"They have asked me to tea in the nursery," I said, "and I have accepted."
"Jewel of a snake-girl!" she laughed--she is not thick.
"Do you know the Torquilstone history?" she said, just as I was going out of the door.
I came back--why, I can't imagine, but it interested me.
"Robert's brother--half-brother, I mean--the duke, is a cripple, you know, and he is toqué on one point too--their blue blood. He will never marry, but he can cut Robert off with almost the bare title if he displeases him."
"Yes," I said.
"Torquilstone's mother was one of the housemaids. The old duke married her before he was twenty-one, and she, fortunately, joined her beery ancestors a year or so afterwards; and then much later he married Robert's mother, Lady Etheldrida Fitz Walter. There is sixteen years between them--Robert and Torquilstone, I mean."
"Then what is he toqué about blue blood for, with a tache like that?" I asked.
"That is just it. He thinks it is such a disgrace that even if he were not a humpback he says he would never marry to transmit this stain to the future Torquilstones--and if Robert ever marries any one without a pedigree enough to satisfy an Austrian prince, he will disown him and leave every sou to charity."
"Poor Lord Robert!" I said, but I felt my cheeks burn.
"Yes, is it not tiresome for him? So, of course, he cannot marry until his brother's death, there is almost no one in England suitable."
"It is not so bad, after all," I said; "there is always the delicious rôle of the 'married woman's pet,' open to him, isn't there?" and I laughed.
"Little cat!" but she wasn't angry.
"I told you I only scratched when I was scratched first," I said, as I went out of the room.
The angels had started for their walk, and Véronique had to come with me at first to find them. We were walking fast down the path beyond Stanhope Gate, seeing their blue velvet pelisses in the distance, when we met Mr. Carruthers.
He stopped and turned with me.
"Evangeline, I was so angry with you yesterday," he said. "I very nearly left London and abandoned you to your fate, but now that I have seen you again--" He paused.
"You think Paris is a long way off!" I said, innocently.