"Not a nun, Lady Baldock." At that moment the door was opened, and
Lord Chiltern came in, to the great relief of his wife's aunt.




CHAPTER III

Gerard Maule


"Why didn't you tell me?" said Phineas that night after Lady Baldock
was gone to bed. The two men had taken off their dress coats, and had
put on smoking caps,--Lord Chiltern, indeed, having clothed himself
in a wonderful Chinese dressing-gown, and they were sitting round the
fire in the smoking-room; but though they were thus employed and thus
dressed the two younger ladies were still with them.

"How could I tell you everything in two minutes?" said Lady Chiltern.

"I'd have given a guinea to have heard her," said Lord Chiltern,
getting up and rubbing his hands as he walked about the room. "Can't
you fancy all that she'd say, and then her horror when she'd remember
that Phineas was a Papist himself?"

"But what made Miss Boreham turn nun?"

"I fancy she found the penances lighter than they were at home," said
the lord. "They couldn't well be heavier."