There was no time for further skirmishing. He had taken her cloak from her, and handed it to the attendant nymph, and received a ticket; and now they were drifting into the tea-room, where a row of ministering footmen were looking at the guests across a barricade of urns and teapots, with countenances that seemed to say, "If you want anything, you must ask for it. We are here under protest, and we very much wonder how our people could ever have invited such rabble!"
"I always feel small in a tea-room when there are only men in attendance," whispered Mr. Scobel, "they are so haughty. I would sooner ask Gladstone or Disraeli to pour me out a cup of tea than one of those supercilious creatures."
Lady Southminster was stationed in the Teniers room—a small apartment at the beginning of the suite which ended in the picture-gallery or ball-room. She was what Joe Gargery called a "fine figure of a woman," in ruby velvet and diamonds, and received her guests with an indiscriminating cordiality which went far to heal the gaping wounds of county politics.
The Ellangowans had arrived, and Lady Ellangowan, who was full of good-nature, was quite ready to take Violet under her wing when Mrs. Scobel suggested that operation.
"I can find her any number of partners," she said. "Oh, there she goes—off—already with Captain Winstanley."
The Captain had lost no time in exacting his waltz. It was the third on the programme, and the band were beginning to warm to their work. They were playing a waltz by Offenbach—"Les Traîneaux"—with an accompaniment of jingling sleigh-bells—music that had an almost maddening effect on spirits already exhilarated.
The long lofty picture-gallery made a magnificent ball-room—a polished floor of dark wood—a narrow line of light under the projecting cornice, the famous Paul Veronese, the world-renowned Rubens, the adorable Titian—ideal beauty looking down with art's eternal tranquillity upon the whisk and whirl of actual life—here a calm Madonna, contemplating, with deep unfathomable eyes, these brief ephemera of a night—there Judith with a white muscular arm holding the tyrant's head aloft above the dancers—yonder Philip of Spain frowning on this Lenten festival.
Violet and Captain Winstanley waltzed in a stern silence. She was vexed with herself for her loss of temper just now. In his breast there was a deeper anger. "When would my day come?" he asked himself. "When shall I be able to bow this proud head, to bend this stubborn will?" It must be soon—he was tired of playing his submissive part—tired of holding his cards hidden.
They held on to the end of the waltz—the last clash of the sleigh-bells.
"Who's that girl in black and gold?" asked a Guardsman of Lady Ellangowan; "those two are the best dancers in the room—it's a thousand to nothing on them."