It was not their style to care for these matters; they were pretty, to be sure, but they had seen so many of them.
The Dowager went home in her brougham; the Countess drove in his mail-phaeton--objectionable, as she might be seen, but less objectionable than letting her servants know he had met her at Richmond.
Besides, she obviated danger by bidding him set her down at a little villa across the park, where dwelt a confidential protegee of hers, whom she patronized; a former French governess, married tolerably well, who had the Countess' confidences, and kept them religiously for sake of so aristocratic a patron, and of innumerable reversions of Spanish point and shawls that had never been worn, and rings, of which her lavish ladyship had got tired.
From here she would take her ex-governess' little brougham, and get quietly back to her own home in Eaton Square, in due time for all the drums and crushes at which she must make her appearance.

This was the sort of little device which really made them think themselves in love, and gave the salt to the whole affair.

Moreover, there was this ground for it, that had her lord once roused from the straw-yards of his prize cattle, there was a certain stubborn, irrational, old-world prejudice of pride and temper in him that would have made him throw expediency to the winds, then and there, with a blind and brutal disregard to slander and to the fact that none would ever adorn his diamonds as she did.

So that Cecil had not only her fair fame, but her still more valuable jewels in his keeping when he started from the Star and Garter in the warmth of the bright summer's evening.
It was a lovely night; a night for lonely highland tarns, and southern shores by Baiae; without a cloud to veil the brightness of the stars.

A heavy dew pressed the odors from the grasses, and the deep glades of the avenue were pierced here and there with a broad beam of silvery moonlight, slanting through the massive boles of the trees, and falling white and serene across the turf.