"Late as usual, and all your partners in hysterics!" said a quick
voice--a voice a little sharp, perhaps, and decided, but clear
as a bell. Agatha, who had just entered the dancing-room with her
chaperon, turned quickly round and smiled at Miss Firs-Robinson.
"I couldn't help it. Aunt Hilda was afraid to come out, and so
Mrs. Poynter has kindly brought me."
"Oh, if it is Mrs. Poynter, thank Heaven you are here at all!
Her wild determination to be 'fashionable,' as she calls it,
makes her slow in many ways. But here you are, anyway."
"What a charming gown!" said Agatha, looking at her friend.
Certainly the gown was not more charming than its wearer. Miss
Firs-Robinson was looking her very best to-night--small,
fairy-like, refined, in spite of her parentage, which, indeed,
was not all it might have been. Her grandfather had been a store
boy in America, had got on, and become the head of a store
himself.
Anyway, Miss Firs-Robinson was as delicately formed as though the
blood of all the Howards had run through her veins. A little
thing--small--vivacious. Her father, the moment he felt
himself above the whims of Fortune's vilest efforts, came to
England and died.
That was five years ago. Elfrida, who had been sent home at an
early age for educational purposes, and who remembered but
slightly her American experiences, had lived all these years with
her father's sister, the elder Miss Firs-Robinson. She was a most
estimable woman, and full of prejudices.
Elfrida was as lovely as the dawning day. Her pretty fair hair
covered in tiny curls a head as patrician in shape as though its
owner had been the daughter of a hundred earls. And in this head
to-night some diamond stars were glittering, sparkling gaily as
its owner moved and spoke. Her mouth was small, but not too
small. And her nose was not Greek. It was pretty and very
lovable, for all that. Her eyes were blue, and so easy to read,
said the tyro; so difficult, said the expert.
"If you hadn't come," said Miss Firs-Robinson, "there would have
been murder presently. Dr.---"
Agatha's face changed and whitened; she made an impulsive
movement.
"Dr. Dillwyn has been wandering round aimlessly for the last
hour, seeking whom he may devour, I suppose. Certainly he has not
been seeking a partner. Now you have come---"
"Well? Now I have come?" Agatha repeated her words. "How can you
be so stupid!" said she.
"Stupid! Stupid! I like that. Well I have news for you. Who do
you think is---"
"Our dance, I believe," said some one to Elfrida at that moment.
It was Elfrida's shadow during the past two months--Lord
Ambert. He bowed to Agatha over Miss Firs-Robinson's head.
"Is it? Yes, of course," said Elfrida, glancing at her card. "But
I have just one word to say to Miss Nesbitt." She smiled again at
Ambert, very prettily.
"Do you know who has come to-night to stay with us for a month?
Dicky--Dicky Browne. He met auntie and me last season in town.
And auntie asked him to run down to us for a bit. He's a
nuisance, certainly," shrugging her shoulders. "We all know that,
in spite of everything; but I do love Dicky more than any one
else, I think."
"I wish I could believe that," said Agatha, in a low tone. Lord
Ambert was standing near, waiting for Elfrida. "Better love him
than---"
"Pouf! What a suggestion! Why should I love any one?" Elfrida's
piquant face was now alight with mischief. "Do you think I am
such a one as thyself? I tell you, Agatha, that I, for one, have
no heart! I can't afford one."
"I should think you could afford anything," said Agatha. "You
could, at all events, afford to marry the man who loved you."
"And where does he live?" asked Elfrida, laughing.
"You know," said Agatha slowly, earnestly.
"You're lovely; you're a perfect delight!" said Miss
Firs-Robinson, her amusement now growing more apparent; "but
really I don't. I know only that I--want to be---"
"Happy?" said Agatha, answering.
"No; a countess," said the pretty little fairy, with a gay
grimace. She looked over Agatha's shoulder and beckoned to Lord
Ambert, who was still "in waiting," to come to her.
He came. A middle-sized, well-set-up man of about forty, with a
rather supercilious mouth and small eyes. He looked quite a
gentleman, however; which a great many earls do not, and, of
course, there he scored. He was a poor man for his rank in life,
and was desirous of impounding the numerous thousands in which
Miss Firs-Robinson lay, as it were, enwrapped. He never forgot
his dignity, however, when with her. He gave her quite to
understand that she was by birth many degrees below zero, and
that he was a star in her firmament.
In the meantime Elfrida, who had a very acute mind of her own,
saw straight through him. In a sense he amused her, and, after
all, she knew very well who would be mistress and master after
her marriage with him. Not Ambert, anyway. Her money should be
securely settled on herself; she was quite decided about that.
