Chapter VI: The Debut (1)

The three days had expanded to ten when Admiral de Winton opened the breakfast-room door on Monday morning, and, standing on the threshold, said in his most emphatic manner: “Harness, I’m going up by the 3.20 this afternoon. Now, not a word, or I’ll bolt this minute. … I can bear a good deal, but there is a limit to everything. You’ve wheedled me and bullied me into neglecting my business for a whole week, in spite of myself; and I’m off to-day by the 3.20.”

“Well, depart in peace whatever you do,” said Sir Simon, “and I suppose you had better have some breakfast before you start? It’s struck nine already, but you will have time to swallow a cup of tea between this and then.”

“The fact is it serves me right,” continued the admiral, advancing to his accustomed seat at the table; “hard-worked drudges of my kind ought never to trust themselves in the clutches of idle swells like you--they never know when they’ll get out of them. Here’s a letter from the Admiralty, blowing me up for not sending in that report I was to have drawn up on the Russian fleet; and quite right, too--only it’s you who ought to get the blowing up, not me.”

“But, uncle, I thought you had settled to remain till Thursday,” said Clide; “you said you would yesterday.”

“One often says a thing yesterday that one has to unsay to-day,” retorted the admiral, clearing for action by sweeping his letters to one side; “I’m going by the 3.20. I tell you I am, Harness!”

“Well, I’ve not said anything to the contrary, have I?”

“But you needn’t be trying to circumvent me, to make me late for the train, or that sort of thing. I’m up to your dodges now. Ryder will be on the look-out; he’s packing up already.”

“I must say its rather shabby behavior to Lady Anwyll,” observed the baronet; “the dinner and dance on Wednesday are entirely for you and Clide.”

“Clide must go and make the best of it for me; an old fellow like me is no great loss at a dinner, and I don’t suppose she counted much on me for the dance. How much longer do you intend to stay here, eh?” This was to his nephew.

“What’s that to you?” said Sir Simon, interrupting Clide, who was about to answer; “you’d like him to do as you are doing--set the county astir to entertain him, and then decamp before anything comes off.”

But the admiral was not to be moved from his determination by any sense of ill-behavior to the county. He started by the 3.20. Sir Simon and Clide went to see him off, and called at The Lilies on their way back.

“It’s perfectly useless, he never would consent to it; and in any case it’s too late now,” Sir Simon remarked, with his hand on the wicket; “it’s for Wednesday, and this is Monday. We should have thought of it sooner.”

“Well, you’ll speak to him anyhow; it may serve for next time,” urged Clide in a low voice; “it’s cruel to see her cooped up in this way.”

It was as Sir Simon guessed. M. de la Bourbonais would not hear of Franceline’s going to Lady Anwyll’s. Why should he? He did not know Lady Anwyll, and he was not likely to accept an invitation that had clearly been sent at somebody else’s request, at the eleventh hour. But quite apart from this he would never have allowed his daughter to go. He never went out himself, and his paternal French instinct repelled as a monstrous _inconvenance_ the idea of letting her go without him--above all, for a first appearance.

“But, happily, Franceline does not care about those things,” he said; “she has never been to a party, as you know. She is happier without amusements of the sort; her doves are all the amusement she wants.”

“Hem!… I’m not so sure of that, Bourbonais,” said Sir Simon; “we take for granted young people don’t care for things because we have ceased to care for them; we forget that we were young once upon a time ourselves. Why should Franceline not enjoy what other young girls enjoy?”

“She is not like other young girls,” replied her father, in a tone of gentle sadness.

“Unfortunately for other girls and for mankind in general,” assented Sir Simon.

Raymond smiled.

“I meant that their circumstances are not alike. You know they are not, mon cher.”

“You make mountains out of mole-hills, Bourbonais,” said the baronet; “however, I give in about this hop of Lady Anwyll’s. It wouldn’t quite do to bring Mlle. de la Bourbonais out in that fashion; she must be presented differently; those youngsters don’t consider these important points.” And he nodded at Clide, who had sat listening with none the less interest because he was silent. “But something must be done about it; the child can’t be thrown any longer on her doves for society; she must have a little amusement; it will tell on her health if she has not.”

It was not without intention that he pointed this arrow at Raymond’s shield. Sir Simon knew where his vulnerable spot lay, and that it was possible to make him do almost anything by suggesting that it might affect his child’s health. He had, so far, no grounds for alarm, or even anxiety about it; but the memory of her mother, to whom she bore in many ways so strong a resemblance, hung over him like the shadow of an unseen dread. It was this that conquered him in the riding scheme, reducing him into acquiescence with what he felt was not frankly justifiable. Sir Simon had indeed assured him that Lord Roxham had declined to take Rosebud; but he did not explain the circumstances. Clide had taken a fancy to the spirited bay mare, and on the very morning after the letter was despatched he announced his intention of riding her while he remained; whereupon the baronet, more keenly alive to the courtesies of a host than the obligations of a debtor, instead of telling him how matters stood, wrote a second letter on receipt of Lord Roxham’s accepting the offer, to say he could not let him have the horse for a week or so, and as Lord Roxham wanted her immediately as a present for his intended bride, he could not wait, and thus £1,000 slipped out of Sir Simon’s hands. Mr. Simpson, his incomparable man of business, had, however, stopped the gap by some other means, and the rascally architect was quieted for the present.

