[CHAPTER XV]
PENELOPE AND HER SUITORS
RECONNOITRING—BLANCHE’S ALBUM—“SITTING HIM OUT”—CROSS-PURPOSES—A SMITTEN DANDY—HAIRBLOWER IN LONDON—THE TRUE-BLUE KAFFIRS—WETTING A PLANT—GOOD ADVICE—A CURE FOR LOW SPIRITS—THE REAL GLASS SLIPPERS
“Look who it is, Rosine!” exclaimed Blanche, as her maid rushed to the window of her dressing-room, commanding as it did a view of Grosvenor Square, and a peep at every visitor who came to that front door, which was even now reverberating from a knock applied by no feeble hand.
“Il n’y a pas de voiture, mademoiselle,” replied Rosine; “ce n’est qu’un monsieur à pied—mais il n’est pas mal, lui, je trouve.” The latter observation escaped Rosine more as a private reflection of her own than a remark for her lady’s ear, and was indeed no more than due to the general appearance of Frank Hardingstone, as he stood at that well-known door, his strong heart beating like a girl’s.
“Run, and say I’ll be down directly, Rosine, if it’s any one for me,” said Blanche, her colour rising as she thought who it was likely to be, and wondered why he had not called before, and determined to punish him and keep him waiting, and be very cold when they did meet, and so show him that she did not choose to be accountable to him indeed for her actions, and would ride in the Park with whom she pleased, and was utterly indifferent to his good opinion, and independent of him altogether—and thus resolving, our consistent young lady looked at herself in the glass, and was pleased to see that her eyes were bright and her hair smooth, and that she should confront Frank armed with her best looks, which proves how entirely careless she was of that gentleman’s admiration.
In the meantime the object of all this severity was kicking his heels in the spacious drawing-room appropriated to morning visitors, whither he had been conducted by an elaborately polite footman, who after informing him that “the General was hout, and Miss Kettering at ’ome,” made a precipitate retreat, leaving him to his own thoughts and the contemplation of his well-dressed figure in some half-dozen mirrors. Frank soon tired of these resources, and found himself driven to the table for amusement, where he found the usual litter of handsomely-bound books, costly work-boxes, grotesque paper-cutters, and miniatures painted in all the glowing colours of the rainbow. He was nervous (for him)—very nervous, and though he took one up after another, and examined them most minutely, he would have been sorely puzzled to explain what he was looking at. Nor did a contemplation of Blanche’s portrait in ivory serve to restore the visitor’s composure, albeit representing that young lady smiling with all her might under a heavy crimson curtain. He shut up the case with a savage snap, and replaced it with a bitter sneer. But if the representation of Miss Kettering’s outward semblance met with so little favour, neither did her album, which we may presume was the index of her mind, seem to afford greater satisfaction to this discontented young man. It opened unfortunately at some lines by Lord Mount Helicon, “addressed to B—— on being asked whether the disfigurement of the object was not a certain cure for any man’s love,” and was entitled—
“THE FADED FLOWER.
“I spied a sweet Moss-rose my garden adorning,
With a blush at her core like the pink of a shell,