As soon as Sundran had withdrawn, Lord Florencecourt advanced to take his leave: but as he did so the door opened, and Lady Millard, accompanied by two of her daughters, was ushered in, and he was detained with or without his will by pretty chattering Charlotte. It was not their first visit; but they were so charmed with the picturesque little bride that they could not keep long away from her; Ella in particular finding a fascination in George’s wife, which was perhaps less extraordinary than the interest Nouna took in the plain abrupt-mannered girl. To Lord Florencecourt, who, in spite of his forced semi-civility, succeeded very ill in masking his intense dislike to young Mrs. Lauriston, the fuss his nieces made with the girl was nothing short of disgusting. Thus when he said, noticing an unmistakable fragrance prevailing over the perfumes of sandalwood and attar of roses: “I observe that you let your husband smoke, Mrs. Lauriston.” Nouna waved her hand towards a little engraved gold cigarette case, beside which a tiny lamp was burning, and answered with a bubbling laugh: “How can I stop him when I set the example?” The ladies were enraptured; they begged her to smoke to show them how she did it, and Nouna, with a sly, mock-frightened glance from under her eyelashes at Lord Florencecourt, whose expression of rigid disapproval did not escape her, said, addressing him in the half-aggrieved, half-deferential air of the man invaded by an elderly female in a smoking-carriage: “I hope you don’t object to smoking, sir!” He did: every line of his face said so. But he could do nothing but smile galvanically, assure her he thought it charming, and hand her the cigarette-case with all the easy grace with which a man travelling first-class produces a third-class ticket. “You will have to lock up Henry’s cigars from Charlotte and Cicely before long, Effie,” said he to his sister-in-law in a dry aside. “Oh, I don’t think so, Horace,” she replied easily. Being the daughter of an American millionaire who had gathered together a priceless collection of paintings and then placed them in a gallery with a magnificent roof of elaborately coloured glass, she was used to eccentricity, and to allowing a wide latitude to individual taste. She had not time to say more, for at that moment Nouna herself crossed the room to her, and joined hands before her in a humbly suppliant attitude. “If you please, Lady Millard, I want to ask a great favour. It’s such a very great favour that George says I ought not to dream of asking it of any one I haven’t known much longer than I have known you. Now--may I ask it?” “With the reservation that if it’s anything penal I may refuse.” “Certainly. Well, Lady Millard, I want you to help me to cure a poor man who is suffering for want of change of air.” “Why, of course I will, with pleasure--” “Oh, but do you understand? I want you to invite him down to Norfolk--and while I’m there!”