“At three o’clock,” thought Jenny, of the tartan shawl; “that’s as much as to say, ‘In the mean time we don’t know you.’”
They waited in a little group near the stairs, and saw the three Champernownes come sweeping down, swanlike, beautiful, “in gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,” and Miss Green in a very severe, tight-fitting yellow silk frock, with a shortish skirt, and round her homely-complexioned throat a collet necklace of emeralds without flaw or feather; and Lady Hartley in a fuss and flutter of palest blue, which seemed just the most telling background for her diamonds. She had diamonds everywhere, butterflies, stars, true lovers’ knots, hearts, and horseshoes, dotted about bust and shoulders amongst the soft fluffiness of azure gauze; diamonds in her hair, in her ears, on her arms. And yet she did not look vulgarly fine. The slender elegance of her form, the delicate colouring of her face and neck harmonized the jewels.
While the Hartley party were composing themselves for their entrance to the dancing-room, a stout matron in red satin and black lace came sailing in, wrapped to the eyes in a white Shetland shawl, and at once made for the Marchants, whom she deliberately kissed, one after the other.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long, dears,” she said, in a fat, good-natured voice. “Ponto had a business appointment at Haslemere, and didn’t get back to his dinner till nine o’clock.”
Mr. Ponto was grinning in the background, very red and puffy, as from a hurried toilet, and with a scarlet camelia in his button-hole; scarlet out of compliment to the hunt.
“Oh no, we have only just come,” answered Eve, troubled by the supercilious stare of the youngest Miss Champernowne, who was looking back from the threshold of the ball-room while the others went in, looking at Mrs. Ponto as at some natural curiosity; and indeed to a young lady whose evening frock had been produced new and immaculate from a Bond Street carton Mrs. Ponto’s crimson satin, lately “done up” with Nottingham lace, and obviously “let out” to accommodate Mrs. Ponto’s increasing bulk, was a thing to wonder at.
The three Marchants and their chaperon entered the ball-room in a cluster. The Redwold Towers party was absorbed in the brilliant throng, had gone straight into the zenith, where the two local peeresses were holding a kind of court, a court splendid with family diamonds and hereditary point d’Alençon. Mrs. Ponto made a dash for a corner of the raised bench that went round the room, and established herself and her charges in this coign of vantage.
“If we don’t get seats at once we mightn’t have a chance of sitting down for an hour,” said Mrs. Ponto. “Ain’t the room full? Now, dears, I shall stay here till some one takes me in to supper, so you can leave your fans with me, and feel you’ve got some one to come to between your dances. I had my cup of tea before I came, so I shan’t trouble about the tea-room. It’s a pretty sight, ain’t it?”
A waltz was just ending. The room was very full, but there was the usual surplus of nice-looking girls sitting down, with the usual sprinkling of men who wouldn’t dance, and who were quite satisfied to stand about and get in the way of the dancers.
The peeresses and their court were on the opposite side of the room, in a central position, which commanded dancers, band, and the festooned archway leading to the tea-room. Lady Hartley had seated herself next old Lady Mandelford, a dowager with white hair, whose son was the well-known Lord Mandelford, a man of prodigious wealth and local importance, a rustic Royalty.