“Not at all too much, my dear child,” she replied. “Wait until you see Lady Blankyre’s and the Countess of Desford’s. No, that simple necklace of pearls and diamonds is just the thing. Later on—well, later on—you shall see what diamonds mean! Now are you sure, quite sure, you will not have a little sal volatile?”
“If it’s medicine, I’m sure I won’t,” said Esmeralda, emphatically. “I’ve never had any since I got the measles; and this business can’t be as bad as that!”
They were driven to Lady Blankyre’s well-known house in Park Lane at what seemed to Esmeralda a remarkably late hour for an “early” party; and, remembering the “small,” she was astonished to find the hall and staircase crowded with guests, and discovered that Lady Wyndover had to almost push her way through the throng.
Lady Blankyre, a magnificent woman, in white velvet, stood just inside the room, and at a whisper from Lady Wyndover extended her hand and smiled a welcome.
“How do you do, Miss Chetwynde?” she said. “It is very good of Lady Wyndover to bring you to me before any one else!”
Then, in an undertone, she said to Lady Wyndover:
“My dear, she is superb! Bring her to me again presently, when the crush is over. George”—she turned to her husband, the Earl of Blankyre, who was standing beside her, holding her bouquet of white camellias—“this is Lady Wyndover’s ward, Miss Chetwynde. Will you take her through into the next room?”
Lord Blankyre offered his arm, and looked at her curiously through his eyeglass. He had heard the story of her discovery, with all its exaggerations, and had expected to see a rough, gawky girl half dead with shyness. But Esmeralda, though she was somewhat confused by the crowd of superbly dressed women and distinguished men, and the hum of voices mingling with the music of the Hungarian band, did not look overcome by shyness or nervousness. The lovely face was just a little graver than most girls, and the wonderful eyes rather solemn; but the shapely hand that rested on his arm did not shake, and the lips were firm and steady.
And yet, what an ordeal lay before her! Lady Blankyre had managed to tell some of her friends that the great heiress was expected, and these had disseminated the information, so that as Esmeralda passed through the room with Lord Blankyre, all those who had heard her name looked at her; at first curiously, and then with greater amazement than they would have felt if she had appeared, say, in the costume of an Australian aboriginal. This lovely creature, with the red-gold hair and large, luminous eyes, this graceful girl in the exquisitely quiet dress, the great heiress whom some lucky lawyer had found in the dust and grime of a gold field! What the newspaper reporters are so fond of calling “a sensation” ran through the crowd, and presently Lord Blankyre was stopped, and plied with eager requests for an introduction, and Esmeralda found herself surrounded by a crowd of men and women, who were as curious and excited about her as if they had been a mob of “the lower class.”