Raymond observed that Lord Roxham was not the only person in England who was open to the offer of a mare like Rosebud, though it might be difficult to meet with any one willing to give such an exorbitant price for her; one does not light on a wealthy, infatuated bridegroom every day. “Yes, that’s just it,” replied Sir Simon, grasping at any excuse for procrastination, “one must bide one’s time; it’s a mistake selling for the sake of selling; if you only have patience you’re sure to find your man by-and-by.” And Raymond, feeling that he had done all that he was called upon to do in the case, recurred to it no more, and was satisfied to let Franceline use the horse. There was no doubt the exercise was beneficial to her. Angélique said her appetite had nearly doubled, and the child slept like a dormouse since she had taken the riding; and as to the enjoyment it afforded her, there could be no mistake about that.

Sir Simon had promised to think over what next should be done to amuse his young favorite, and he was as good as his word. He gave the matter, in ministerial parlance, his most anxious consideration, and the result was that he made up his mind to give a ball at the Court, where Franceline should make her _début_ with the _éclat_ that became her real station and the hereditary friendship of the two families. He owed this to Raymond. It was only fitting that Franceline should come out under his roof, and be presented by him as the daughter of his oldest and most valued friend. He was almost as fond of the child, too, as if she were his own; and besides, it was becoming desirable at this moment that her position in society should be properly defined. He came down to breakfast big with this mighty resolution, and communicated it to Clide, who at once entered into the plan with great gusto, and had many valuable hints to give in the way of decorations; he had seen eastern pageants, and Italian and Spanish _festas_, and every description of barbaric gala in his travels, and his ideas were checked by none of the chains that are apt to hamper the flights of fancy in similar cases. Sir Simon had never hinted in his presence at such a thing as pecuniary embarrassments, and there was nothing in the style and expenditure at the Court to suggest their existence there. Sir Simon winced a little as Clide unwittingly brought his practical deception home to him by speaking as if money were as plentiful as blackberries with the owner of Dullerton; but he was determined to keep strictly within the bounds of reason, and not to be beguiled into the least unnecessary extravagance.

“Bourbonais would not like it, you see; and we must consider him first in the matter. It will be better on the whole to make it simply a sort of family thing, just a mustering of the natives to introduce Franceline. It would be in bad taste to make a Lord Mayor’s day of it, as if she were an heiress, and so on. We’ll just throw all the rooms open, and make it as jolly as we can in a quiet way. I’ll invite everybody--the more the merrier.”

So they spent a pleasant hour or so talking it all over; who were to be asked to fill their houses, and what men were to be had down from London as a reserve corps for the dancing. They had got the length of fixing the date of the ball, when Sir Simon remembered that there was the highly important question of Franceline’s dress to be considered.

“I must manage to get her up to London, and have her properly rigged out by some milliner there. I dare say your stepmother would put us up to that part of the business, eh?” And Clide committed his stepmother to this effect in a most reckless way. It had already been mooted with Raymond by Sir Simon that Franceline should go to London for a few days to see the sights, and he could fall back on this now for the present purpose. He was surprised to find that Raymond consented to the proposal, not merely without reluctance, but almost with alacrity.

“If you really think the change will do her good, I shall be only too grateful to you for taking her,” he said; “but does it strike you she wants it?”

Sir Simon felt a slight shock of compunction at this direct question, and at the glance of timid inquiry that accompanied it. He had never intended to distress or alarm his friend; he only made the remarks about Franceline’s health as a means of compassing his own ends towards amusing and pleasing her.

“Not a bit of it!” he answered contemptuously; “what could have put such a notion into my head? When I say a little change of one sort or another will do her good, I only judge from what I hear all the mothers say; when their daughters are come to Franceline’s age they’re constantly wanting change, and if they are too long without it they begin to droop, and to look pale, and so forth, and the doctor orders them off somewhere. I don’t imagine Franceline is an exception to the general rule; and as prevention is better than cure, it’s as well to give her the change before she feels the want of it. It’s a good plan always to take time by the forelock; you see yourself that the riding has done her good.”

“Yes, mon cher, yes,” said M. de la Bourbonais, tilting his spectacles, “it certainly has strengthened her. She has lost that pain in her side she used to suffer from, though I never knew it--I only heard of it when it was gone. Angélique should not have concealed it from me,” he added, a little nervously, and with another of those inquiring looks at Sir Simon.

“Pooh, pooh, nonsense! What would she have worried you about it for? All young people have pains in their sides,” returned the baronet oracularly. “She’s not done growing yet. Well, then, it’s settled that I carry her off on Monday. We will start early, so as to be there to receive Mrs. de Winton, who arrives at Grosvenor Square by the late afternoon train.”

“But there is one thing you must promise me,” said Raymond, going up to him and laying a hand impressively on his arm; “you will go to no unnecessary expense. You must give me your word for that.”

“There you are, as usual, harping on the old string,” laughed the baronet, with a touch of impatience. “What expense do you expect me to go to? The house is there, and the servants are there and whether I’m there or not the expenses go on. You don’t suppose Franceline will add very heavily to them, or Mrs. de Winton either?”

“But you talked about taking her to the operas, and so on, and I am sure she would not care for amusements of that sort; they would be too exciting for her. The change of scene and the sights of the city will be quite enough.”

