Here Sir James Handcock, wakening from one of his usual fits of somnolence, actually takes the trouble to cross the room and put a question to his wife in an audible whisper.
"Who is that handsome lad?" he asks, staring kindly at Billy. (He was absent when my brother first entered the room.)
"Mrs. Carrington's brother," returns his wife, with a sympathetic smile.
"A really charming face," says Sir James, criticisingly; "scarcely a fault. Quite a face for an artist's pencil." And I feel my heart warm towards Sir James Handcock.
When dinner is announced, Lady Blanche declares her intention of going down with no one but her new friend, and Billy, proud and enchanted, conducts her to the dining-room; while Bebe casts a "what did I tell you?" sort of look at me behind their backs. Indeed, so thorough are the fascinations she exercises upon him that before the evening is concluded he is hopelessly and entirely her slave.
CHAPTER XXII.
It has come at last—the night of my first ball; and surely no girlish debutante in her first season ever felt a greater thrill of delight at this mere fact than I, spite of my being "wooed an' married an' a'."
Behold me in my room arrayed for conquest.
Having once made up my mind to the black velvet—though mother and Harriet and Bebe all declare me a great deal too young and too slight for it—I persist in my determination, and the dress is ordered and sent down.
It is a most delectable old dress, rejoicing greatly in "old point;" and when I am in it, and Martha has fastened the diamonds in my hair and ears and round my throat and wrists and waist, I contemplate myself in a lengthy mirror with feelings akin to admiration.