"In your orisons be all my sins remembered," whispered Mr. Ombre as he passed, and again found himself at Lady Tilney's side. "It is high time such bookworms as I should retire into our cells; so, lady sweet, good night.—You know it is not I who speak, but he, who would have been blest, could he have poured all his sweetest lays into that gentle ear." Lady Tilney considered the homage of talent as peculiarly her own, and would gladly have retained the speaker; but gliding with the gentle undulation of some shadowy form towards the door, he escaped the infliction of a penalty, which even the syren smiles which were his reward could hardly at times repay.
It was now growing late—the assembly was breaking up, and Lady Tilney looked anxiously for some cavalier to attend her to her carriage: but this was not a point of easy settlement. In degree he must be either of rank, or a dependent—one who was her equal, or one on whom she might confer distinction by her choice of his services. Neither such requisites, however, were to be found in the group around, and Lady Tilney, whilst feeling yet more and more the necessity of an exclusive circle, where such predicaments would be avoided, was doomed still further mortification in the approach of Colonel Temple, a person whom she hardly ever considered recognizable, and whose offer of assistance, made evidently with sarcastic reference to her being alone, came in a shape particularly offensive to her.
"Will you allow me to have the honour of calling your carriage," he said, addressing her with easy familiarity; "or if you are going to walk through the rooms, allow me to escort you?" (offering his arm).
"No," said Lady Tilney, in a manner that might have awed any one else; "I am going away immediately."
"Well, then, let me call your carriage," he replied, with a tenacity that nothing could evade—whilst Lady Tilney continued to move on, terrified lest she should be seen so attended.
This apparent anxiety to avoid him, was, however, with Colonel Temple, the surest incitement to a continuance of his proffered attentions. It might not have been exactly consistent with the general, high breeding and politeness which distinguished Lady Feuillemerte's assemblies, for any one to have acted under this influence perhaps; but Col. Temple was a character known to all the world as such, and privileged to do things which no one else did. He was a man, too, of family, and felt his situation in society, in the midst of all his eccentricities. His want of refinement had its compensation in an honesty of disposition quite at variance with the measured forms of fashionable exclusiveness, but which made him generally beloved; while his shrewd sense, mixed with a certain vein of sarcastic humour, always penetrated the littleness of vanity, and often inflicted on it its severest wounds.
Lady Tilney, from repeated slights, was a darling object of his attacks, and could she without compromise have purchased immunity from their never-failing and successful arrogance, by an honourable truce, she would gladly have done so. But Col. Temple was too arrogant, too presumptuous, to be checked by any defiance of ultra fashion—too independent, too high-spirited, to suffer a cold and haughty recognition, in place of the politeness and courtesy due to him as a gentleman, and thus this warfare had become interminable.
Enjoying his triumphs in the way in question, he followed Lady Tilney from room to room—even to the steps of her carriage, assuring her as they proceeded, that her apprehensions of being detected in his society were compliments to him beyond price; he was aware that, to be of importance, the next thing to being liked, was being feared—and bidding her be sure to send him a card for her next choice soirée, he handed his victim into her carriage, under a thousand half-pronounced inuendos upon his insufferable vulgarity, and the awful anathema of future exclusion.