Could the Professor be married, and might there be some woman in the family?
Or was it nothing to do with the Professor or with a letter, or was there a more present reason?
Had Cora Lutworth attracted him with her youth and high spirits?
They were walking ahead now, and she could hear his laugh and see how they were enjoying themselves.
She had been a perfect fool to ask Cora.

She did not fear a single Englishwoman, the powers of most of whom in her heart she despised--but Cora was of her own race, and well equipped to rival her in a question of marriage.

Cora was only twenty-one, and she herself was thirty--and there was the divorce which, although she had found it no bar to her entrance into the most exclusive English society, still might perhaps rankle unconsciously in the mind of a man mounting the political ladder, and determined to secure the highest honors.
She felt she hated Cora, and would have destroyed her with a look if she had been able.
Miss Lutworth, meanwhile, brimful of the joy of life and _insouciance_, was amusing herself vastly.

And John Derringham was experiencing that sense of relaxation and irresponsible pleasure he got sometimes when he was overworked from going to an excruciatingly funny Paris farce.

Miss Lutworth did not appeal to his brain at all, although she was quite capable of doing so; she just made him feel gay and frolicsome with her deliciously _ruse_ view of the world and life in general.