“Make your mind easy about all that. Mrs. de Winton will take care the child doesn’t overdo herself. She’s a very sensible woman, and not at all fond of excitement.”

As the baronet pronounced Mrs. de Winton’s name, it occurred to him for the first time to wonder if it suggested nothing to Raymond, and whether Clide’s assiduity at The Lilies, and prolonged stay at Dullerton after his announcement that he was only to remain three days, awoke no suspicion in his mind. The thing would have been impossible in the case of any other father; but Raymond was so absorbed in his studies, in hunting out and analyzing the Causes of the Revolution, the proposed title of the work that was to be Franceline’s _dot_, and so altogether unlearned in the common machinery of life, that he was capable of seeing the house on fire, and not suspecting it concerned him until it singed his pen. He knew that Clide’s meeting with him had been a turning-point in the young man’s life; that it was Raymond’s advice and influence that determined him to return to Glanworth, and enter on his duties there with a vigorous desire to fulfil them at the sacrifice of his own plans and inclinations. He was already acting the part of mentor to Clide, who carried him his agent’s letters to read, and consulted him about the various philanthropic schemes he had in his head for the improvement of the people on his estate--notably the repression of drunkenness, which Raymond impressed on him must be the keystone of all possible improvement among the humbler classes in England. Was it possible that this demeanor and the son-like tone of respect which Clide had adopted toward him suggested no ulterior motive on Clide’s part, or awoke no parental fear or suspicion in Raymond? Sir Simon was turning this problem up and down in his mind, and debating how far it might be advisable to sound his friend, when Raymond said abruptly:

“Mr. de Winton is not going with you, of course?”

“No; he is to run down to his own place while we are away. I expect him back when we return.”

Their eyes met. Sir Simon smiled a quizzical, complaisant smile, but it died out quickly when he saw the alarmed expression in Raymond’s face.

“The idea never struck me before,” he exclaimed. “How should it? There was nothing to suggest it; the disparity is too great.”

“How so? They are pretty well matched in age--eighteen and eight-and-twenty--and as to Clide’s family, he cannot certainly count quarterings with the De Xaintriacs, or perhaps even the Bourbonais; but the De Wintons are…”

“Enfantillage,[127] enfantillage!” broke in Raymond with a gesture of wild impatience; “as if it signified in a foreigner living in exile whether his family be illustrious or not, when it is decayed and without the smallest actual weight or position! The disparity I allude to is in fortune. With such a barrier between my daughter and Mr. de Winton, how could any arrangement have entered into my imagination?”

“And you have actually lived all these years in England without getting to understand Englishmen and their ideas better than that!” said Sir Simon. “As if it mattered that”--snapping his fingers--“about any difference in fortune! Why half the wealthiest men I know have married girls without a penny. I did it myself,” added the baronet, with a change from gay to grave in his tone; “my wife had no fortune of her own, and if she had, I wouldn’t have taken a penny with her. No man of spirit, who has a fortune large enough to support his wife properly, likes to take money with her. Clide de Winton has £15,000 a year, and no end of money accumulating in the funds; he hasn’t spent two years’ income these last eight years, I’ll lay a wager; it would be a crying shame if he were to marry a wife with money; but he’s not the man to do it.”

M. de la Bourbonais had risen, and was walking up and down with his hands behind his back and his chin on his breast, his usual attitude when he was thinking hard. It was the first time that the idea of Franceline’s marriage had come home to him in any practical form--indeed, in any form but that of a remote and shadowy abstraction that he might or might not be some day called upon to discuss. He had not discussed his own marriage, and there was no precedent in his mind for discussing hers. As far as his perceptions carried him, those things were entirely arranged by outsiders; when everything was made ready in the business department, the parties concerned were brought together, and the wedding took place. But what business was there to arrange in Franceline’s case? If Mr. de Winton had been a high-born young gentleman without a penny to bless himself with, there would have been some sense in his being proposed as a candidate for Mlle. de la Bourbonais; but it was against all law and precedent that a millionnaire should dream of marrying a girl without a _dot_.

“This is very foolish” he said, taking another turn up the long room--they were in the library--“if it occurred to you before, you should have told me.”

“Told you what? That Mlle. de la Bourbonais was a deuced pretty girl, and Mr. de Winton a remarkably good-looking young man, neither blind nor devoid of understanding. I should think you might have found that out for yourself.”

“It is not a thing to joke about, Simon. I cannot understand your joking about it.” And Raymond halted before Sir Simon, who was lounging back in his chair, his coat thrown back, and his thumbs stuck into his waistcoat, while he surveyed his friend’s anxious face with a look of comical satisfaction. “Has Mr. de Winton spoken to you on the subject?”

“No.”

“Have you said anything to him about it?”

“Not I!”

“And yet you speak as if you had something to go upon.”

“And so I have. I have my eyes and my intelligence. I have been making use of both during the last ten days.”

“Then am I expected to speak to him?”

“You are expected to do nothing of the sort,” said the baronet, starting from his listless attitude, and speaking in a determined manner; “it does not concern you at this stage of affairs. If you interfere you may just put your foot in it. Leave the young people to manage their own affairs; they understand it better than we do.”

