"I fear I have mistaken much; forgive me, the error will have no mate—like myself, it will be lone—forgive me."
There was so much sadness in his voice, that her hand trembled with the emotion her pride even could not quell; she had accepted Lord Randolph in pique at Tremenhere's supposed trifling with her, and now those chains were already galling her; yet, how throw them off? how find courage to cast herself away on him—the man she had once so much despised? It was a fearful war within her. At this juncture Lord Randolph came to their aid in words, but every one was significant to their thoughts.
"Tremenhere!" he cried, "I appeal to you," and he turned to where the two sat, a little apart; she was knitting a purse. "Do you think a bal masqué, as we went the other night, a place where no man should take his wife?"
"That depends much on the lady," was the reply.
"I said," answered Lady Ripley, "that in my opinion, from the description given me by Lady Lysson (for I thank goodness I was not there,) that scenes so totally at variance with decorum as men in female attire, and vice versâ, and the heterogeneous mass of persons collected there—their freedom of speech, want of all ceremony and obedience to the commonest rules of society, must leave an unfavourable trace on the mind—I declare, even Dora savours of it; for ever since she went there has been a restlessness of spirit, an unquietness of manner, I never noticed before. I should scarcely have wondered at any absurdity she might have committed."
"Oh, mamma!" exclaimed that lady, in painful confusion.
"On my life," laughed Lord Randolph, "Lady Ripley, you are epigrammatic in your speech. Has Lady Dora been guilty of any absurdity since?"
"You mistake me," hastily answered she, remembering the engagement contracted within a few days; "of any serious fault I trust my daughter will never be guilty; but I mean, were she not perfect, as I may, I believe, call her, in strict propriety of thought and action, I should indeed dread what such influence might effect."
"Lady Dora could never forget what is due to her rank and station," said Tremenhere. "There may be a certain excitement in the scene, especially to a person visiting it for the first time; but we will leave all casualties of this kind to your unsophisticated girl, believing in such an absurdity as love different to what the world has viewed it, and thrown with one she fancied destined to call into being that feeling, there is really no saying whether such a one might not be led away by the atmosphere around her to give love for love, and speak her heart freely where the generous mask concealed her blushes from the eye envious to behold that record of her sincerity; but you will all perceive, I am depicting an imaginary scene, and persons. We are all too sage and old in fashion's ways to commit the like follies."
"Oh, of course!" answered the unseeing mother; but every word had echoed in Lady Dora's heart, or its facsimile; for the thing itself she did not possess—it had long been choked by pride.