“Scott, the fly man, is waiting, Miss Hayes. We promised not to detain him after one o’clock; it is now half-past one. Therefore, if you are returning in our charge, I must ask you to come home at once.”
“And my dance?” cried Mr. Aubrey Price.
“And mine?” echoed Sir Fulke.
There was no use in attempting to resist them—no time to take leave of my hostess: she was at supper. I was in the Miss Bennys’ clutches; they were inexorable. This was their moment of triumph, and I was carried away, followed to the very door of the fly by four eligible partners, uttering loud regrets.
Mr. Somers pressed my hand as he said good-by, and added, “I shall look forward to seeing you soon—in a day or two.”
“We need not ask if you have enjoyed yourself, Miss Hayes,” exclaimed the elder Miss Benny in an acrid key. “I admire your”—I thought perhaps she was going to say dress or dancing, but it was my—“wonderful self-confidence! Mrs. Cholmondeley seems to have quite taken you up! She is fond of doing that; she took a fancy to an Australian girl, she met on board ship, and actually brought her home, and had her with her, taking her everywhere for months. People called her the kangaroo; she was a horror.”
The tone implied, that I was a horror also,—if not actually a kangaroo. I burst out laughing. I laughed loud and long; I could not stop. I suppose I was almost hysterical. The reaction from the late brilliant scene, where I had been made much of, where I had danced and enjoyed the pleasures of this life for the very first time, where I had been conscious of whispered flattering comments, and eloquently flattering eyes, where I had sniffed a little of the intoxicating incense of admiration, and felt that youth and beauty are a great power, was too much. Then to come down to being one of four in a close stuffy fly, to remember the dingy little bedroom in which I must shed my fine feathers—how seven-and-sixpence for my share of the conveyance would pinch my weekly purse, and that I had forgotten to buy bacon for the morrow’s breakfast! All these thoughts and contrasts were jumbled up in my excited brain, and I laughed loud and long. My indecorous hilarity was succeeded by a freezing silence—a terrible, accusing, blank silence, which lasted the whole way home. For five long miles there was not a sound in that fly, save a sneeze or a yawn. The experience was appalling; it got upon my nerves. I felt inclined to sing or to scream. Luckily I controlled myself, or I should probably have been delivered at the door of the lunatic asylum. At last we drove up to Mrs. Gabb’s. I opened the door and sprang out, then I politely thanked the Miss Bennys for their escort, and wished them all a fair good night—which met with no response.