"Those poor devils envy us!" he thought. "Better be one of them ten thousand times than be trained for the Great Race, and started with the cracks, dead weighted with the penalty-shot of Poverty!"
A soft touch came on his arm as he sat there; he looked up, surprised. Before him stood a dainty, delicate little form, all gay with white lace, and broideries, and rose ribbons, and floating hair fastened backward with a golden fillet; it was that of the little Lady Venetia,--the only daughter of the House of Lyonnesse, by a late marriage of his Grace,--the eight-year-old sister of the colossal Seraph; the plaything of a young and lovely mother, who had flirted in Belgravia with her future stepson before she fell sincerely and veritably in love with the gallant and still handsome Duke.
Cecil roused himself and smiled at her; he had been by months together at Lyonnesse most years of the child's life, and had been gentle to her as he was to every living thing, though he had noticed her seldom.
"Well, Petite Reine," he said kindly, bitter as his thoughts were; calling her by the name she generally bore. "All alone? Where are your playmates?"
"Petite Reine," who, to justify her sobriquet, was a grand, imperial little lady, bent her delicate head--a very delicate head, indeed, carrying itself royally, young though it was.
"Ah! you know I never care for children!"
It was said so disdainfully, yet so sincerely, without a touch of affectation, and so genuinely, as the expression of a matured and contemptuous opinion, that even in that moment it amused him. She did not wait an answer, but bent nearer, with an infinite pity and anxiety in her pretty eyes.
"I want to know--you are so vexed; are you not? They say you have lost all your money!"
"Do they? They are not far wrong then. Who are 'they,' Petite Reine?"
"Oh! Prince Alexis, and the Duc de Lorance, and mamma, and everybody. Is it true?"
"Ah!" She gave a long sigh, looking pathetically at him, with her head on one side, and her lips parted; "I heard the Russian gentleman saying that you were ruined. Is that true, too?"
"Yes, dear," he answered wearily, thinking little of the child in the desperate pass to which his life had come.
Petite Reine stood by him silent; her proud, imperial young ladyship had a very tender heart, and she was very sorry; she had understood what had been said before her of him vaguely indeed, and with no sense of its true meaning, yet still with the quick perception of a brilliant and petted child. Looking at her, he saw with astonishment that her eyes were filled with tears. He put out his hand and drew her to him.