Barbara looked at her and answered quickly—"I do not mean to dance to-night,"—but she felt the touch of critical enmity in the older woman's voice, and it added to her depression. Instinctively she turned for a word of comfort to Lucy Kemp.
In her white tulle skirt and plain satin bodice, the girl looked very fresh and pretty: she was smiling—the very sight of the lovely frock before her had given her a joyous thrill of anticipation. Lucy had never been to a great ball, and she was beginning to look forward to the experience. "Oh! but you must dance to-night, mother says that at such a ball as this everybody dances!" The other shook her head, but it pleased her to think that she had been instrumental in bringing this pretty, kind young creature to a place which, whatever it had in store for her—Barbara—could only give Lucy unclouded delight.
Walking with stately steps up the great staircase of Halnakeham Castle, Mrs. Boringdon became at once conscious that her party had arrived most unfashionably early, and she felt annoyed with Mrs. Rebell for having brought about so regrettable a contretemps. While apparently gazing straight before her, she noticed that her present fellow-guests were in no sense representative of the county; they evidently consisted of folk, who, like Barbara, had known no better, and had taken the ducal invitation as literally meaning that the Duchess expected her guests to arrive at half-past nine!
Mrs. Boringdon accordingly made her progress as slow as she could, while Lucy, just behind her, looked about and enjoyed the animated scene. The girl felt happier than she had done for a long time; Oliver's manner had again become full of affectionate intimacy, and she had experienced an instinctive sense of relief in witnessing Mrs. Rebell's manner to him. A woman, even one so young as Lucy Kemp, does not mistake a rival's manner to the man she loves.
At last, thanks to a little manœuvre on the part of the older lady, she and Lucy, with, of course, her son, became separated from Mrs. Rebell. Barbara was soon well in front, speeding up the staircase with the light sliding gait Oliver so much admired, and forming part of, though in no sense merged in, the stream of rather awe-struck folk about her.
The kindly Duchess, standing a little in front of a brilliant, smiling group of men and women, stood receiving her guests on the landing which formed a vestibule to the long gallery leading to the ball-room. There came a moment when Barbara Rebell—so Boringdon felt—passed out of the orbit of those with whom she had just had the silent drive, and became absorbed into that stationary little island of people at the top of the staircase. More, as he and his mother shook hands with the Duchess, he saw that the woman who now filled his heart and mind to the exclusion of almost everything else, was standing rather in the background, between James Berwick and an old gentleman whom he, Oliver Boringdon, had long known and always disliked, a certain Septimus Daman who knew everyone and was asked everywhere.
Down on Mr. Daman—for he was very short and stout—Mrs. Rebell was now gazing with her whole soul in her eyes; and to-night old Septimus found that his one-time friendship with poor forgotten Richard Rebell conferred the pleasant privilege of soft looks and kindly words from one of the most attractive women present. To do him justice, virtue was in this case rewarded, for Septimus Daman had ever been one of the few who had remained actively faithful to the Rebells in their sad disgrace, and when Barbara was a little girl he had brought her many a pretty toy on his frequent visits to his friends in their exile.
But of all this Boringdon could know nothing, and, like most men, he felt unreasonably annoyed when the woman whom he found so charming charmed others beside himself. That Mrs. Rebell should exert her powers of pleasing on Madame Sampiero and on old Doctor McKirdy had seemed reasonable enough,—especially when she had done so on his behalf,—but here, at Halnakeham Castle, he could have wished her to be, as Lucy evidently was, rather over-awed by the occasion, and content to remain under his mother's wing. In his heart, he even found fault with Barbara's magnificent dress. It looked different, so he told himself, from those worn by the other women present: and as he walked down the long gallery—every step taking him, as he was acutely conscious it did, further away from her in whom he now found something to condemn—his eyes rested on Lucy's simple frock with gloomy approval.
"Mrs. Rebell's gown?" he said with a start, "no, I can't agree with you—Frankly, I don't like it! Oh! yes, it may have come from Paris, and I dare say it's very elaborate, but I never like anything that makes a lady look conspicuous!"