“Not concern me!” echoed Raymond, protruding his eyebrows an inch beyond his nose; “and if this idea, that seems so clear to you, should seem clear to others, and nothing comes of it, how then? My child is compromised, and I am not to interfere, and it does not concern me?”

“You talk like an infant, Bourbonais!” said Sir Simon, changing his bantering tone to one of resentment. “Am I likely to encourage De Winton if I did not know him; if I were not certain that he is incapable of behaving otherwise than as a gentleman!”

“But you confess that he has not said anything to you; suppose he should never have thought of it at all?”

“Suppose that he’s a blind idiot! Is it likely that a young fellow like Clide should be thrown into daily society with a girl like Franceline and not fall in love with her? Tell me that!”

But that was precisely what Raymond could not see. His mental vision was not given to roaming beyond the narrow horizon of his own experience: this furnished him with no precedent for the case in point--a young man falling in love and choosing a wife without being told to do so by his family.

“If it were suggested to him,” he replied, dubiously, “no doubt he might; but no one has put it into his head; even you have not given him a hint to that effect.”

Sir Simon threw back his head and roared.

“Really, Bourbonais, you’re too bad! ’Pon my honor you are. To imagine that a man of eight-and-twenty waits for a hint to fall in love when he has the temptation and the opportunity! But you know no more about it than the man in the moon. You live in the clouds.”

“I have lived in them perhaps too long,” replied Raymond, humbly and with a pang of self-reproach. “I should have been more watchful where my child was concerned; but I fancied that her poverty, which hitherto has cut her off from the enjoyments of her age, precluded all possibility of marriage--at least until the fruit of my toil should have given her a right to think of it. It seems I was mistaken.”

“And are you sorry for it?”

Raymond walked to the window, and looked out for a moment before he answered.

“Admitting that the immense disparity in fortune were _not_ an insuperable barrier, there is another that nothing would overcome in Franceline’s eyes--he is not a Catholic.”

“Yes, he is. At least he ought to be; his mother was a Catholic, and he was brought up one.

“Strange that he should not have mentioned that to me!” said Raymond, musing; “but then how is it that we did not see him in church last Sunday?”

“Hem!… I’m not quite sure that he went; it was my fault. I kept them both up till the small hours of the morning talking over business, and so on,” said Sir Simon, throwing the mantle of friendship over Clide’s delinquency. “You know it does not do to draw the rein too tight with a young fellow. He’s been so much abroad, and unhappy, and that sort of thing, you see; but a wife would bring him all right again, and keep him up to the collar.”

“Franceline would attach paramount importance to that, Harness,” said the father, with a certain accent of humility; he did not dare insist on it in his own name.

“Of course she would, dear little puss, and quite right; but she won’t be too hard on him for all that.”

It required all Sir Simon’s powers of persuasion to make Raymond promise that he would leave things alone, and not speak either to Clide or Franceline on the subject of this conversation. He gave the promise, however, feeling in some intangible way that the possibility of Franceline’s marriage under such unprecedented, such unnatural circumstances, in fact, was a phenomenon too far beyond his ken for him to meddle with in safety. It was decided that she should go to London on the day appointed, as if nothing had transpired between the friends since the proposed visit had been agreed to.

* * * * *

A ball anywhere at Dullerton was always a momentous occasion, stirring the stagnant waters with pleasurable agitation; but a ball at the Court was an event of such magnitude that it set the neighborhood in movement like a powerful electric shock. It was, compared to ordinary entertainments of the kind, what a Royal coronation is to a Lord Mayor’s show. Wonderful reports were afloat as to the magnificence of the preparations that were going on. Nobody had been allowed to see them; but conjecture was busy, and enough transpired to excite expectation to the highest pitch. It was known that men had been brought down from London with vans full of all sorts of appliances for transforming the solemn Gothic mansion into a fairy palace. How the transformation was to be effected no one had the vaguest idea, and this made expectation all the more thrilling.

It was indeed but too true that Sir Simon had abandoned his first wise intention of making it no more than a gay mustering of the clans. Fate so ordained that just at this time he got news of the rapidly declining health of his interesting relative, Lady Rebecca Harness. “She cannot possibly hold out over the autumn; her physician allowed as much to transpire to a professional friend of mine, so we must be prepared for the worst,” wrote Mr. Simpson; “it is certainly providential that the £50,000 and the reversion of her ladyship’s jointure should fall in at this moment.” And Sir Simon felt that he could not better express his grateful sense of the providential coincidence, and at the same time cheer himself up under the impending bereavement, than by giving for once full play to the oriental element of hospitality and magnificence, so long pent up in him by a sordid bondage to economy.

“Clide, that idea of yours about turning the Medusa gallery into a moonlight walk, with palms and ferns, and so on, was really too good to be lost. I think we must have the Covent Garden people down to do it. And then the Diana gallery would make a capital pendant in the Chinese style. It’s really a pity to do the thing by halves; I owe it to Bourbonais to do it handsomely on an occasion like this; and, hang it! a couple of hundreds more or less won’t break a man, eh?”

And Clide being decidedly of opinion that it would not, the Covent Garden people were had down, and preparations went on in right royal style.

