"It was impossible to keep poor Blanche straight. Always excitable, and unlike other people, you know. Latterly, I am afraid, more than flighty, my dear, and more than odd."
Besides, Mrs. Lushington, as usual, had a great deal of business on hand. For herself and her set Cowes was nothing in the world but London gone down to the sea. Shorter petticoats, and hats instead of bonnets, made the whole difference. There were the same attractions, the same interests, the same intrigues. Even the same bores went to and fro, and bored, as they breathed, more freely in the soft, Channel air. Altogether, it was fresher and quieter, but, if possible, stupider than Pall Mall.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Lushington, being in her natural element, exercised her natural functions. She was hard at work, trying to mate Bessie Gordon, nothing loth, with a crafty widower, who seemed as shy of the bait as an old gudgeon under Kew Bridge. She had undertaken, in conspiracy with other frisky matrons, to spoil poor Rosie Barton's game with young Wideacres, the catch of the season; and they liked each other so well that this job alone kept her in constant employment. She had picnics to organise, yachting parties to arrange, and Frank to keep in good humour; the latter no easy task, for Cowes bored him extremely, and, to use his own words, "he wished the whole place at the devil!" She felt also vexed and disappointed that the General had withdrawn himself so entirely from the sphere of her attractions, reflecting that she saw a great deal more of him before he was free. Added to her other troubles was the unpardonable defection of Soldier Bill. That volatile light dragoon had never been near her since Daisy's marriage—a ceremony in which he took the most lively interest, comporting himself as "best man" with an unparalleled audacity, and a joyous flow of spirits, that possessed, for a gathering composed of Hibernians, the greatest attractions. People said, indeed, that Bill had shown himself not entirely unaffected by the charms of a lovely bridesmaid, the eldest of Lady Mary's daughters; and it was impossible to over-estimate the danger of his position under such suggestive circumstances as must arise from a wedding in the house.
Then a grey hair or two had lately shown themselves in her abundant brown locks; while of the people she chose to flirt with, some neglected her society for a cruise, others afforded her more of the excitement produced by rivalry than she relished, none paid her the devoted attention she had learned to consider her due. Altogether, Mrs. Lushington began to find life less couleur de rose than she could wish, and to suspect the career she had adopted was not conducive to happiness, or even comfort. Many people make the same discovery when it is too late to abandon the groove in which they have elected to run.
Daisy, in the meantime, true to his expressed intention of turning over a new leaf, found no reason to be dissatisfied with his lot. You might search Ireland through, and it is saying a good deal, without finding a more joyous couple than Captain and Mrs. Walters. The looked-for promotion arrived at last, and the bridegroom had the satisfaction of seeing himself gazetted to a troop on the very morning that provided him with a wife. Old Macormac was pleased, Lady Mary was pleased, everybody was pleased. The Castle blazed with light and revelry, the tenants drank, danced, and shouted. The "boys" burnt the mountain with a score of bonfires, consuming whisky, and breaking each other's heads to their own unbounded satisfaction. In short, to use the words of Peter Corrigan, the oldest solvent tenant on the estate, "The masther's wedding was a fool to't! May I never see glory av' it wasn't betther divarsion than a wake!"
But Norah's gentle heart, even in her own new-found happiness, had a thought for the beautiful and stately Englishwoman, whom, if she somewhat feared her as a rival, she yet loved dearly as a friend.
"What's gone with her, Daisy?" she asked her young husband, before they had been married a fortnight. "Sure she would never take up with the nice old gentleman, a general he was, that marked the race-cards for us at Punchestown. Oh, Daisy! how I cried that night, because you didn't win!"