CHAPTER XXXIX
TREVALYON THROWS DOWN THE GLOVE.
The dinner on this Twelfth-night, fraught as it was with so much of the effervescence of the champagne of life to so many, was a dinner fit for an emperor. The gold plate, the glassware, each piece a gem. Sweet flowers looked up from their delicate design in moss beside each person, or from elegant vases. The hostess was recklessly gay and abandon, looking like a scarlet poppy with dew upon it, robed as she was in satin of scarlet, the whole front of the dress and corsage being embroidered in poppies from pink to scarlet, their leaves of pearls; her necklet, armlets, and earrings were diamonds, rubies and pearls. A handsome woman, without doubt, loving life and its bon-bons.
"We only make the run once," she would cry, "let us take it effervescing."
Vaura is peerlessly beautiful and brilliant as her diamonds, her large hazel eyes bright as stars, her lips a rose, throat, neck and arms gleam in their whiteness as does the satin of her gown. Ah! Lionel, much as we love you, we are happy in the thought that Vaura is your rest. Colonel Haughton notices that his niece often glances at him, and that beneath her gay repartee or brilliant converse, there underlies some powerful excitement which he attributes wholly to the expose of the truth by Lionel.
"And so you enjoyed Rome," said Capt. Chancer to Vaura, who had been assigned to him, so causing him to be the envy of the other men.
"Intensely! dear sun-warm, love-warm Italia."
"Yes, one loves to live and lives to love while there. I hope you did not leave your heart behind you, Miss Vernon."
"Nay, you should congratulate me had I done so, and by your own words of 'one lives to love while there.'"
"Yes, and on my warm heart; for, though old Sol laughs in gay Paris, his temple is in warm Italia," she said, gaily.