The ready laughter sprang to her eyes. “Confess that Anna warned you to take notice of my finery!”

“Certainly not! Do you think I must be told by your maid when you are looking in great beauty?”

“Sylvester, you make love so charmingly that I fear you must be the most outrageous flirt!”

“Oh, not outrageous, Mama! Are you busy with a new poem?”

“Merely a letter. Dearest, if you will push the table away, you may draw up that chair a little, and we can enjoy a comfortable prose.”

This he was prevented from doing by the hurried entrance from the adjoining bedchamber of Miss Augusta Penistone, who begged him, somewhat incoherently, not to trouble himself, since she considered the task peculiarly her own. She then pushed the table to the side of the room, and instead of effacing herself, as he always wished she would, lingered, amiably smiling at him. She was an angular, rather awkward lady, as kind as she was plain, and she served the Duchess, whose kinswoman she was, in the capacity of a companion. Her good nature was inexhaustible, but she was unfortunately quite unintelligent, and rarely failed to irritate Sylvester by asking questions to which the answers were patent, or commenting upon the obvious. He bore it very well, for his manners were extremely good, but when, after stating that she saw he had not gone out hunting, she recollected that one didn’t hunt after severe frost and said, with a merry laugh at her mistake: “Well, that was a stupid thing for me to have said, wasn’t it?” he was provoked into replying, though with perfect suavity: “It was, wasn’t it?”

The Duchess intervened at this stage of the dialogue, urging her cousin to go out into the sunshine while it lasted; and after saying that, to be sure, she might venture to do so if dear Sylvester meant to sit with his mama, which she had no doubt of, and pointing out that Anna would come if the Duchess rang the bell, she got herself to the door, which Sylvester was holding open. She was obliged to pause there to tell him that she was now going to leave him to chat with his mama, adding: “For I am sure you wish to be private with her, don’t you?”