During the days which intervened before that named for the dinner-party, Katharine never gave a passing thought to the subject of her father's strange and incongruous guest; but when the day came, she felt rather ill-humoured about the whole thing.
"What on earth can papa want with him?" she thought, impatiently; "and I am to make myself agreeable to him! Well, that generally comes easy to me; but not in this case. I can't even talk to him about the City, which I really should like, because that would be talking shop, though he's not a tradesman. However, it will soon be over," she thought, brightening up, and with an exquisite smile of happy anticipation lighting up her face, moody till then; "and the ball can't fail to be delightful."
Miss Guyon was going to a ball in the evening, after her dinner-party at home; and her toilet was made with a view to that festivity. An ornament or two, and a magical touch added to her head-dress, were all she would require for the perfect brilliancy of her appearance, in addition to the white dress, arrayed in which she appeared to the enchanted gaze of Robert Streightley, when he was ushered into her drawing-room, like a vision from another world. And it was quite true that he had never seen so beautiful, so graceful, so elegant a woman as the girl-hostess, who played her part with perfect self-possession, while he felt miserably embarrassed in his.
Katharine was seated on an ottoman, placed between the long narrow windows of the front drawing-room, talking to an elderly lady, whom Robert Streightley's quick eye recognised, as he advanced from the door. Mr. Guyon left the group with whom he was talking, on the announcement of Robert's name; and went forward to meet him with a decided empressement of manner which had its effect on the other guests assembled. He led Robert up to Katharine, and presented him to her. She bent her graceful head, said a gracious word or two, and resumed her conversation with the lady--whom Robert had recognised, and who was Lady Henmarsh--with well-bred imperturbability. Did she remember him? Robert thought. Had she ever thought of him since that day which had meant to him so much, but to her so little? So little! nothing! and yet not nothing, if she had only known it, for he had discovered things about her father since. Robert found himself thinking these rambling thoughts, and gazing helplessly at Katharine, unheeding the smooth flow of Mr. Guyon's talk, as that gentleman, in his very best and airiest manner, addressed himself to the entertainment of his new and useful guest, and to the task of putting him at his ease in this strange sphere. With a sudden consciousness of his absence of mind came self-command to Robert, and before long he began to examine the other guests with much more of attention and curiosity than they were at all likely to bestow on him. To the dozen persons assembled in Mr. Guyon's drawing-room Robert Streightley was merely a stranger,--well-dressed, well-looking, and though deficient in the air of fashion, which more or less marked themselves, a gentleman in whom there was nothing to provoke any adverse or sneering criticism. To Robert they were all interesting. These were Katharine's friends,--the people she lived amongst, the people who could influence her by their tastes and opinions, the people whose manners, and dress, and conversation she liked. In every man in the room Robert saw a possible rival, in every woman a possible enemy. He was very foolish, not only in the ordinary sense in which every man who is in love is foolish, but in an extraordinary sense,--the result of his peculiar position, and the isolation of his life. He was possessed by his one idea; and he allowed it to become a centre round which every thing revolved. When the announcement of dinner told him that the party was complete, and relieved him from the apprehension of seeing Gordon Frere's handsome face amongst the number, he actually sighed audibly with the sense of relief. He listened eagerly, as Mr. Guyon or Katharine addressed their guests, and learned with absurd satisfaction that three of the six gentlemen who composed the male portion of the company were married to three of the six ladies who composed the female portion.
Robert Streightley was a very clever man, but there was a dangerously weak side to his intellect, all the more perilous that he had never suspected it, and did not suspect it now; and that weak side was about to be stormed by a strong passion, all the more ungovernable because it attacked him for the first time. He had never played with this dangerous enemy; he had not known any of the feints, the mock-surprises of love, and he was hopelessly at its mercy. Mingled happiness and misery,--the happiness of this delicious, unexpected excess to Katharine's presence, the misery of his uncertainty as to her relations with others, with one terrible other in particular--the sense of his strangeness in the scene familiar to her,--ravaged and divided his heart between them. For a time the misery was predominant; and then Robert, an impressionable man, and one in whom social tastes were not non-existent, only dormant, yielded to the charm of the present, and gave himself up to admiration of Katharine, who never showed to greater advantage than on such occasions. The aplomb of her manner, the brilliancy of her conversation, the taste, elegance, and fashion of her dress, the easy and pleasant grace with which she made the dinner-party "go off" with a success utterly beyond his experience of any festal occasion whatever, were full of a marvellous charm for the man who looked at this girl through the glorified medium of a first and overmastering passion.
