"The name of the slough was Despond."
Dancing is going on in the small drawing-room. A few night broughams are
still arriving, and young girls, accompanied by their brothers only, are
making the room look lovely. It is quite an impromptu affair, quite
informal. Dicky Browne, altogether in his element, is flitting from
flower to flower, saying beautiful nothings to any of the girls who are
kind enough or silly enough to waste a moment on so irreclaimable a
butterfly.
He is not so entirely engrossed by his pleasing occupations, however, as
to be lost to the more serious matters that are going on around him. He
is specially struck by the fact that Lady Swansdown, who had been in
charming spirits all through the afternoon, and afterward at dinner, is
now dancing a great deal with Beauclerk, of all people, and making
herself apparently very delightful to him. His own personal belief up to
this had been that she detested Beauclerk, and now to see her smiling
upon him and favoring him with waltz after waltz upsets Dicky's power of
penetration to an almost fatal extent.
"I wonder what the deuce she's up to now," says he to himself, leaning
against the wall behind him, and giving voice unconsciously to the
thoughts within him.
"Eh?" says somebody at his ear.
He looks round hastily to find Miss Maliphant has come to anchor on his
left, and that her eyes, too, are directed on Beauclerk, who with Lady
Swansdown is standing at the lower end of the room.
"Eh, to you," says he brilliantly.
"I always rather fancied that Mr. Beauclerk and Lady Swansdown were
antipathetic," says Miss Maliphant in her usual heavy, downright way.
"There was room for it," says Mr. Browne gloomily.
"For it?"
"Your fancy."
"Yes, so I think. Lady Swansdown has always seemed to me to be
rather--raiher--eh?"
"Decidedly so," agrees Mr. Browne. "And as for Beauclerk, he is quite
too dreadfully 'rather,' don't you think?"
"I don't know, I'm sure. He has often seemed to me a little light, but
only on the surface."
"You've read him," says Mr. Browne with a confidential nod. "Light on
the surface, but deep, deep as a draw well?"
"I don't think I mean what you do," says Miss Maliphant quickly.
"However, we are not discussing Mr. Beauclerk, beyond the fact that we
wonder to see him so genial with Lady Swansdown. They used to be
thoroughly antagonistic, and now--why they seem quite good friends,
don't they? Quite thick, eh?" with her usual graceful phraseology.
"Thick as thieves in Vallambrosa," says Mr. Browne with increasing
gloom. Miss Maliphant turns to regard him doubtfully.
"Leaves?" suggests she.
"Thieves," persists he immovably.
"Oh! Ah! It's a joke perhaps," says she, the doubt growing. Mr. Browne
fixes a stern eye upon her.
"Is thy servant a dog?" says he, and stalks indignantly away, leaving
Miss Maliphant in the throes of uncertainty.
"Yet I'm sure it wasn't the right word," says she to herself with a
wonderful frown of perplexity. "However, I may be wrong. I often am.
And, after all, Spain we're told is full of 'em."
Whether "thieves" or "leaves" she doesn't explain, and presently her
mind wanders entirely away from Mr. Browne's maundering to the subject
that so much more nearly interests her. Beauclerk has not been quite so
empressé in his manner to her to-night--not so altogether delightful. He
has, indeed, it seems to her, shirked her society a good deal, and has
not been so assiduous about the scribbling of his name upon her card as
usual. And then this sudden friendship with Lady Swansdown--what does he
mean by that? What does she mean?
If she had only known. If the answer to her latter question had been
given to her, her mind would have grown easier, and the idea of Lady
Swansdown in the form of a rival would have been laid at rest forever.
As a fact, Lady Swansdown hardly understands herself to-night. That
scene with her hostess has upset her mentally and bodily, and created in
her a wild desire to get away from herself and from Baltimore at any
cost. Some idle freak has induced her to use Beauclerk (who is
detestable to her) as a safeguard from both, and he, unsettled in his
own mind, and eager to come to conclusions with Joyce and her fortune,
has lent himself to the wiles of his whilom foe, and is permiting
himself to be charmed by her fascinating, if vagrant, mood.
Perhaps in all her life Lady Swansdown has never looked so lovely as
to-night. Excitement and mental disturbance have lent a dangerous
brilliancy to her eyes, a touch of color to her cheek. There is
something electric about her that touches those who gaze, on her, and
warns herself that a crisis is at hand.
Up to this she has been able to elude all Baltimore's attempts at
conversation--has refused all his demands for a dance, yet this same
knowledge that the night will not go by without a denouement of some
kind between her and him is terribly present to her. To-night! The last
night she will ever see him, in all human probability! The exaltation
that enables her to endure this thought is fraught with such agony that,
brave and determined as she is, it is almost too much for her.
Yet she--Isabel--she should learn that that old friendship between them
was no fable. To-night it would bear fruit. False, she believed
her--well, she should see.
In a way, she clung to Beauclerk as a means of escaping
Baltimore--throwing out a thousand wiles to charm him to her side, and
succeeding. Three times she had given a smiling "No" to Lord Baltimore's
demand for a dance, and, regardless of opinion, had flung herself into a
wild and open flirtation with Beauclerk.
But it is growing toward midnight, and her strength is failing her.
These people, will they never go, will she never be able to seek her own
room, and solitude, and despair without calling down comment on her
head, and giving Isabel--that cold woman--the chance of sneering at her
weakness?
A sudden sense of the uselessness of it all has taken possession of her;
her heart sinks. It is at this moment that Baltimore once more comes up
to her.
"This dance?" says he. "It is half way through. You are not engaged, I
suppose, as you are sitting down? May I have what remains of it?"
She makes a little gesture of acquiescence, and, rising, places her hand
upon his arm.