“Well, it’s the truth,” murmured Brancepeth sulkily. “And don’t make me a scene, Mouse; my nerves can’t stand it; I’m taking cocaine and I ought to keep quiet, I ought indeed.” “Why do you take cocaine?” asked Lady Kenilworth, changing to inquietude and interrogating his countenance anxiously. “All sorts of reasons,” said her friend, sulkily still. “Oh, yes, I look well enough, I dare say; people often look well when they are half dead. Don’t make me scenes, Topinetta; I can’t bear them.” “I never make _you_ scenes, darling; not even when you give me reason!” “Humph!” said Brancepeth, very doubtfully, “when do I give you reason? There never was anybody who stood your bullying as I stand it.” “Bullying! Oh, Harry!” “Yes, bullying. Cocky don’t stand it; he licks you; I cave in.” With those unpoetic words Lord Brancepeth laid his poetic head back on the cushions of his chair, and closed his eyelids till their long thick lashes rested on his cheeks, with an air of martyrdom and exhaustion. She looked at him anxiously. “You really do not look well, love,” she whispered, as she hung over his chair. “It is--is it--that you care for any other woman? I would rather know the truth, Harry.” “Women be hanged,” said Brancepeth with a sigh, his eyes still closed. “It’s the cocaine; cures a fellow, you know, but kills him. That’s what all the new medicines do.” CHAPTER VII. “By the way,” said the young man, still with his eyes closed, and indisposed to follow his companion’s lead into the domain of sentiment, “I saw the most beautiful woman last night that I ever saw in my life--the most glorious creature! Such eyes! you can’t imagine such eyes!” “What color?” asked Mouse, with a glance at her own eyes in an adjacent mirror and a displeased severity on her mouth. “Black--black as night! At least, you know, perhaps they weren’t really black; they were like that stone--what do you call it--opal? No; onyx--yes, onyx. Such a woman! I’m a bad ’un to please, but, on my honor----” “You are very enthusiastic!” said Mouse, with the lines of her lips more scornful and displeased. “Where did you see this miracle?” Brancepeth smiled. “Lord, how soon they are jealous!” he thought. “Take fire like tow!” Aloud he answered: “Yesterday my sister got me to go to complines at the Oratory. It was some swell saint or another, and some of the cracks were singing there. This woman was close to where I was. She was all in black, and seemed very much ‘gone’ on the service; her eyes got full of tears at part of it. Well, I don’t mind telling you she fetched me so that I asked the Duc d’Arcy to see my sister safe home, and I followed the lady with the eyes. She got into a little dark _coupé_, and my hansom bowled after it. I ran her to earth at a private hotel--quite solemn sort of place called Brown’s--and there they told she was the Countess zu Lynar.”