"Yes, he's been at German Universities, and games of that sort."
"No--second. Come, I say, Miss Dickenson, two's not much...."
But her remark was less a tobacco-crusade than a protest against too abrupt a production of family history by a family friend. Mr. Pellew felt confident it would come, though; and it did, at about the third whiff of the new cigar.
"Couldn't say, without hearing it first to know."
"About Philippa and Sir Hamilton Torrens?"
"Can't say I have. But then I'm the sort of fellah nobody ever tells things to."
"I suppose I oughtn't to have mentioned it."
"I shall not tell anyone you did so. You may rely on that." Mr. Pellew gave his cigar a half-holiday to say this seriously, and Miss Dickenson felt that his type, though too tailor-made, was always to be relied on; you had only to scratch it to find a Gentleman underneath. No audience ever fails to applaud the discovery on the stage. Evidently there was no reserve needed--a relation of the Earl, too! Still, she felt satisfied at this passing recognition of Prudence on her part. Preliminaries had been done justice to.
She proceeded to tell what she knew of the episode of her friend's early engagement to the father of the gentleman who had been shot. It was really a very flat story; so like a thousand others of its sort as scarcely to claim narration-space. Youth, beauty, high spirits, the London season, first love--warranted the genuine article--parental opposition to the union of Romeo and Juliet, on the vulgar, unpoetical ground of Romeo having no particular income and vague expectations; the natural impatience of eighteen and five-and-twenty when they don't get their own way in everything; misunderstandings, ups-and-downs, reconciliations and new misunderstandings; finally one rather more serious than its predecessors, and judicious non-interference of bystanders--underhanded bystanders who were secretly favouring another suitor, who wasn't so handsome and showy as Romeo certainly, but who was of sterling worth and all that sort of thing. Besides, he was very nearly an Earl, and Hamilton Torrens was three-doors off his father's Baronetcy and Pensham Steynes. This may have had its weight with Juliet. Miss Dickenson candidly admitted that she herself would have been influenced; but then, no doubt she was a worldling. Mr. Pellew admired the candour, discerning in it exaggeration to avoid any suspicion of false pretence. He did not suspect himself of any undue leniency to this lady. She was altogether too _passée_ to admit of any such idea.