“Lady Ada!” she said. Then she added, quietly: “I’ve never seen such hair as yours, my lady. No one can see it for the first time without raving about it. If you could hear the gentlemen—”
But Esmeralda had descended low enough.
“Thank you, Barker,” she said, recovering herself; “I don’t think I want to hear what the gentlemen say about it.”
“No, my lady,” assented Barker, humbly.
When Esmeralda went down they were all assembled in the drawing-room—she had waited until she had heard the second bell, waited with a strange nervousness which she had not felt on her first visit to Belfayre—and her entrance made a sensation. The shaded light fell upon her ivory-clear face and red-gold hair, and upon the superb dress and flashing jewels, so that she looked like a picture of Rossetti’s.
“Great Heaven, she is more lovely than ever!” murmured Lord Selvaine, startled, for once, out of his cynical calm.
“Yes—yes!” breathed Lilias.
Lady Ada looked at her, and then away. Norman Druce caught his breath and turned away also; the duke looked round with pride, as if she were indeed his daughter. And Trafford—Trafford stood motionless for a moment, his pale face growing paler, an expression of wistfulness, intense enough for pain, in his eyes.
The duke led her to the head of the table. She glanced appealingly at Lilias, whose place she was taking, but Lilias shook her head with a smile; and so, for the first time, Esmeralda, the waif of Three Star Camp, presided over the ducal table at Belfayre; and the duke smiled at Trafford as if he had done the greatest and cleverest thing a man could do in winning so lovely and divine a wife.
When she could collect herself sufficiently to look round, Esmeralda found that she had Norman Druce upon her right and Lord Selvaine on her left. The table was oval, and the party of a family character.