Like a man who walks in his sleep, Sir Victor Catheron turned, re-entered the brougham, and was driven home.
CHAPTER XV.
LADY HELENA'S BALL.
Three days after, on Thursday, the fifth of June, Lady Helena Powyss gave a very large dinner-party, followed by a ball in honor of her American guests. When it is your good fortune to number half a county among your friends, relatives, and acquaintances, it is possible to be at once numerous and select. The creme de la creme of Cheshire assembled in Lady Helena's halls of dazzling light, to do honor to Sir Victor Catheron's bride-elect.
For the engagement had been formally announced, and was the choice bit of gossip, with which the shire regaled itself. Sir Victor Catheron was following in the footsteps of his father, and was about to bring to Catheron Royals one of the lower orders as its mistress. It was the Dobb blood no doubt cropping up—these sort of mesalliances will tell. An American, too—a governess, a poor relation of some common rich people from the States. The best county families, with daughters to marry, shook their heads. It was very sad—very sad, to see a good old name and a good old family degenerate in this way. But there was always a taint of madness in the Catheron blood—that accounted for a good deal. Poor Sir Victor—and poor Lady Helena.
But everybody came. They might be deeply shocked and sorry, but still Sir Victor Catheron was Sir Victor Catheron, the richest baronet in the county, and Catheron Royals always a pleasant house to visit—the reigning Lady Catheron always a desirable acquaintance on one's visiting-list. Nobody acknowledged, of course, they went from pure, downright curiosity, to see this manoeuvring American girl, who had taken Sir Victor Catheron captive under the aristocratic noses of the best-born, best-bred, best-blooded young ladies in a circuit of twenty miles.
The eventful night came—the night of Edith's ordeal. Even Trix was a little nervous—only a little—is not perfect self-possession the normal state of American young ladydom? Lady Helena was quite pale in her anxiety. The girl was handsome beyond dispute, thoroughbred as a young countess, despite her birth and bringing up in a New England town and Yankee boarding-house, with pride enough for a princess of forty quarterings, but how would she come forth from the fiery furnace of all those pitiless eyes, sharpened to points to watch for gaucheries and solecisms of good breeding—from the merciless tongues that would hang, draw, and quarter her, the instant their owners were out of the house.
"Don't you feel nervous, Dithy?" asked Trix, almost out of patience at last with Edith's serene calm. "I do—horribly. And Lady Helena has got a fit of the fidgets that will bring her gray hairs to an early grave, if this day lasts much longer. Ain't you afraid—honor bright?"
Edith Darrell lifted her dark, disdainful eyes. She sat reading, while the afternoon wore on, and Trixy fussed and fluttered about the room.
"Afraid of the people who are coming here to-night—is that what you mean? Not a whit! I know as well as you do, they are coming to inspect and find fault with Sir Victor Catheron's choice, to pity him, and call me an adventuress. I know also that any one of these young ladies would have married him, and said 'Thank you for asking,' if he had seen fit to choose them. I have my own pride and Sir Victor's good taste to uphold to-night, and I will uphold them. I think"—she lifted her haughty, dark head, and glanced, with a half-conscious smile, in the pier-glass opposite—"I think I can bear comparison by lamplight with any of these 'daughters of a hundred earls,' such as—Lady Gwendoline Drexel for instance."