunt Anastasia--the Provost's wife, you remember--I saw a great many pretty people. I saw a great many students, too," says Mona, brightening, "and liked them very much. They liked me, too."

"How strange!" says the d.u.c.h.ess, with an amused smile. "Are you quite sure of that?"

"Oh, quite. They used to take me all over the college, and sometimes to the bands in the squares. They were very good to me."

"They would be, of course," says the d.u.c.h.ess.

"But they were troublesome, very troublesome," says Mrs. Geoffrey, with a retrospective sigh, leaning back in her chair and folding her hands together on her lap. "You can't imagine what a worry they were at times,--always ringing the college bell at the wrong hours, and getting tight!"

"Getting what?" asks the d.u.c.h.ess, somewhat taken aback.

"Tight,--screwed,--tipsy, you know," replies Mona, innocently. "Tight was the word they taught me. I think they believed it sounded more respectable than the others. And the Divinity boys were the worst. Shall I tell you about them?"

"Do," says the d.u.c.h.ess.

"Well, three of them used to come to see Aunt Anastasia; at least they _said_ it was auntie, but they never spoke to her if they could help it, and were always so glad when she went to sleep after dinner."

"I think your Aunt Anastasia was very good to them," says the d.u.c.h.ess.

"But after a bit they grew very tiresome. When I tell you they all three proposed to me every day for a week, you will understand me. Yet even that we could have borne, though it was very expensive, because they used to go about stealing my gloves and my ribbons, but when they took to punching each other's heads about me auntie said I had better go to Uncle Brian for a while: so I went; and there I met Geoffrey," with a brilliant smile.

"I think Geoffrey owes those Divinity boys more than he can ever pay,"

says the d.u.c.h.ess, very prettily. "You must come and see me soon, child.

I am an old woman, and seldom stir from home, except when I am positively ordered out by Malcom, as I was to-night. Come next Thursday.

There are some charming trifles at the old Court that may amuse you, though I may fail to do so."

"I sha'n't want any trifles to amuse me, if you will talk to me," says Mona.

"Well, come early. And now go and dance with Mr. Darling. He has been looking at me very angrily for the last three minutes. By the by,"

putting up her gla.s.ses, "is that little girl in the lemon-colored gown his sister?"

"Yes; that is Sir Nicholas's Doatie Darling," returns Mona, with a light laugh. And then Nolly leads her away, and, feeling more confident with him, she is once again dancing as gayly as the best.

"Your foot is plainly 'on your native heath,'" says Nolly, "though your name may not be 'McGregor.' What on earth were you saying to that old woman for the last four hours?"