M. de la Bourbonais had been informed that a dance was in view for the purpose of introducing Franceline, and accepted the intelligence as a part of the mysterious web that was being woven round him by unseen hands. Perhaps he vaguely connected the event with something like a _soirée de contrat_, or a forerunner of it, and this would account for his passive acquiescence, and the tender, preoccupied air that marked his manner during the foregoing week. Sir Simon, like a wily diplomatist as he was, managed to keep Clide from going to The Lilies for nearly the entire week, by throwing the whole burden of overseer on him, filling his hands so full of commissions for London, and shifting the responsibility of everything so completely on his shoulders that he had scarcely time to eat or sleep, being either on the railroad or in a state of workmanlike _déshabillé_ that made it impossible for him to show himself beyond the precincts of the scene of action until dinner-hour, when Sir Simon was always abnormally disinclined for a walk, and insisted on being read to or otherwise entertained by his young friend till bed-time.

Franceline, meanwhile, had her own preoccupations. Not about her dress--that had been settled to her utmost satisfaction, being aided by the combined action of Mrs. de Winton and that lady’s French milliner. But there was another important matter weighing heavily upon her mind. It was just three days before the great day. Mr. de Winton had rushed down with the _Edinburgh Review_ for M. de la Bourbonais, apologizing profusely to Franceline, who was sitting in the summer-house, for presenting himself in such a state of undress, and saying something to the effect that it was the servants’ dinner-hour, and they were so much engaged, etc. But he could not keep the count waiting for the book, which ought to have been sent several days ago. No, he would not disturb the count at that hour, if Mlle. Franceline would be kind enough to take the book and explain about the delay. Franceline promised to do so; which was rash, considering that she did not understand a word about it, or that there was any delay whatever.

“Oh! I may as well profit by the opportunity to ask if you are engaged for the first waltz on Thursday?” said Mr. de Winton, turning back after he had gone a few steps, as if struck by a happy thought.

No, Franceline was not engaged.

“Then may I claim the privilege of the first-comer, and ask you for it?”

“Yes, thank you. I shall be very happy.”

And she began immediately to be very miserable, remembering that she did not know how to waltz, never having had a dancing lesson in her life. She shut up her book, and set out toward the vicarage. She never felt quite at home with the Langrove girls; but they were the essence of good nature, and perhaps they could help her out of this difficulty. She was ashamed to say at once what had brought her, and went on listening to them chattering about their dresses, which were being manufactured out of every shade of tarlatan in the rainbow. Suddenly Godiva exclaimed: “I wonder if you’ll have any partners, Franceline? Do you think you will? You know you don’t know anybody? You’ve never even spoken to Mr. Charlton.” And Franceline, crushed under a sense of this and another inferiority, blushed, and said “No.”

“Perhaps Mr. de Winton will ask you? Oh, I should think he’s sure to. Hasn’t he asked you already?” And Franceline, painfully conscious of ten eyes staring at her, blushed deep crimson this time, and answered “Yes”; and then, suddenly recollecting that she had something important to do, she said good-by and hurried away. She had not closed the gate behind her when the five Misses Langrove who were “out” had rushed up to the nursery and informed the five who were not “out” that Franceline de la Bourbonais was engaged to that handsome, rich young Mr. de Winton, who had £60,000 a year and the grandest place in Wales. Only fancy!

“How stupid I was to get red like that, instead of telling the truth and asking Isabella to teach me how to do it!” was Franceline’s vexed exclamation to herself, as she entered the garden, and, swinging her sunshade, looked up at her doves perched on a branch just behind the chimney that was curling its blue rings up against the deeper purple of the copper-beech.

“What is my child meditating on so solemnly?” said M. de la Bourbonais, meeting her at the door; and taking her face between his hands, he looked into the dark, deep eyes that had never had a secret from him. Had they now? He had watched her walking up the garden, and noticed that fold in the smooth, white brow; he was always watching her of late, though Franceline did not perceive it.

“I am worried, petit père. I wish I were not going to this ball!” And she leaned her cheek against his with a sigh.

Raymond started as if he had been stabbed.

“My child! my cherished one! what is it? What has happened?”

“O petit père! it’s nothing,” she cried eagerly, smitten with remorse by his look of anguish. “It’s not worth being unhappy about; only I never thought of it before, and now I’m afraid it can’t be helped. They will ask me to dance, and I don’t know how.”

“Mon Dieu! it is true. We should have thought of that. It was very heedless of us all. But there must be a master here who could give thee some lessons, my child. We will speak to Miss Merrywig. Stay, where’s my hat? There is no time to be lost.”

But Franceline checked him. “Petit père, I should be ashamed to get a master now; every one would know about it and laugh at me; all the young girls would make such fun of me.”

“What dances dost thou want to dance?” inquired her father, knitting his brows, as if searching some forgotten clew in the background of memory; “I dare say I could recall the _minuet de la cour_ a little, if that would help thee.”

“I never hear them speak of it. I don’t think they dance that now; only quadrilles and waltzes,” said Franceline.

“Ah! quadrilles were after my day; but the _valse à trois temps_ I knew once upon a time. Come and let us see if I cannot remember it.”

They went into the dining-room, pushed the table and chairs into a corner, and M. de la Bourbonais, fixing his spectacles as a preliminary step, put himself into position; his right foot a little in advance, his eye-brows very much protruded, and his head bent forward; he made the first steps with hesitation, then more boldly, assisting his memory by humming the tune of an old waltz.

