“are an exception to all rules. No, you are a rule by yourself.”
“To revert to the subject then for a moment,” the Duchess said stiffly. “You have made no progress with the Duke?”
“None whatever,” Saxe Leinitzer admitted. “He was sufficiently emphatic to inspire me with every caution. Even now I have doubts as to whether I have altogether reassured him. I really believe, dear Duchess, that we should be better off if you could persuade him to go and live upon his estates.”
The Duchess smiled grimly.
“Whilst the House of Lords exists,” she remarked, “you will never succeed in keeping Algernon away from London. He is always on the point of making a speech, although he never does it.”
“I have heard of that speech,” Lady Carey drawled, from her low seat. “It is to be a thoroughly enlightening affair. All the great social questions are to be permanently disposed of. The Prime Minister will come on his knees and beg Algernon to take his place.”
The Duchess looked up over her knitting.
“Algernon is at least in earnest,” she remarked drily. “And he has the good conscience of a clean living and honest man.”
“What an unpleasant possession it must be,” Lady Carey remarked sweetly. “I disposed of my conscience finally many years ago. I am not sure, but I believe that it was the Prince to whom I entrusted the burying of it. By the bye, Lucille will be here directly, I suppose. Is she to be told of Souspennier’s arrival in London?”
“I imagine,” the Prince said, with knitted brows, “that it will not be wise to keep it from her. It is impossible to conceal her whereabouts, and the papers will very shortly acquaint her with his.”
“And,” Lady Carey asked, “how does the little affair progress?”
“Admirably,” the Prince answered. “Already some of the Society papers are beginning to chatter about the friendship existing between a Cabinet Minister and a beautiful Hungarian lady of title, etc., etc. The fact of it is that Brott is in deadly earnest. He gives himself away every time. If
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