Georgie found Mr. Hammond pretty well, and tolerably cheerful. The feeble old man liked his gentle and considerate hostess. He had liked her when he was in health; and he liked her still better now that the languor of illness rendered him liable to being fatigued by ordinarily dull or extraordinarily brilliant people. Georgie was neither;--she was only a gentle, refined, humble-minded, pure-hearted lady; and the old man, though of course he did not admire her at all in comparison with his own brilliant and bewitching Laura, and had considered her (under Laura's instructions) rather vapid and commonplace the preceding season, was in a position just then to appreciate these tamely admirable qualities to their fullest extent. She remained with Mr. Hammond until the sound of the horses' hoofs upon the avenue warned her that the cavalcade was returning. She then went hastily down the great staircase, and reached the hall just in time to see Mrs. Hammond lifted from her saddle by Sir Charles with demonstrative gallantry, and to observe that he looked into her face as he placed her upon the ground with an expression which rendered words wholly superfluous. The unborn strength which had been created by Alsager's counsel was too weak to bear this sharp trial. Georgie shrunk as if she had been stung, and, abandoning her brave purpose of giving her guests a cheerful greeting at the door, she took refuge in her own room.
On this day Sir Charles for the first time departed from the custom he had maintained since their marriage, of seeking Georgie on his return home after any absence. It was a significant omission; and as she took her place at the dinner-table, Lady Mitford felt that the few hours which had elapsed since Colonel Alsager had given her that counsel, which every hour became more difficult for her to follow, had made a disastrous difference in her position. She would make a great effort--she would do all that Laurence had advised, but how if Sir Charles estranged himself from her altogether?--and even to her inexperience there was something ominous in any marked departure from his accustomed habits,--what should she do then? He might either persist in a tacit estrangement, which would place her at a hopeless disadvantage, or he might quarrel with her, and end all by an open rupture. Georgie was beginning to understand the man she had married, without as yet ceasing to love him; and it is wonderful what rapid progress the dullest of women will make in such knowledge when they are once set on its right track.
Lord Dollamore took Lady Mitford to dinner, as usual, on that day, and Sir Charles gave his arm to Mrs. Hammond. He had entered the drawing-room only a moment before dinner was announced, and had not exchanged a word with his wife. Among the first topics of conversation was Colonel Alsager's departure, which Sir Charles treated with much indifference, and to whose cause Mrs. Hammond adverted with a pert flippancy, so much at variance with her customary adherence to the rules of good taste that the circumstance attracted Lord Dollamore's attention. He made no remark when she had concluded her lively sallies upon the inconvenience of fathers in general, the inconsiderateness of fathers who had paralytic strokes in particular, and the generic detestability of all old people; but he watched her closely, and when her exclusive attention was once more claimed by Sir Charles, whose undisguised devotion almost reached the point of insult to the remainder of the company, he smiled a satisfied smile, like that of a man who has been somewhat puzzled by an enigma, and who finds the key to it all of a sudden. A little was said about Miss Gillespie, but not much; she was speedily relegated to the category of "creatures" by Mrs. Hammond, and then she was forgotten. The general conversation was perhaps a little flat, as general conversation is apt to be under such inharmonious circumstances; and Lady Mitford's assumed spirits flagged suddenly and desperately. A feeling of weariness, of exhaustion, which quenched pride and put bitterness aside, came over her; a dreary loathing of the scene and its surroundings; a swift passing vision of the dear old home she had left so cheerfully--abandoned so heartlessly, she would now have said--of the dear old father of whom she had thought so little latterly, whose advice would be so precious to her now,--only that she would not tell him for the world; a horrid sense of powerlessness in the hands of a pitiless enemy--all these rushed over her in one cold wave of trouble. Another moment and she would have burst into hysterical tears, when a low firm whisper recalled her to herself.
"Command yourself," it said; "she is looking at you, though you cannot perceive it. Drink some wine, and smile."
It was Lord Dollamore who spoke, and Lady Mitford obeyed him. He did not give her time to feel surprise or anger at his interpretation of her feelings, or his interposition to save her from betraying them; but instantly, with the utmost ease and readiness, he applied himself to the task of enlivening the company, and that so effectually, that he soon gained even the attention of the preoccupied pair at the other end of the table, and turned a dinner-party which had threatened to become a lamentable failure into a success. It was a bold stroke; but he played it with coolness and judgment, and it told admirably. Lady Mitford lifted her candid eyes to his as she left the dining-room, and there was neither anger nor reproach in them; but there was gratitude, and the dawn of confidence.
