“Oh, Mr. Holroyd, this is most fortunate! I know I can depend upon you to look after poor mamma—here she is—she says she is quite faint with hunger.”
Mrs. Redmond—who had at last shaken off Maria—was in a bland and chatty frame of mind, although intensely occupied with various toothsome comestibles—soup, salmon, ducklings, pâté de foie gras, all of which received her very best attention. She remained a long time in the supper-room—with George, so to speak, chained to the stake, and never noticed how silent and preoccupied he was; how often his eyes wandered to a little table, at which sat Betty, Miss Pink, and the brothers Moore, nor how restless he became, after they had risen and departed. Lady Mary was a fussy chaperon, and by the time Mr. Holroyd and his charge had returned to the ball-room, she and her young ladies were nowhere to be seen—they had gone home!
Poor George! He had never wished Mrs. Redmond at Jericho! Never!
CHAPTER II.
“FOXY JOE TELLS TALES.”
“For every inch that is not a fool is a rogue.”
—Dryden.
Miss Pink, who was in the highest spirits, followed Betty into her bed-room, when they arrived home from the ball, and offered to unlace her dress, if Betty would do the same kind office for her.
“You looked perfectly beautiful,” she exclaimed, kissing her, “and did you not have a lovely time. Oh, my!”
Betty agreed that she had had a lovely time, and when, after an hour’s thorough discussion of the events of the evening, she had got rid of her vivacious companion, she wrapped herself in a shawl, and put out the candles, and went and sat in a deep window seat, to watch for the dawn, and to think. Never before had Betty’s thoughts kept her out of bed.
She was not the same gay careless Betty that we had figuratively handed into the old green chariot a week ago. No, her little simple heart now beat with delicious dazzling hopes and then fluttered with dismal dreadful fears. She had made a discovery; she found that she was continually thinking of George Holroyd, and that she liked him. Not as she liked Denis Malone, and Fred and Ghosty Moore. No, quite differently. She had a guilty knowledge that she never was so happy as when he was talking to her, and that when he was not present she was continually and secretly watching the door. Alas! poor Betty, this latter is a truly fatal symptom.