Alexander, grinning like Mephistophiles, still followed.
“I was quite mistaken in the princess. It was another whom I took to be Prince Waldemar’s daughter,” said Lillespont, deeply annoyed that he should have led any one to believe so ill of his tastes as that he should have fallen in love with the elderly fire-fly.
“Hem! I thought you had made some mistake of the sort,” said Lord John kindly.
“Oh, yes, quite another sort of person! a lovely young creature, just out of the schoolroom, I should say. Ah, there—there she is now, sitting within that window!” suddenly exclaimed the young man as an opening in the crowd, like a rift in the clouds, showed a vista at the farther end of which a bay window lined with lilies and roses and occupied by General Lyon and his party, and by a select circle of their particular friends.
“There! that lovely, dark-eyed houri, looking the very spirit of spring and youth, clothed with sunshine, adorned with flowers, and spangled with diamond-dew! Do you know her?”
“Know her? Stop,—let me see. I know that party she is with. I met them here at this house a few mornings ago. Let me see,—there is General Lyon, and Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, and—yes, the young creature you admire so justly is Mrs. Lyon.”
“‘Mrs.’—did you mean to say ‘Mrs.?’”
“Yes, ‘Mrs.’ I remember perfectly well being as much surprised as you are at seeing so childlike a creature introduced by a matronly title.”
“But she is never the wife of that old man? It would not—that sort of union—be May and December, it would be April and January!”
“Oh, no, she is not his wife—she is his niece, I think. Yes, I am sure he introduced her as his niece, Mrs. Lyon.”