Angélique, who was spinning in the room overhead, came down to see what the table and chairs were making all this clatter about, and burst in on a singular spectacle: her master pirouetting to the tune of _un, deux, trois!_ round the eight-feet square apartment, while Franceline, squeezed against the wall, held up her skirt so as to afford a full view of her shabby little boots, and tried to execute the same evolutions in a space of one foot square.

“Papa is teaching me to waltz,” explained the pupil, not looking up, but keeping her eyes stuck on the professor’s feet lest she should miss the thread of their discourse.

“Well, to be sure! To think of Monsieur le Comte’s remembering his steps at this time of day! What a wonderful memory monsieur has!” was Angélique’s admiring comment.

“Now, then, shall we try it together?” said M. de la Bourbonais, and placing his arm round Franceline, the two glided round the room, the professor whistling his accompaniment with as much emphasis as possible, while the pupil counted one, two, three, and Angélique kept time by clapping her hands.

“Oh, petit père, I shall do it beautifully!” cried Franceline, suspending the performance to give him an energetic kiss that nearly sent his spectacles flying across the room. “Now if you only could teach me the quadrille!”

But this recent substitute for the art of dancing was beyond the scope of Raymond’s abilities; quadrilles, as he said, had come into fashion long after his time. It was a grand thing, however, to have accomplished so much, and Franceline felt a sense of triumphant security in her newly-acquired possession that cleared away all her tremors. She spent the rest of the afternoon practising the _valse à trois temps_, so as to be quite perfect in it. Sir Simon found her thus profitably employed when he came down just before his dinner with a newspaper.

“What were we all thinking about not to have remembered that?” was his horrified exclamation. “Why, of course you must know the quadrille; you will have to open the ball, child. You must come up this evening to the Court, and we’ll have a private little dancing lesson, all of us, and put you through the figures.”

And so they did; and the result was so successful that, when the great day came, Franceline felt quite sure of being able to behave like everybody else. Her dress came down with Mrs. de Winton on the eve of the ball, and she was, in accordance with that lady’s desire, to dress at the Court under her supervision.

It was a new era in Franceline’s life, finding herself arrayed in a fairy robe of snow-white tulle, with wild roses creeping up one side of it, and a cluster of wild roses in her hair. Angélique stood by, surveying the process of transformation with arms a-kimbo, too much impressed by the splendors of the whole thing to vindicate her rights as _bonne_, and quite satisfied to see her natural functions usurped by nimble Croft, Mrs. de Winton’s maid. But when that experienced person whipped up the gossamer garment and shook it like an apple-tree, and tossed it with a sweep over Franceline’s head, it fairly took away her breath, for the pink petals stuck on in spite of the shock, and the soft flounces foamed all round just in the right place, rippling down from the neck and shoulders, and flowing out behind like a sea-wave. Then Croft crowned it all by planting the pink cluster in the hair just as if it grew there. Mrs. de Winton came in at this crisis, however, and suggested that they would be more becoming a little more to the front.

“Well, ma’am, if you’ll take the responsibility,” demurred the abigail with pinched lips, and stepping aside as if to get clear of all participation in the rash act herself, “in course you can; but my maxiom always was and is, as modesty is the most becoming ornament of youth; if you put them roses forwarder, anybody’ll see as how it was meant to be a set-off to the complexion--as you might say, putting a garding rose alongside of a wild one, to see which was the best pink.”

“Oh! indeed, it’s very nicely done; it could not possibly be better,” said Franceline earnestly. She was rather in awe of the fine lady’s maid, and looked up appealingly to Mrs. de Winton not to gainsay her; but that serene lady paid no more heed to the abigail’s protest than she might have done to the snarling of her pet pug. With deft and daring fingers she plucked out the flowers, pushed the rich, bright coils to one side so as to make room for them, and then planted them according to her fancy. If the change were done with a view to the effect foretold by Mrs. Croft, there was no denying it to be a complete success. Angélique, by way of doing something, took up a candle and held it at arm’s length over Franceline’s head, making short chuckling noises to herself which the initiated knew to be expressive of the deepest satisfaction.

“Now, my dear, I think you will do,” said Mrs. de Winton, looking up and down the young girl with a smile of placid assent, while she washed her long, tapering hands with the old Lady-Macbeth movement; “let us go down.”

Sir Simon and the Admiral and M. de la Bourbonais were assembled in the blue drawing-room, where the guests were to be received, when the two ladies entered. Mrs. de Winton, in the mellow splendor of purple velvet, old point, and diamonds, looked like the protecting divinity of the cloud-clad nymph tripping shyly after her. An involuntary murmur of admiration burst from the Admiral and Sir Simon, while M. de la Bourbonais, all smiles and joy, came forward to embrace Franceline.

“O my dear child!…”

“Count, take care of her roses!” cried Mrs. de Winton, ruffled into motherly alarm as she saw Franceline, utterly oblivious of her headgear, nestling into her father’s neck.

Raymond started, and looked with deep concern to see if he had done any mischief. Happily not.

“Come here and let me look at you!” said Sir Simon, holding her at arm’s length out before him. “They’ve not made quite a fright of you, I see--eh, admiral?”

“Dear Sir Simon, it’s all a great deal too pretty. It’s like being in a story-book, my lovely dress and everything?” said Franceline, standing on tip-toe to be kissed.

