Five billets in six days! Deny it if you can, Mr.
Caryll." Her playfulness, so ill-assumed, sat more awkwardly upon her than her usual and more overt malice towards him.
"To what end should I deny it ?" he replied, and added in his most ingratiating manner another of his two-edged compliments.

"Your ladyship is the model chatelaine.

No happening in your household can escape your knowledge.

His lordship is greatly to be envied." "Yet, you see," she cried, appealing to her husband, and even to Hortensia, who sat apart, scarce heeding this trivial matter of which so much was being made, "you see that he evades the point, avoids a direct answer to the question that is raised." "Since your ladyship perceives it, it were more merciful to spare my invention the labor of fashioning further subterfuges.

I am a sick man still, and my wits are far from brisk." He took up the glass of wine Leduc had poured for him.
The countess looked at him again through narrowing eyelids, the playfulness all vanished.