Lady Hampton advanced in her usual grave, artificial manner.
"Sir Oswald wanted to send for you, but I said 'no.' What can be more charming than such a group under the trees? I am so anxious to introduce my niece to you, Miss Darrell—she arrived only yesterday. Elinor, let me introduce you to Miss Darrell, Miss Hastings, and Captain Langton."
Pauline's dark eyes glanced at the blushing, sweet face, and the shrinking graceful figure. Miss Hastings made her welcome; and the captain, stroking his mustache, thought himself in luck for knowing two such pretty girls.
There could not have been a greater contrast than Pauline Darrell and Elinor Rocheford. Pauline was dark, proud, beautiful, passionate, haughty, and willful, yet with a poet's soul and a grand mind above all worldliness, all meanness, all artifice. Elinor was timid, shrinking, graceful, lovely, with a delicate, fairy-like beauty, yet withal keenly alive to the main chance, and never forgetting her aunt's great maxim—to make the best of everything for herself.
On this warm August morning Miss Rocheford wore a charming gossamer costume of lilac and white, with the daintiest of Parisian hats on her golden head. Her gloves, shoes, laces, parasol, were perfection—not a fold was out of place, not a ribbon awry—contrasting most forcibly with the grand, picturesque girl near her.
Lady Hampton seated herself, and Miss Rocheford did the same. Sir Oswald suggesting how very refreshing grapes and peaches would be on so warm a morning, Captain Langton volunteered to go and order some. Lady Hampton watched him as he walked away.
"What a magnificent man, Sir Oswald! What a fine clever face! It is easy to see that he is a military man—he is so upright, so easy; there is nothing like a military training for giving a man an easy, dignified carriage. I think I understood that he was the son of a very old friend of yours?"
"The son of the dearest friend I ever had in the world," was the reply; "and I love him as though he were my own—indeed I wish he were."
Lady Hampton sighed and looked sympathetic.
"Langton," she continued, in a musing tone—"is he one of the Langtons of Orde?"