When they drove up to the palace, Trafford came out to help them to alight, and the duke, as he leaned on his son’s arm, said:
“I have had a most delightful drive, Trafford. Miss Chetwynde is a famous whip. I want you to send to London for a phaeton and pair for her.”
“I have done so,” said Trafford, quietly.
“I am glad. I have been showing Miss Chetwynde the site for the new town, and she quite agrees with me that it would be a great improvement. Don’t you think we ought to commence it at once, my dear?”
Trafford glanced at Esmeralda gravely; but, quite innocently, she said:
“Oh, yes; I would begin at once.”
“You see!” exclaimed the duke, triumphantly; and he patted her shoulder approvingly.
Lilias, fearing that Lady Wyndover and Esmeralda would find Belfayre dull, had invited some people to dine that night, and Esmeralda made her first acquaintance with a country dinner-party.
It was a stately, not to say solemn, affair. There were three or four of the neighboring county families, a couple of officers from Belmont, and the rector and his wife. The county families had heard of and read about “Miss Chetwynde, the heiress,” and were consumed with curiosity respecting her, and were amazed—and doubtless rather disappointed—at not finding her to be a kind of female cowboy. They were also much startled and impressed by her beauty, and before the evening was over, Esmeralda had won the golden opinion of the male portion of the party. The men grouped themselves around her very much as they were in the habit of doing in London, and Trafford looked on from a distance with his usual gravity.
The duke was not present at dinner, but he came into the drawing-room afterward for half an hour, and witnessed Esmeralda’s little triumph, and nodded and smiled at her as she left her court of admirers, and seating herself beside him, talked to him of their drive in her frank, unaffected way.