"Not handsome," said Miss Blanche Oleander, raising her glass, "but eminently interesting. He looks like the hero of a sensation novel, or a modern melodrama, or one of Lord Byron's poems. Does he dance, and will he ask me, I wonder?"
Yes, the dusky hero of the night did dance, and did ask Miss Blanche Oleander. A tall, gray-eyed, imperious sort of beauty, this Miss Blanche, seven-and-twenty years of age, and frightfully passée, more youthful belles said.
Mr. Walraven danced the very first dance with Miss Oleander, to her infinite but perfectly concealed delight.
"If you can imagine the Corsair, whirling in a rapid redowa with Medora," Miss Oleander afterward said, "you have Mr. Walraven and myself. There were about eighty Guinares gazing enviously on, ready to poniard me, every one of them, if they dared, and if they were not such miserable little fools and cowards. When they cease to smell of bread and butter, Mr. Walraven may possibly deign to look at them."
It seemed as if the dashing Blanche had waltzed herself straight into the affections of the new-found heir, for he devoted himself to her in the most prononcé manner for the first three hours, and afterward led her in to supper.
Miss Blanche sailed along serene, uplifted, splendidly calm; the little belles in lace, and roses, and pearls, fluttered and twittered like angry doves; and Mme. Walraven, from the heights of her hostess-throne, looked aslant at her velvet and diamonds with uneasy old eyes.
"The last of all you should have selected," she said, waylaying her son after supper. "A woman without a heart, Carl—a modern Minerva. I have no wish to interfere with you, my son; I shall call the day happy that brings me your wife, but not Blanche Oleander—not that cold-blooded, bold-faced, overgrown grenadier."
Madame hissed out the words between a set of spiteful, false teeth, and glared, as women do glare, upon the gray-eyed Blanche. And Carl listened, and laughed sardonically.
"A woman without a heart. So much the better, mother; the less heart the more head; and I like your clever, dashing women, who are big and buxom, and able to take care of themselves. Don't forget, mother mine, I haven't proposed to the sparkling Blanche, and I don't think I shall—to-night. You wouldn't have me fall at the feet of those mealy-winged moths fluttering around us, with heads softer than their poor little hearts—you wouldn't, I hope?"
With which Mr. Walraven went straight back to Miss Oleander and asked her to dance the lancers.