'Oh! Oh well, of course, they'll understand you couldn't keep the Duke waiting. I'll mention it; I'll explain. I shall see a little more of Hyacinth just now, Charles. It'll be the right thing. An engaged girl ought to be chaperoned by a connection of the family--of some weight. Not a person like that Miss Yeo. I shall arrange to drive out with Hyacinth and advise her about her trousseau, and....' 'Yes; do as you like, but spare me the details.' Lady Cannon sighed. 'Ah, Charles, you have no romance. Doesn't the sight of these happy young people bring back the old days?' The door shut. Lady Cannon was alone. 'He has no soul,' she said to herself, using a tiny powder-puff. The young people, as they were now called, had had tea with her in her magnificent drawing-room. She had said and done everything that was obvious, kind, and tedious. She had held Hyacinth's hand, and shaken a forefinger at Cecil, and then she explained to them that it would be much more the right thing now for them to meet at her house, rather than at Hyacinth's--a recommendation which they accepted with complete (apparent) gravity, and in fact she seemed most anxious to take entire possession of them--to get the credit of them, as it were, as a social sensation. 'And now,' she said, 'what do you think I'm going to do? If you won't think me very rude' (threatening forefinger again), 'I'm going to leave you alone for a little while. I shan't be very long; but I have to write a letter, and so on, and when I come back I shall have on my bonnet, and I'll drive Hyacinth home.' 'It's most awfully kind of you, Auntie, but Cecil's going to drive me back.' 'No, no, no! I insist, I insist! This dear child has been almost like a daughter to me, you know,' pressing a lace-edged little handkerchief, scented with Ess Bouquet, to a dry little eye. 'You mustn't take her away all at once! Will you be very angry if I leave you?' and laughing in what she supposed to be an entirely charming manner, she glided, as though on castors, in her fringed, embroidered, brocaded dress from the room. 'Isn't she magnificent?' said Cecil. 'You know she has a reputation for being remarkable for sound sense,' said Hyacinth. 'Well, she's shown it at last!' She laughed. He took a stroll round the room. It was so high, so enormous, with so much satin on the walls, so many looking-glasses, so much white paint, so many cabinets full of Dresden china, that it recalled, by the very extremity of the contrast of its bright hideousness, that other ugly, dismal little room, also filled with false gods, of a cheap and very different kind, in which he had had so much poignant happiness. 'Hyacinth,' he said, rather quaintly, 'do you know what I'm doing? I want to kiss you, and I'm looking for a part of the room in which it wouldn't be blasphemous!' 'You can't find one, Cecil. I couldn't--here. And her leaving us alone makes it all the more impossible.'