“Where is your self-respect?” he demanded, furiously. “Your lover will never come back to you! Can you not see through his shallow trick? At least, you must appear in society. I will not have this moping away in dark rooms. Here is an invitation to Lady Gaynor’s ball. You must be there, if only to end the silly gossip about broken hearts. Pshaw, I have no sympathy with such nonsense!”
“If it is your desire, papa, I will accept the invitation,” Lady Elaine said, calmly; “but I shall find no pleasure at Lady Gaynor’s ball.”
The earl was satisfied that he had gained his point so far.
“She will soon forget the fellow in the excitement of pleasure. If necessary, I will take her abroad,” he thought.
Two days later Miss Nugent came and kissed Lady Elaine with a great show of affection.
The one subject was the ball and the dresses they were to wear. Lady Elaine treated the whole thing in a listless, apathetic manner.
“I have no special choice,” she said; “I shall leave the selection to my maid. I have no one to please.”
“My dear Elaine, how ridiculous you are,” exclaimed Margaret Nugent. “You know that the viscount adores you.”
“Silence!” the earl’s daughter said, sternly. “How can you speak in that way—you, who know all?”
“It is that very knowledge that makes me speak,” Miss Nugent replied, steadily. “It is that very knowledge that makes me speak, Lady Elaine. You are wasting your life for a man who never cared for you. He confessed to me that it was merely the infatuation of a moment. I dared not tell you so before. These creatures of poetic fancy are never to be trusted wholly. Sir Harold has ever been eccentric and quixotic; he has ever been afflicted with some new craze at which hard-hearted, sober-minded men have smiled. I believe that for a little while he worshiped you as the perfect embodiment of some cherished ideal; but the instant he realized that you were only human, his so-called love changed to actual dislike.”