Leonard entered on the scene, and joined the party in the garden. The
Countess, perhaps to please her son, was more than civil--she was
markedly kind to him. She noticed him more attentively than she had
hitherto done; and, with all her prejudices of birth, was struck to find
the son of Mark Fairfield, the carpenter, so thoroughly the gentleman.
He might not have the exact tone and phrase by which Convention
stereotypes those born and schooled in a certain world; but the
aristocrats of Nature can dispense with such trite minutiæ. And Leonard
had lived, of late, at least, in the best society that exists, for the
polish of language and the refinement of manners--the society in which
the most graceful ideas are clothed in the most graceful forms--the
society which really, though indirectly, gives the law to courts--the
society of the most classic authors, in the various ages in which
literature has flowered forth from civilization. And if there was
something in the exquisite sweetness of Leonard's voice, look, and
manner, which the Countess acknowledged to attain that perfection in
high breeding, which, under the name of "suavity," steals its way into
the heart, so her interest in him was aroused by a certain subdued
melancholy which is rarely without distinction, and never without charm.
He and Helen exchanged but few words. There was but one occasion in
which they could have spoken apart, and Helen herself contrived to elude
it. His face brightened at Lady Lansmere's cordial invitation, and he
glanced at Helen as he accepted it; but her eyes did not meet his own.
"And now," said Harley, whistling to Nero, whom his ward was silently
caressing, "I must take Leonard away. Adieu! all of you, till to-morrow
at dinner. Miss Violante, is the doll to have blue or black eyes?"
Violante turned her own black eyes in mute appeal to Lady Lansmere, and
nestled to that lady's side as if in refuge from unworthy insult.