Lewis smiled and offered her his arm. At the same moment De Grandcville, gaudily ornate, marched up and requested the honour of Miss Peyton’s hand for the set then forming.
“I am engaged to Mr. Arundel for the next quadrille,” returned Miss Peyton.
“For the following one, then—ar?”
“I shall have much pleasure,” was the reply. “In the meantime allow me to introduce you to my friend Miss Singleton, who is at present without a partner.”
De Grandeville, charmed to have the opportunity of obliging Miss Peyton, acted on the hint, and the two couples hastened to take their places in the quadrille then forming. Leicester’s volatile companion still continued chattering, heedless of his evident annoyance, until she had worried him into a state of mind bordering on distraction, when some fresh fancy seizing her, she fastened herself on to a new victim and left him to his meditations. These were by no means of an agreeable character; and after wandering listlessly through the suite of rooms and watching Laura Peyton, as during the intervals of the dance she talked and laughed gaily with De Grandeville (an occupation which did not tend greatly to raise Leicester’s spirits or soothe his ruffled temper), he strolled into a card-room tenanted only by four elderly gentlemen immersed in a rubber of whist, and flinging himself on a vacant sofa in a remote corner of the apartment, gave himself up to gloomy retrospection.
He had not remained there long when Lewis entered and glanced round as if in search of some one; then approaching Leicester, he began—
“You’ve not seen Walter lately, have you? Your amusing friend, Lady Mary Goodwood” (“confound the jade,” muttered Leicester, sotto voce) “introduced herself to me just now, and having captivated Walter by her bright smile and scarlet jacket, carried him off, to tease me, I believe, and I can’t tell what she has done with him. But,” he continued, for the first time observing his companion’s dejected manner and appearance, “is anything the matter; you’re not ill, I hope?”
“I wish I was,” was the unexpected reply; “ill—dead—anything rather than the miserable fool I am——”
“Why, what has occurred?” asked Lewis anxiously. “Can I be of any use?”
“No, it’s past mending,” returned Leicester in an accent of deep dejection. He paused, then turning to Lewis he resumed almost fiercely: “The tale is soon told, if you want to hear it. I met that girl—Laura Peyton, I mean—in town about a year ago; in fact—for my affairs are no secret—every fool knows that I am a beggar, or thereabouts. I was introduced to her because she was a great heiress, and dangled after her through the whole of a London season for the sake of her three per cents. Well, last autumn I met her again down in Scotland; we were staying together for three weeks in the same house. Of course we saw a good deal of each other, and I soon found I liked her better for herself than I had ever done for her money; but somehow, as soon as this feeling arose, I lost all nerve, and could not get on a bit. The idea of the meanness of marrying a woman for the sake of her fortune haunted me day and night, and the more I cared for her the less was I able to show it. My cousin Annie perceived what was going on, it seems, and without saying a word to me of her intention, struck up a friendship with Laura, and invited her here; and somehow—the thing’s very absurd in a man like myself, who has seen everything and done everything, and found out what humbug it all is—but the fact of the matter is, that I’m just as foolishly and romantically and deeply in love with that girl as any raw boy of seventeen could be; and I don’t believe she cares one sous about me in return. She thinks, as she has a good right to do, that I am hunting her for her money, like the rest of them, I dare say; and—stop a minute,” he continued, seeing Lewis was about to speak—“you have not heard the worst yet: because all I’ve told you was not enough, that conceited ass, De Grandeville, must needs come and consult me this morning as to whether Miss Peyton was worthy of being honoured with his hand, hinting pretty plainly that he did not anticipate much difficulty on the lady’s part; and by Jove, from the way in which she is going on with him this evening, I believe that for once he wasn’t lying: then that mad-headed Mary Goodwood coming and bothering with her confounded ‘Charley’ this and ‘Charley’ that, and her absurd plan of monopolising one—of course she means no harm; she has known me from a boy, and it’s her way; besides, she really is attached to old Goodwood. But how is Laura Peyton to know all that?”