Mr. de Winton came in at this juncture.

“I say, Clide, it’s rather hard on us to have to stand by and not follow suit,” grumbled the admiral.

Franceline crimsoned up; the bare suggestion of such a possibility as the words implied made her heart leap up with a wild throb. She did not mean to look at Clide, but somehow, involuntarily, as if moved by some mesmeric force, their eyes met. It was only for a moment, but that rapid, mutual glance sent the life-current coursing through her young veins with strange thrills of joy. Clide had turned quickly to point out something in the decorations to his uncle, and Franceline slipped her arm into her father’s, and began to admire the beauty of the long vista of parlors leading on to the ball-room, where the orchestra was already inviting them to the dance with abrupt flashes of music, one instrument answering another in sudden preludes, or chords of sweetness “long drawn out.”

“You have not seen the galleries yet,” said Sir Simon; “come and look at them before the crowd arrives.”

They followed him into the Medusa gallery, and the transition from the brilliant glare of wax-lights to the subdued twilight of the blue dome, where mimic stars were twinkling round a silver crescent, was so solemn and unexpected that Raymond and Franceline stood on the threshold with a kind of awe, as if they had come upon sacred precincts. Tall ferns and palms nodded gently in the blue moonlight, swayed by some invisible agent. The change from this to the gaudy brilliancy of the Diana gallery was in its way as striking; myriads of Chinese lanterns were swinging from the ceiling; some peeped through flowers and plants, and some were held by Chinese mandarins with pig-tails and embroidered bed-gowns.

“Are they real Chinamen?” enquired Franceline in a whisper, as she passed close by one of them and met his eyes fixed on her with the appreciating glance of an outer barbarian.

“Real! To be sure they are. I imported a small cargo of them from Hong Kong, pig-tails and all, for the occasion,” replied Sir Simon.

But a twinkle in his eye, and a broad grin on the face of the genuine John Chinaman, belied this audacious assertion. Franceline laughed merrily.

“How clever of you to have invented it, and how exactly like real Chinamen they are!” she cried, intending to be complimentary to all parties; which the mandarin under consideration acknowledged by a slow bend of his skull-capped head and a movement of the left hand towards the tip of his nose, supposed to represent a native salutation.

“Bestow your commendation where it is due,” said Sir Simon; “it’s all that young gentleman’s doing,” pointing with a jerk of his head towards Clide, who had sauntered in after them. “But here comes somebody; we must be under arms to receive them.”

The baying of the bloodhounds chained in the outer court announced the arrival of a carriage; they reached the reception-room in time to hear it wheeling up the terrace.

And now the master of Dullerton Court was in his element. The tide of guests poured in quickly, and were greeted with that royal courtesy that was his especial attribute. No matter what the worries and cares of life might be elsewhere, they vanished as if by enchantment in the sunshine of Sir Simon’s hospitality. He forgot nobody; the absent ones had their tribute of regret, and he remembered the precise cause of the absence: the daughter who had an inopportune toothache, the son forced to remain in town on business, and the father pinned to his bed by the gout; Sir Simon was so sorry for each individual absentee that while he was expressing it you would have imagined this feeling must have damped his joy for the evening; but the cloud passed off when he shook hands with the next arrival, and he was radiantly happy in spite of sympathetic gout and toothache.

Mrs. de Winton seconded her host well in doing the honors. If she was a trifle stiff, it was such a graceful, well-bred stiffness that you could not quarrel with it, and she neglected no one.

“There are Mr. Langrove and the girls!” exclaimed Franceline, in high excitement, as if that inevitable spectacle were an extraordinary surprise.

“Oh! how gorgeous you are, Franceline,” was Godiva’s awe-stricken _sotto voce_, as if she feared that loud speech might blow away the bubble.

“And what a delicious fan! Do let me look at it!” panted Arabella in the same subdued tone.

“Oh! but look at her shoes,” cried Georgiana, clasping her hands and looking down, amazed, at the white satin toe, with its dainty pink rosette, that protruded from under the skirt.

“I’m so glad you like it all,” said Franceline, delighted at the _naïve_ and good-natured expressions of admiration. They were all as artless as birds, the Langrove girls, and had not a grain of envy in their composition.

“Oh! there’s Mr. Charlton,” whispered Matilda, nudging Alice to look as the observed-of-all-observers in Dullerton appeared in the doorway.

The room was now full to overflowing, and the crowd, swayed by one of those spontaneous movements that govern crowds, suddenly poured out of the blue drawing-room into the adjoining ones, leaving the former comparatively empty. Franceline was following the stream when Sir Simon called out to her:

“Don’t run away; come here to me. I want to introduce you to my friend Lady Anwyll. Mlle. de la Bourbonais--I was going to say, my daughter, but unfortunately she is only the daughter of my oldest friend and second self, the Comte de la Bourbonais; you have met him, I believe?”

Lady Anwyll had had that distinction, and was charmed now to make his daughter’s acquaintance. She had none of her own to dispose of, which the wily Sir Simon perhaps remembered when he singled her out for this introduction.

“You’ll see that she has a few partners. I dare say they won’t be very reluctant to do their duty with a little pressing.”

“It’s the only duty young men seem equal to nowadays,” said the plump old lady, nodding in the direction of a group of the degenerate race; and she drew Franceline’s hand through her arm, and bore her off like a conquest.