Robert took little heed of the other guests, except as one or other of them engaged Katharine's attention, and so divided his. He had the good fortune to be seated near Miss Guyon; and but that Lady Henmarsh directed much of her conversation to the young hostess, and so won Streightley's enthusiastic gratitude, she would probably have found her neighbour rather a dull companion. But Lady Henmarsh was never dull, and never suffered from other people's dulness. In the first place, she dearly liked and thoroughly understood a good dinner; and Mr. Guyon's dinners were invariably and remarkably good. She made it a practice to eat systematically and steadily through all the courses, and to do justice to all the wines. She was too fashionable and too impervious to other people's opinions to care what any body thought; and so she ate and drank precisely as much as she pleased, and gave her opinion of the comestibles with perfect candour. She was intimate with every one there, except that good-looking new man, who was probably clever in something, but whom nobody knew, and who did not seem to want to talk much or to be talked to; and she therefore joined in all the general conversation, and did not mind him particularly, thereby increasing Robert's gratitude. Lady Henmarsh talked remarkably well. She was naturally quick and intelligent--well-informed too, for a woman of fashion, with, of course, no time for improving her mind; and as she knew every one and had been every where, and probably had a more extensive epistolary correspondence than any other woman in London who did not play at either literature or politics, she was never at a loss for news to communicate or subjects to discuss.
With the exception of Mr. Guyon, whose like was not quite unknown within the circle of Robert's experience, every type there was a novel one to him. Few were interesting after a little,--after a cursory examination extending to their personal appearance and the grooves in which their conversation ran. There was a new member, who talked "House" a good deal, and his wife--pretty and well-dressed--who talked "Ladies' Gallery," who hoped her husband would soon "speak" on the great topic of the day, and who seemed to regard every one not "in the House" as in the "butterfly of fashion" and general inutility line. There was a country gentleman, not at all stupid and not in the least fat; and a country lady, almost as sprightly as Miss Guyon herself, though by no means so handsome. The country lady and gentleman were also going to Mrs. Pendarvis's ball; and from their talk about it at dinner Robert learned that Katharine was going to another entertainment that evening, and the tortures of his infatuated state recommenced. She would disappear, then, after dinner, and he should see no more of her, thought Robert in his innocent ignorance of fashionable hours; and she would go and glitter among a crowd of happy people, and that handsome fellow with the light hair would be one of them. And so Robert once more stretched himself upon the rack, and gave himself an excruciating twist. He was miserable from the time the ball was mentioned. Did he wish that he could go there too? Hardly; he felt he would be too much out of place in such a scene; and where could he be more hopelessly parted from her? No, he did not wish to be going to Mrs. Pendarvis's house; he only wished she were not going.
"Have you a card, Mr. Mostyn?" he heard Katharine say in a charming accent of interest to a gentleman seated near her, whom Robert had already regarded with some surprise and amusement.
"Yes," returned Mr. Mostyn in a supremely languid tone, at the same time permitting his eyes to raise themselves towards Katharine, as if in slow acknowledgment of the complimentary accent. "I think I shall look in for an hour very late. Will you give me a dance, Miss Guyon?" He said this as if he felt bound to make a concession to a wish of hers. Robert Streightley had very quick eyes, and he saw her steal a glance of sly, mischievous amusement at Lady Henmarsh as she replied,
"I don't see how I can, Mr. Mostyn, if you only look in for an hour very late, for I mean to do my looking in rather early."