Those who had stigmatized her as a ballet-dancer and a dress-maker were staggered. Ballet-dancers and dressmakers, poor things! don't often play the piano like that, or have Mendelssohn's and Beethoven's superbest compositions at their finger-ends. In short, Miss Henderson bewitched Speckport that night, even as she had bewitched poor Tom Oaks. Never had a debut on the great stage of life been so successful. Where the witchery lay, none could tell; she was not beautiful of feature or complexion, yet half the people there thought her dazzlingly beautiful.
In short, Olive Henderson was not the sort of woman fire-side fairies and household angels and perfect wives are made of, but the kind men go mad for, and rarely marry. She was so brightly beautiful that she defied criticism; and she moved in their midst a young empress, crowned with the scarlet coronal and jetty braids, her diamond-star scintillating rays of rainbow fire, and that smiling face of hers alluring all. Even that slow Val Blake felt the spell of the sorceress, recanted his former heresy, and protested he was as near being in love with her as he had ever been with any one in his life.
The confession was made to Laura Blair, of all people in the world; but the glamour was over her eyes, too, and she heard it without surprise, almost without jealousy.
"Oh, she's splendid, Val," the young lady enthusiastically cried. "I never loved any one so much in my life as I do her! How could you say she was ugly?"
"Upon my word, I don't know," responded Mr. Blake helplessly; "I thought she was at the time, but she don't seem like the same person. How that Cavendish does stick to her, to be sure."
The cold pale dawn of the April day was lifting a leaden eye over the bay and the distant hill-top, when the assembly broke up. It was four o'clock of a cold and winter morning before the lights were fled, the garlands dead, and the banquet-halls deserted. Speckport was very quiet as the tired pleasure-seekers went wearily home, the chill sweeping wind penetrating to the bone.
Leaning against a lamp-post, opposite Mr. Darcy's house, and gazing with ludicrous earnestness at one particular window of that mansion, was a gentleman, whom the cold and uncomfortable dawn appeared to affect but very little. The gentleman was Mr. Tom Oaks, his face flushed, his hair tumbled, and his shirt-bosom in a limp and wine-splashed state, and the window was that of Miss Henderson's room. Heaven only knows how these mad lovers find out things; perhaps the passion gives them some mysterious indication; but he knew the window of her room, and stood there watching her morning-lamp burn, with an absorption that rendered him unconscious of cold and sleet and fatigue. While he was gazing at the light, with his foolish heart in his eyes, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a familiar voice sounded in his ear:
"I say, Oaks, old fellow! What are you doing here? You'll be laid up with rheumatic fever, if you stand in this blast much longer."
Tom turned round, and saw Captain Cavendish's laughing face. The young officer was buttoned up to the chin, and was smoking a cigar.
"It's no affair of yours, sir," cried Mr. Oaks, rather more fiercely than the occasion seemed to warrant. "The street's free, I suppose!"