"If by serious you mean selfish, I agree with you. There isn't such another d----d egotist anywhere under the sun." And, much out of temper, Usk flings himself out of the room and goes to Lady Waverley, who is lying on a sofa in the small library. She has a headache, but her smile is sweet, her hand cool, her atmosphere soothing and delightful, with the blinds down and an odor of attar of roses. If any one were to tell Dolly Usk that she had been making up fibs on this occasion, she would be mortally offended and surprised. She would reply that she had only been _brodant un peu_,--putting the thing as it ought to be put, as it must be put, if Gervase is to obtain the hand of Xenia Sabaroff, and if nobody is to know anything which ought not to be known. Indeed, she has pondered so much on this manner of putting it, that she has almost ended in believing that her version of the story is the true one. "Brandolin's feelings, indeed!" she thinks, with great contempt. "As if any pain he might feel, if he did feel any, would not be due and fitting retribution upon him for the horrid life he has led, and the way he has played fast and loose with women. He can go back to his Hindoos, whose figures are so superior to any European's! But George is always so absurd about his friends." Whereon, being in an irritated and unkind mood, she desires the servant, who just then announces the visit of the rector of the parish, to show that reverend person into the small library, where she knows that Dulcia Waverley is trying to get rid of her headache. It is very seldom that she is unwise enough to indulge in this kind of domestic vengeance; but at this moment it seems sweet to her. The unfortunate and innocent rector finds the lord of Surrenden monosyllabic and impolite, but Lady Waverley, woman-like, is wholly equal to the occasion, and in her sweet low voice discourses of village choirs, and village readings, and village medicines and morals, with such divine patience and feminine adaptability that the good man dismisses from his mind as impossible what he had certainly fancied he saw in the moment when the library door opened before him.