“I don’t know,” said Trafford.
“Do!” said the young fellow. “There’ll be a fearful crush, for Miss Chetwynde will be a great attraction; but I dare say we can fight our way in.”
Trafford was soon left alone again, for the gay young Irishman did not find him too cheerful a companion, and Trafford finished his cigar in a mood even more irritable than that in which he had commenced it.
It seemed to him as if this girl were going to dominate his life, as if he were to be haunted by her name and her money wherever he went and whomsoever he met. He dined at the club, and the two or three men who sat at the same table with him talked of little else but Miss Chetwynde. One of them, with the audacity of youth, called her the Golden Savage; and Trafford sat almost silent, and chafing inwardly, though outwardly as calm and serene as usual. He went home to his chambers half resolved not to go to the Villiers’, but by ten o’clock the faint resolution had melted, and he put on his overcoat, and sauntered down to Lord Villiers’ official residence, in Carlton Terrace, in a frame of mind more easily imagined than described.
About the same time, Lady Wyndover and Esmeralda were starting for the same destination. Her ladyship was, if not in a seventh heaven of delight, in the fifth or sixth. Esmeralda’s success had been greater, more emphatic than even Lady Wyndover had anticipated, and she was basking in something of the glory which shone around her ward. As the guardian of one of the most beautiful, and the richest, and, what is more important still, the most successful of the débutantes, Lady Wyndover had suddenly risen from a position of comparative insignificance to one of great social value. There would now be no difficulty in filling her dinner-parties; there would be plenty of invitations to the best houses; plenty of partners, plenty of adulation and eager civility.
She was all in a little flutter of excitement, and the blood mantled in her powdered cheek, making the artistically applied rouge almost unnecessary, as she watched Esmeralda going through the last stages of her toilet under Barker’s experienced hands.
Every hour of the day her study of the girl grew more intense in its interest. She had never seen any girl like her, and Esmeralda’s manner and conduct completely upset all her preconceived theories. She had expected the girl to be confused, bewildered, overwhelmed by the novelty of her position. She had expected her to be painfully shy at times, and over-bold at others; but Esmeralda, though she had been suddenly plunged from the wilds of Australia into the whirlpool of society, seemed neither bewildered nor overwhelmed. She was not even shy; and, judging by her calmness, was not even dazzled by the sudden brilliance into which she had been thrust. And, strange to say, Lady Wyndover had actually overheard a certain illustrious personage, whose name may not be mentioned, describe Miss Chetwynde as “good form.”
Since the Blankyres’ party, Esmeralda had been receiving dancing lessons from a famous professor; and the famous professor had declared, with something like enthusiasm, that he had never had a more apt pupil. Although the lessons had been so few, Esmeralda, by dint of many hours’ practice, had acquired sufficient knowledge of the Lancers and the simple waltz to be able to accept a partner without any very serious misgivings.
She had also learned other things; but there was one thing that Lady Wyndover could not teach her—she would not discriminate between nobodies and somebodies; she was frank and pleasant with one and all, and smiled upon the veriest detrimental—especially if he were good-looking and agreeable—as freely as she did upon the most noble of the innumerable persons who were introduced to her. Esmeralda was, at any rate as yet, no respecter of persons. But Lady Wyndover hoped that this would come in time.
Esmeralda, on this evening, wore the second of her ball-dresses, and as Lady Wyndover declared, Madame Cerise’s taste had never been employed to better advantage. The dress was still too low to altogether please Esmeralda, but as she knew by her two nights’ experience that there were many still lower, she submitted. Their arrival at Lady Villiers’ created quite a little sensation. The well-dressed mob in a London ball-room does not shout or wave its handkerchief, but it can stare and whisper together; and in this, and in several other ways, it displayed its curiosity and interest. Esmeralda was very soon surrounded, and her card would have been filled up to the last item, but she reserved several spaces, notwithstanding the ardent protests which assailed her.