"Just so," thought Lord Dollamore, as he drew his chair up to the table again; "she's the sort of woman who must trust somebody; and she has found out that her reclaimed Charley is not to be trusted. I'll see if I can't make her trust me."
It suited Laura Hammond's humour to exert her powers of pleasing on this evening, or perhaps even her audacious spirit quailed before the ordeal of the female after-dinner conclave, and she was forced to cover her fear by bravado. At any rate, she appeared in an entirely new character. The insolent indolence, the ennui which usually characterized her demeanour when there were no men present, were thrown aside, and she deliberately set herself to carry the women by storm. She talked, she laughed, she admired their dresses, and made suggestions respecting their coiffures. She offered one a copy of a song unpurchaseable for money and unprocurable for love; she promised another that her maid should perform certain miracles in millinery on her behalf; she sat down at the piano and played and sang brilliantly. Lady Mitford watched her in silent amazement, in growing consternation. The witchery of her beauty was irresistible; the power of an evil purpose lent her the subtlest seductive charm. The dark-grey eyes flashed fire, and glowed with triumph; the wanton mouth trembled with irrepressible fun.
It was an easy and a common thing for Laura Hammond to captivate men, and she really thought nothing about it, unless some deeper purpose, some remoter end, happened, as in the present instance, to be in view; but women, to tell the simple truth, always feared, generally envied, and frequently hated her; she enjoyed her triumph over the "feminine clique," as she disdainfully called them, at Redmoor thoroughly, and with keen cynical appreciation. She played her game steadily all that evening. When the gentlemen came into the drawing-room she almost ignored their presence; she was innocently, ingenuously polite, but she admitted no exclusive attentions; she never relapsed for a moment in her wheedling, but never overdone, civilities to the women. She brought forward the bashful young ladies; she actually played a perfect accompaniment, full of the most enchanting trills and shakes, to a feeble bleat which one of them believed to be a song; and when Sir Charles Mitford, whose ungoverned temper and natural ill-breeding invariably got the better of the conventional restraints which were even yet strange to him, endeavoured to interrupt her proceedings, she stopped him with a stealthy uplifted finger, and a warning glance directed towards his wife. Her victim was persuaded that he fully understood her; he rendered her admirable ruse in his feeble way, the warmest tribute of admiration; and he left the room with a vague consciousness that the indifference which had been for some time his only feeling towards his wife was rapidly turning into hatred.
Laura Hammond's own game was not the only one she played that night. Lord Dollamore had watched her quite as closely as Lady Mitford, and to more purpose. He saw that--where sheer recklessness or from some deeper motive,--which he thought he could dimly discern--she was hurrying matters to a crisis, and that he might take advantage of the position which she had created. They were dainty jewelled claws with which he proposed to snatch the fruit he coveted from the fire; but what of that; they were cruel also; and when they had done his work he cared little what became of them. Let them be scorched and burnt; let the sharp talons be torn out from their roots; what cared he? So he watched the feline skill, the deft, supple, graceful dexterity of the woman, with a new interest--personal this time; any he had previously felt had been mere connoisseurship, mere cynical curiosity, in a marked and somewhat rare specimen.
Every evidence of this observation, every sign Of this new interest, was carefully and successfully suppressed. When all other yes were turned on Mrs. Hammond, his never rested on her even by accident. She sang; and while the greater part of the company gathered round the piano, and those who could not obtain places near the singer kept profound silence, and listened with eager intensity, Dollamore ostentatiously suppressed a yawn, turned over the upholstery-books which ornamented the useless tables, scrutinized the chimney-decorations, and finally strolled into the adjoining room. Equally artistic was his demeanour towards Lady Mitford. He was delicately deferential and frankly cordial; but neither by word or look did he remind her of the service he had rendered her at dinner. Georgie might have been slow to comprehend genius and appreciate wit, but she recognized delicacy and good taste at a glance: and so it fell out that when she received Lord Dollamore's "goodnight," she thought, as she returned the valediction, "There is one man besides Colonel Alsager over whom she has no power. Lord Dollamore holds her in contempt."