“I know perfectly well what you mean, Mr. Beresford, and I despise you for it. Because Margery works—earns her own living—is a dressmaker—you, and people like you, look down upon her from your lofty platform of position and social standing, and I hate you for it; yes, I do, for how are you better than she, I’d like to know. Aren’t you just as anxious for a case to work up as she for a dress to make, and what’s the difference, except that you are a man and she a woman, and so the more to be commended, because she is willing to take care of herself instead of folding her hands in idleness. I tell you, Mr. Beresford, you must do better, or I’ll never speak to you again. There’s Margery now, over there by the summer-house, talking with Major Rossiter, and looking awfully bored. Go and get her away, and dance with her. See, they are just forming a quadrille there in the summer-house;” and she pointed to the large, fanciful structure on the plateau, which, with its manycolored lights, was much like the gay restaurants on the Champs d’Elysees in Paris. Indeed the whole affair bore a strong resemblance to the outdoor fetes in France, and the grounds seemed like fairy-land, with the flowers, and flags, and arches, and colored lights, and groups of gayly-dressed people wandering up and down the broad walks and on the grassy terraces, or dancing in the summer-house, near which the band was stationed.
Mr. Beresford never danced; he was too dignified for that, but he carried Margery away from the major, and walked with her through the grounds, and wondered at her refinement and lady-like manners, which seemed so natural to her. Mr. Beresford was an aristocrat of the deepest dye, and believed implicitly in family and blood, and as Margery had neither, he was puzzled, and bewildered, and greatly interested in her, and thought hers the most beautiful face he had ever seen, excepting Reinette’s, which stood out distinct among all the faces in the world.
Reinette was at her best that night, and like some bright bird flitted here and there among her guests, saying the right word to the right person, and doing the right thing in the right place, and so managing, that when at a late hour the festivity was at an end, and her guests came to say good-by, it was no fashionable lie, but the truth they spoke when they assured her that evening had been the most enjoyable of their lives, and one never to be forgotten.
CHAPTER XXIII.
PERFECTING THEMSELVES IN FRENCH.
That was what Mr. Beresford and Phil were said to be doing during the weeks when they went every day to Hetherton Place, Phil, who had nothing to do, riding over early every morning, and Mr. Beresford, who had a great deal to do, going in the evening, or as early in the afternoon as he could get away from his office. It was not unusual for the two to meet on the causeway, Phil coming from and Mr. Beresford going to the little lady, who bewitched and intoxicated them both, though in a very different way. With Phil, her cousin, she laughed, and played, and flirted, and quarreled—hot, bitter quarrels sometimes—in which she always had the better of Phil, inasmuch as her command of language was greater, and her rapid gestures added point to her sarcasm. But if her anger was the hotter and fiercer, she was always the first to make overtures for a reconciliation; the first to confess herself in error, and she did it so prettily and sweetly, and purred around Phil so like a loving kitten, that he thought the making up worth all the quarreling, and rather provoked the latter than tried to avoid it.
Sometimes, when she was more than usually unreasonable and aggravating, Phil would absent himself from Hetherton Place for two or three days, knowing well that in the end Pierre would come to him with a note from Queenie begging him to return, and chiding him for his foolishness in laying to heart anything she had said.
“You know I do not mean a word of it, and it’s just my awful temper which gets the mastery, and I think you hateful to bother me by staying away when you know how poky it is here without you,” she would write, and within an hour Phil would be at her side again, basking in the sunlight of her charms, and growing every day more and more infatuated with the girl, whose eyes were just as bright, and whose smile was just as sweet and alluring, when, later on, Mr. Beresford came, more in love, if possible, than Phil, but with a different way of showing it.
Queenie was morally certain that he was either in love with her or would be soon; and she was always a little shy of him, and never allowed the conversation to approach anything like love-making; and if he praised a particular dress and said it was becoming, as he sometimes did, she never wore it again for him, but when she knew he was coming, donned some old-fashioned gown in which she fancied herself hideous.
“If Mr. Beresford would be foolish, it should not be from any fault of hers,” she thought, never dreaming that if she arrayed herself in a bag he would still have thought her charming, provided her eyes and mouth were visible.