Just at this time, while he was walking off the drowsy dream that had got possession of him, a stream of carriages was slowly moving down Park Lane, taking up from one of the best known houses in town—Lady Merivale’s.
Lady Merivale was one of the leaders of ton and had been one as long as most middle-aged people could remember. To be seen at Lady Merivale’s was to be acknowledged as one of that small but powerful portion of humanity known as “the upper ten.”
It was one of her ladyship’s grand balls, and not only were the ball and drawing-rooms full, but the staircase also, and any one wishing to enter or exit had to make his way down a narrow line flanked on either side by the youth and nobility of the best kind of society.
That it had been a great success no one who knows the world—and Lady Merivale—needs to be told. It had, perhaps, been one of her greatest, for in addition to two princes of the blood royal, she had secured the great sensation of the day, the young millionairess, Lady Isabel Earlsley.
And this was no slight achievement, for Lady Bell, as she was generally called, was a wilful, uncertain young personage, from whom it was very hard to procure a promise, and who, not seldom, was given to breaking it when made, at least, so far as acceptation of invitations went.
But she was there tonight; as the next issue of the Morning Post would testify.
Jack had been really too careless and scornful in his indifference. Lady Bell was not only beautiful, she was—what was more rare than beauty—charming. She was rather short than tall; but not too short. She had a beautiful figure; not a wasp waist by any means, but a natural figure, full of power and grace. Her skin was, well, colonial; delicately tinted and creamy; and her eyes—it is difficult to catalogue her eyes, because their lights were always changing—but the expression which generally predominated was one of half-amused, half-mocking light.
With both expressions she met the open admiration of the gilded youths who thronged round her, amused at their foppery, mocking at their protestations of devotion.
Tonight she was dressed neither magnificently nor superbly, but with, what seemed to the women who gazed at her with barely concealed envy, artful simplicity.
Her dress was of Indian muslin, priceless for all its simplicity; and she wore glittering in her hair, on her arms, and on her cream-white bosom, pearls, that, in quantity and quality would have made the fortune of any enterprising burglar.