“Who’s that girl? She’s awfully pretty! What color are her eyes--black, blue, or brown? I’ve not seen such a pair of eyes this season, by Jove!” drawled a _blasé_ young gentleman from the metropolis.

“You’re a luckier man than your betters if you have ever seen a pair like them,” retorted Mr. Charlton, superciliously; “that’s the belle of the evening, Mlle. de la Bourbonais.”

“You’ll be a good fellow, and introduce me--eh, Charlton?” said his friend.

But Mr. Charlton turned on his heel without committing himself further than by a dubious “I’ll see about it.” His position as native gave him the whip-hand over all interlopers, and he meant to let them know it.

And now the orchestra has burst out in full storm, and engaged couples are hunting for each other amidst the vortex of tarlatan and dress-coats. Clide has found his partner and led her to the top of the room, where Sir Simon and Lady Anwyll are waiting for their _vis-à-vis_. A little lower down, Miss Merrywig is standing up with Mr. Charlton.

“How very absurd of him, my dear,” the old lady is protesting to Arabella Langrove, who made their _dos-à-dos_; “but he will have me dance the first quadrille with him. Was there ever anything so absurd!”

Arabella was too polite to contradict her; and Mr. Charlton bent down to assure Miss Merrywig there was no one in the room he could have half as much pleasure in opening the evening’s campaign with; a speech which was overheard by several neighboring young ladies, who commented on it in their own way, while Franceline, who beheld with surprise the ill-assorted couple stand up together, thought it showed very nice feeling on the part of Mr. Charlton to have selected the dear old lady for such a compliment, and that she looked very pretty in her lavender watered silk and full blonde cap with streamers flying. But it was quite clear that Miss Bulpit thought differently. That estimable and zealous Christian had with much difficulty been persuaded by Sir Simon to condescend so far to sanction the vanities of the unconverted as to be present at the ball, and she had discarded her funereal trappings of black bombazine for the mitigated woe of black satin; but the cockade of limp black feathers that sprouted from some hidden recess where her back hair was supposed to be protested sorrowfully against the glossy levity of her dress, and bobbed with a penitential expression that was really affecting. Mr. Sparks was hawking her about like a raven in a carnival. _He_ entered into her feelings; it was chiefly the desire to support her by his countenance and sympathy that had brought him to this scene of ungodly dissipation.

Franceline was terribly nervous in the first figure, and Clide felt it incumbent on him to give her his utmost help in the way of prompting beforehand, and commendation when the feat was over. They got on swimmingly until the third figure, when she became hopelessly entangled in the ladies’-chain, giving her hand to Lady Anwyll instead of Sir Simon, and then rushing back to Clide, while Sir Simon rushed after her and made everything inextricable.

“Really, governor, you’re too bad!” protested Mr. de Winton; “why don’t you mind what you’re about? You’re putting my partner out disgracefully!”

Sir Simon bore the broadside with heroic magnanimity, apologized to everybody all round, except Clide, who ought to have called him to order in time, and not let him go bungling on, confusing everybody. By the time he had done scolding and they had all got into position again, the figure was over. The rest of the quadrille was got through without any mishaps to speak of, and when Clide carried his partner off for a promenade in the moonlit gallery, assuring her that she had done it all beautifully, Franceline felt that the praise, for being a trifle strained, was none the less due. Other couples followed them in amongst the ferns and palms, and Franceline was soon besieged by entreating candidates for the next dances. Mr. Charlton came up with the graceful self-possession that belongs to six thousand pounds a year and a decidedly handsome and rather effeminate face, and requested the favor of a quadrille. It was promised, and he stood by her side and in that earnest tone that was acknowledged to be so captivating by all the young ladies of Dullerton asked Mlle. de la Bourbonais if this was her first ball.

“Ah! I thought so. One can always tell by the freshness with which people enjoy it. For my own part, I confess I envy every one their first experience of this kind; it so soon wears off--the pleasure, I mean--and one feels the insipidity of it. Perhaps you already anticipate that?” There was a depth of expression in her face that suggested this remark. Mr. Charlton considered himself a reader of character--a physiognomist, in fact.

“Oh! no,” exclaimed Franceline, with artless vehemence; “I don’t think I should ever get tired of it; it’s far more enjoyable than I imagined!”

“Ah, indeed! Well, just so; it’s as people feel; for my part I think it’s a mistake--I mean getting _blasé_ of things;” and he ran a turquoise and diamond finger through his curly straw-colored hair.

“I hate people who are _blasé_,” was the unconventional rejoinder; “they are always so tiresome and woe-begone. Papa always says he feels under a personal obligation to people for being happy; they do him good--like dear little Miss Merrywig, for instance. I’m sure she’s not _blasé_ of anything; how she did enjoy herself in the quadrille! And it was so pretty to see her dancing her demure little old-fashioned steps.”

“She’s a very old friend of yours, is she not, Charlton?” said Clide.

“Oh! yes; since before I was born. She’s a dear old girl, if she would only not bother one to guess what she gave for her buttons,” replied Mr. Charlton. “But just see here! Is our Christian friend trying to deal with Roxham?”

Miss Bulpit was coming across the conservatory out of the Diana gallery, leaning on Lord Roxham, with whom she was conversing in an earnest manner.