But my lady did not smile. She threw her head back, and looked at Algernon from under her half-closed eyelids. "It's my opinion, young man, that it matters a good deal to Castalia," she said; "more than it would have mattered to me when I was a young lady, I can tell you. But there's no accounting for tastes." Then Lady Seely also left the room, having first bidden Algernon to come and dine with her the next day. Algernon was dumfoundered. Not that he had not perceived the scornful Castalia's partiality for his charming self; not that her submission to his wishes, or even his whims, and her jealous anxiety to keep him by her side whenever there appeared to be danger of his leaving it for the company of a younger or more attractive woman, had escaped his observation. But Algernon was not fatuous enough to consider himself a lady-killer. His native good taste would alone have prevented him from having any such pretension. It was ridiculous; and it involved, almost of necessity, some affectation. And Algernon never was affected. He accepted Castalia's marked preference as the most natural thing in the world. He had been used to be petted and preferred all his life. But it truly had not entered into his head that the preference meant anything more than that Castalia found him amusing, and clever, and good-looking, and that she liked to keep so attractive a personage to herself as much as possible. For Algernon had noted the Honourable Castalia's little grudging jealousies, and he knew as well as anybody that she did not like to hear him praise Lady Harriet, for whom, indeed, she had long entertained a smouldering sort of dislike. But that she should have anything like a tender sentiment for himself, and, still more, that Lady Seely should see and approve it--for my lady's words and manner implied no less--was a very astonishing idea indeed. So astonishing was it, that after a while he came to the conclusion that the idea was erroneous. He turned Lady Seely's words in his mind, this way and that, and tried to look at them from all points of view, and--as words will do when too curiously scrutinised--they gradually seemed to take another and a different meaning, from the first obvious one which had struck him. "The old woman was only giving me a hint not to annoy Miss Kilfinane; not to excite her peevish temper, or exasperate her envy." But this solution would not quite do, either. "Lady Seely is not too fond of Castalia," he said to himself. "Besides, I never knew her particularly anxious to spare anyone's feelings. What the deuce did she mean, I wonder?"