A RECONNAISSANCE.
Violent tempests like that described in the last chapter do not pass away without leaving a "ground swell" as it were, on the domestic surface. Neither Mrs. Lascelles nor Miss Ross felt disposed to take their usual drive in the open carriage for the purpose of shopping and "leaving cards;" two functions that constitute the whole duty of women, from three to six P.M. of every week-day, during the London season. The principle of acquisitiveness inherent in the female breast, together with an insatiable desire to see and to be seen, may account for the shopping; but why society enjoins the penance of leaving cards surpasses my comprehension altogether. Unmeaning, endless, and exceedingly troublesome, this custom seems to produce no definite result, but to fill the waste-paper basket with a multitude of other cards left in return. To-day, however, the ladies at No. 40 resolved they would devote their afternoon to refreshment and repose: a good luncheon, a comfortable arm-chair, the newest novel, and a casual dropping in of visitors to tea.
The luncheon was heavy, the arm-chair provocative of slumbers; so was the novel; and Mrs. Lascelles, I am bound to admit, went fast asleep over its pages; while Miss Ross stole softly up-stairs to read one important little note, write another, and otherwise bring her schemes to maturity.
In the mean time, a considerable bustle was going on in Messrs. Tattersalls' celebrated emporium for the sale of horses—good, bad, and indifferent. To use correct language, "The entire stud of a nobleman, well known in Leicestershire," was being brought to the hammer; and a very motley crowd of sportsmen, dandies, horse-dealers, lords, louts, yeomen, yokels, and nondescripts were gathered round the auctioneer's box in consequence. A well-bred chestnut horse, with magnificent shoulders, and a white fore-leg, was the object of competition at the moment Sir Henry Hallaton entered the yard; and, although he neither wanted a hunter, nor could have afforded to buy this one even at its reserved price, it was not in his power to refrain from elbowing his way through the crowd, and stationing himself in perilous vicinity to the hind-legs of the animal.
"Handsome—fast—up to great weight—with an European reputation! And only two hundred bid for him!" said the voice of Fate from under an exceedingly well-brushed and rather curly-brimmed hat; while the object of these encomiums, whose restless eye and ear denoted excitement, if not alarm, gave a stamp of his foot and a whisk of his tail that caused considerable swaying, surging, and treading on toes in the encircling crowd.
"Ten! Twenty!" continued the voice of Fate. "Thirty! Thank you, my lord. Fifty! Two hundred and fifty bid for him. Run him down once more. Take care!" And Sir Henry found himself jostled against his new friend Picard, who, having made the last bid with an assumption of great carelessness, seemed in danger of becoming the actual proprietor of this desirable purchase.
"Make me a wheeler, I think," said he, as the horse was led back to the stable, and another brought out to elicit a fresh burst of competition, all the more lively, perhaps, that the Leicestershire nobleman had put such a reserve price on his stud as precluded the sale of anything but a hack he didn't like.
"Rather light for harness," observed Sir Henry, with a certain covert approval of his friend's extravagance. "I suppose they are to be sold?" he added, on further reflection.
"I conclude so, of course," replied the other, though he well knew they were not, and had been bidding pompously for some half-dozen with the comfortable conviction that there was nothing to pay for his whistle.
"It's a long price," resumed the baronet, as he took Picard's arm to saunter leisurely in the direction of Belgravia. "At least, it makes them very dear when you come to match them. That's the worst of having too good a team."