She was quite decided also about her marriage with him. She had
lived some little time in America, as has been said, and had
learned the value of our English lords; so she had arranged with
herself very early in life never to die until she could have a
title carved upon her tombstone. Ambert had come in quite handy.
He was the only unmarried earl within a radius of a tremendous
number of miles, so, of course, he would have to do. It was a
pity he was so old--that he was a little bald--that his
expression was so unpleasant. But he was an earl. She would be
Lady Ambert; and if he thought he would have it all his own way
afterwards--why, she would show him. She hadn't the least doubt
about his proposing to her. She gave herself no trouble on that
head; and, indeed, she used to know great mirth sometimes, when
he had been specially laborious over his efforts to prove to her
that he had twenty or forty heiresses in his eye, who would all
be ready at a moment's notice to accept his title, his debts, and
his bald head.
For all that, she was determined to marry him. This, however, did
not prevent her indulging in small flirtations here and there.
There were several young officers in the barracks in the next
town who were literally at her feet, and there was the curate,
Tom Blount, who every one knew was a very slave to her every
caprice.
"Ah, Mr. Blount," said she, as she passed him now on her way to
the conservatory. "Here? And you haven't asked me for a single
dance."
"I don't dance," said Tom Blount. "The bishop doesn't like it,
you know, and to ask you to sit out a dance with me would be more
than I dare venture."
He smiled at her out of two honest blue eyes. And she smiled back
at him out of two very dishonest ones, though all four were much
of the same colour.
"'If thy heart fail thee,'" quoted she daringly.
"Well, I shan't let it fail me," said the curate suddenly. His
smile was somewhat forced, however. "Will you sit out one with
me?"
"You don't deserve it," said she. "But---"
Here Lord Ambert bent and whispered something into her ear. He
was evidently urging her to refuse the insolent request of this
nobody, this curate of a small country parish. But his words took
no effect. Elfrida listened to them, nodded and smiled as if
acquiescing, and then---
"The fourteenth is a quadrille, for the sake of appeasing old
Lady Saunders, I believe," said she, looking at the curate. "Will
you have that dance--to sit it out with me?"
"Won't I!" said the curate enthusiastically, who had not long
left Oxford, and who was wonderfully young in many ways.
"You promised that quadrille to me," said Ambert, frowning.
"Yes, I know. But as I never dance quadrilles---" She paused and
looked up at Ambert. "You see?"
"No, I don't," said he.
"Well I am sure Mr. Blount does," said Elfrida audaciously. "Now,
remember, Mr. Blount, the fourteenth is ours."
Lord Ambert looked at him.
Really the audacity of this contemptible curate passed
comprehension. To speak so to her, his--Ambert's--future wife.
He frowned and bit his lip. That was the worst of marrying into
the middle classes; they never know how to keep those beneath
them in order.
Lord Ambert, holding her hand during her descent from the steps
to the garden beneath, ventured a cold remonstrance.
"Is it wise of you--you will pardon, I hope, my interference--
but is it wise of you to be so kind to a person of that sort?"
"A person? Is he a person?" asked Miss Firs-Robinson with much
airy astonishment. "I quite understood he was a man of good
family. Whereas a 'person' must be of no family whatever."
"If without money," put in Lord Ambert quickly, "quite so. There
are, of course, grades."
"Grades?"
"Yes. A man of no birth with money is not the same as a man of no
birth without it. For money educates, refines, elevates." This he
pointed with little emphases, as a small hint to her.
"And a man of birth without money?"
"Sinks." Here Lord Ambert's voice took even a lower tone. "Sinks
until he meets the _extreme_--that is, the lowest of all
classes--with which he unites. I am afraid that young man you
have just been talking to will come to that end. His people, I
believe, were in a decent set at one time; but there is no money
there now, and probably he will marry his landlady's daughter, or
the young woman who manages the school in the village, and--
repent it soon after."
"Repentance is good for the soul," said Elfrida; she laughed.
"But as you show it, money is everything. Even the 'person' can
be raised by it."
"It is sad of course, but I am afraid that is really the case. In
these days money is of great importance--of nearly as great
importance as birth or position. It lifts the 'person,' as you
call it---"
"Has it, then, lifted me?"
"Dear Miss Firs-Robinson! What a question! Surely you do not
consider yourself part of this discussion?"
He, however, _had_ considered her so, and had taken pleasure in
the argument that had laid her low. This was part of what he
called his "_training_" of her!
"You--who are a thing apart, a thing most precious---"
"I don't want to be a 'thing,' however precious," said Miss
Firs-Robinson, with decision. "I should much rather be a
'person,' for choice, however criminal it sounds. It only wants
'age' put to it to be magnificent. And so you call Mr. Blount 'a
person'?"
"Perhaps I was wrong," said Ambert contemptuously; "a 'beggar'
would be nearer the mark."