To be brief, the number of young men who were in favour of the ball was so very limited, that it seemed impossible to get one up in a manner approaching to the style of former years. And the gentlemen, feeling a sort of consciousness that they were not exactly in their duty, became more remiss than ever in visiting the ladies.
It was now the week before Christmas: the ladies, being in hourly expectation of receiving their cards, had already begun to prepare; and flowers, feathers, ribands, and laces were in great activity. Still no invitations came. It was now conjectured that the ball was, for some extraordinary reason, to be deferred till New Year's. But what this reason was, the ladies (being all in a state of pique) had too much pride to inquire.
The gentlemen begun to feel a little ashamed; and Gordon Fitzsimmons had nearly prevailed on them to agree to a New Year's ball, when Apesley Sappington (who had recently returned from England in a coat by Stultz, and boots by Hoby) threw a damp on the whole business, by averring that, with the exception of Miss Lucinda Mandeville, who was certainly a splendid woman with a splendid fortune, there was not a lady in the whole circle worth favouring with a ball ticket. At least so they appeared to him, after seeing Lady Caroline Percy, and Lady Augusta Howard, and Lady Georgiana Beauclerck. Mr. Sappington did not explain that his only view of these fair blossoms of nobility had been circumscribed to such glimpses as he could catch of them while he stood in the street among a crowd assembled in front of Devonshire House, to gaze on the company through the windows, which in London are always open on gala nights. He assured his friends that all the ladies of the American aristocracy had a sort of parvenue air, and looked as if they had passed their lives east of Temple Bar; and that he knew not a single one of them that would be presentable at Almack's: always excepting Miss Lucinda Mandeville.
The gentlemen savans knew Apesley Sappington to be a coxcomb, and in their own minds did not believe him; but still they thought it scarcely worth while to allow their favourite pursuits to be interrupted for the sake of giving a ball to ladies that might be unpresentable at Almack's, and that possibly looked like parvenues from the east side of Temple Bar.
The belles, though much disappointed at the failure of the expected fête, proudly determined not to advert to the subject by the remotest hint in presence of the beaux; carefully avoiding even to mention the word cotillion when a gentleman was by. One young lady left off wishing that Taglioni would come to America, the name of that celebrated artiste being synonymous with dancing; and another checked herself when about to inquire of her sister if she had seen a missing ball of silk, because the word ball was not to be uttered before one of the male sex.
Things were in this uncomfortable state, when Miss Lucinda Mandeville, the belle par excellence, gave a turn to them which we shall relate, after presenting our readers with a sketch of the lady herself.
Miss Mandeville was very beautiful, very accomplished, and very rich, and had just completed her twenty-second year. Her parents being dead, she presided over an elegant mansion in the most fashionable part of the city, having invited an excellent old lady, a distant relation of the family, to reside with her. Mrs. Danforth, however, was but nominally the companion of Miss Mandeville, being so entirely absorbed in books that it was difficult to get her out of the library.
The hand of Miss Mandeville had been sought openly by one-half the gentlemen that boasted the honour of her acquaintance, and it had been hinted at by the other half, with the exception of Gordon Fitzsimmons, a young attorney of highly promising talents, whose ambition would have led him to look forward to the probability of arriving at the summit of his profession, but whose rise was, as yet, somewhat impeded by several very singular notions: such, for instance, as that a lawyer should never plead against his conscience, and never undertake what he knows to be the wrong side of a cause.
Another of his peculiarities was a strange idea that no gentleman should ever condescend to be under pecuniary obligations to his wife—ergo—that a man who has nothing himself, should never marry a woman that has anything. This last consideration had induced Mr. Fitzsimmons to undertake the Herculean task of steeling his heart, and setting his face against the attractions of Miss Mandeville, with all her advantages of mind and person. Notwithstanding, therefore, that her conversation was always delightful to him, he rarely visited her, except when invited with other company.
Lucinda Mandeville, who, since the age of sixteen, had been surrounded by admirers, and accustomed to all the adulation that is generally lavished on a beauty and an heiress, was surprised at the apparent coldness of Gordon Fitzsimmons, than whom she had never met with a young man more congenial to her taste. His manifest indifference continually attracted her attention, and, after awhile, she began to suspect that it was no indifference at all, and that something else lurked beneath it. What that was, the sagacity of her sex soon enabled her to discover.