Delrose, pushed to it and full of hate to Trevalyon, excited, and as was usual, reckless (knowing also what his plot was for this very night; knowing, too, how that act would be canvassed at dawn; when society! in her chaste morning robe would look shocked at what she would wink at at midnight, and in her robe de chambre), electrified the groups of wasps and butterflies, in their musical mur-mur and whirr-whirr, by standing up and saying, in a tone of bravado—
"A pretty plot and well got up for a fifth-rate theatre, but not for a drawing-room in Belgravia I need scarcely say I deny the charge, the object of which is to free a man from a 'hidden wife' to enable him to wed a new beauty with us to-night. (Sensation). Sir Lionel Trevalyon has lately come into the possession of much gold; the Church of Rome hath a fancy for the yellow metal; if the woman robed as a nun be a nun, then she is only adding to the coffers of the church by speaking the words we have heard. If she even be the one-time wife of poor Colonel Clarmont, society, knowing a thing or two (excuse the slang), will place no reliance on the story of such an one."
To attempt to describe the effects of the words of Delrose on the gay groups of revellers would be impossible. Butterflies and wasps forgot for a moment their beauty and their sting. It was as though Dame Rumour and Mrs. Grundy were struck blind and dumb, their lovers faithless, or Worth dead! But now the Babel of tongues fills the air, and silence lays down her sceptre to go forth into the night alone.
"Isn't it too delightful! a double scandal!" cried one.
"Alas! alas! that my day should be in such an age," said Lord
Ponsonby.
"I wonder who it is darling Sir Lionel wishes to marry," said another. At this remembering rivalry got on the war path, as each looked critically at the other.
"Trevalyon would be a decent fellow enough if you did not all kneel to him," growled a county magnate. "I wish he would go to Salt Lake city and take his harem with him."
"I wonder if he has his eye on me," cried gay Mrs. Wingfield; "you men do sometimes take a fancy to other men's belongings. If he does I shall have to succumb instanter. Eustace, dear fellow, has rather a consumptive look, now I come to notice him."
"He may drop off in time," laughed the huntress; "but I am afraid I've lost my whip," she added, dolefully, brushing past Colonel Haughton, standing beside Lady Esmondet, and conversing in an undertone with Claxton and Trevalyon.
"Lost your whip!" exclaimed her host with forced gaiety; "that dare-devil has picked it up, then."