"So it is," said Val, "and we are a heartless lot, I expect; but, meantime, the quadrille is commencing, and as you have not taken the vail yet, Miss Blair, suppose you make me a bow, and let us have a whack at it with the rest!"
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE HEIRESS OF REDMON ENTERS SOCIETY.
A pretty room—Brussels carpet on the floor, marble-topped table strewn with gayly-bound books and photograph-albums, chairs and sofas cushioned in green billiard-cloth, hangings of lace and damask on the windows, a tall Psyche mirror, a dressing-table, strewn with ivory-backed brushes, perfume bottles, kid gloves, and cambric handkerchiefs; and marble mantel, adorned with delicate vases filled with flowers. You might have thought it a lady's boudoir but for the pictures on the papered walls—pictures of ballet-dancers and racehorses, with one or two Indian scenes of pig-sticking, tiger and jackal hunts, and massacres of Sepoys, and the pistols and riding-whips over the mantel, and the gentleman standing at the window, looking out. He wore a captain's uniform, and nothing could have set off his fine figure so well; and this lady-like apartment was his, and told folios about the man's tastes and character. He stood looking out on the lamp-lit street, with people passing carelessly up and down, not looking at them, but thinking deeply—thinking how the best-laid plans of his life had been defeated by that invincible Fate, which was the only deity he believed in, and laying fresh plans, so skillfully to be carried out as to baffle grim Madam Fate herself. He was going to a party to-night—a party given by Mrs. Darcy, to introduce the new heiress of Redmon to Speckportian society.
Captain George Percy Cavendish, standing at the window, looking abstractedly out at the starlit and gaslit street, was thinking. No one had wished more to see the heiress than he. She was the fashion, the sensation, the notoriety of the day. What eclat for him, not to speak of the solid advantages in the way of dollars and cents, to carry off this heiress, in fair and open combat, from all competitors. Tom Oaks, the most insensible of mankind, had seen her but once, and had gone raving about her ever since. Then, she was the heiress of Redmon, and Captain Cavendish had vowed a vow long ago, that Redmon and its thousands should be his, in spite of the very old Diable himself. Did he think remorsefully of that other heiress who had staked all for him, and lost the game? I doubt it.
A little toy of a clock on a Grecian bracket struck ten. There had been a noisy mess-dinner to detain him, and he was late; but he did not mind that. Mr. Johnson, his man, appeared, to assist him on with his greatcoat, and Captain Cavendish started to behold his fate!
The drawing-room of the lawyer's house was filled when he entered—he being himself the latest arrival. He stood near the door for some time, watching the figures passing and re-passing, gliding in and out of the dance—for they were dancing—glancing from one to the other of those pretty mantraps, baited in rainbow-silk, jewelry, and artificial flowers, for the capture of such as he. He was looking for the heiress, but all of those faces were familiar, and almost all deigned him their sweetest smiles in passing—for was there another marriageable man in all Speckport as handsome as he? While he waited, Lieutenant the Honorable L. H. Blank, in a brilliant scarlet uniform, approached with a lady on his arm, and Captain Cavendish knew that he was face to face with the heiress of Redmon! She had been dancing, and the lieutenant led her to a seat, and left her to fulfill some request of hers. Captain Cavendish looked at her, with an electric thrill flashing through every nerve. Tom Oaks was right when he had called this woman glorious. It was the only word that seemed to fit her, with her dark Assyrian beauty, her flaming black eye, and superb wealth of dead-black hair. Yes, she was glorious, this black-eyed divinity, who was dressed like the heroine of a novel, in spotless white, floating like a pale cloud of mist all about her, and emblematic of virgin innocence, perhaps; only this dark daughter of the earth would hardly do to sit to an artist for an ideal Innocence.
She was dressed with wonderful simplicity, with a coronal of vivid scarlet berries and dark-green leaves in the shining braids of her black hair, and a little diamond star, shining and scintillating on her breast. Her nose might turn up, her forehead might be too broad and high, her face too long and thin for classic beauty, but with all that she was magnificent. There was a streaming light in her great black eyes, a crimson glow on her thin cheeks, and a sort of subtle brilliant electricity about her, not to be described, and not to be resisted. This flashing-eyed girl was one of those women for whom worlds have been lost—dark enchantresses not to be resisted by mortal man.
While Captain Cavendish stood there, magnetized and fascinated, a ringing laugh at his elbow made him look round. It was Miss Laura Blair, of course; no one ever laughed like that, but herself.