The History of the Lady Betty Stair

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Lady Betty flashed him a look of scorn and jealousy and pain that was indescribable. She felt quite sure that he had got them their invitation; and Flora’s beauty and her noble figure and her string of pearls went like a dagger to Lady Betty’s quivering heart. The counsellor and his wife made their bows with dignity and without any air of servility; but Flora made hers with matchless grace, and looked as composedly at their Royal Highnesses as if she had been a Montmorenci or a De Rohan, instead of a lawyer’s daughter from the new town. It was a great sensation. Bastien, who was responsible for it all, sat back in a corner and smiled like Mephistopheles. He had paid off several old scores by getting that invitation, which had required some diplomacy and some secrecy. He knew women well enough to understand that Lady Betty, in her heart, at once taxed De Bourmont with having got the Mackenzies to the levee. De Bourmont did not know in the least how the old counsellor would take it that a man should introduce himself into another man’s house under an assumed character, but at the moment that Counsellor Mackenzie caught De Bourmont’s glance, a twinkle came into the old Scotchman’s eye. He had found out that De Bourmont was a gentleman and had charged him with it, and here he was, one of the first gentlemen in the royal suite. De Bourmont’s eyes twinkled, too, as he bowed and smiled at the counsellor. Mistress Mackenzie gave him a bow of delighted recognition, but her heart jumped into her mouth; here she had been treating a gentleman-in-waiting on royalty exactly as if he had been a mere ordinary French teacher. Only Flora looked at him so calmly and loftily that no one would have dreamed that they had ever met before.

De Bourmont could not leave his post until the royalties saw fit to retire, and that was not until nearly midnight.

Lady Betty spoke no more to him that evening. She often played at haughtiness with him, and it was a joke of De Bourmont’s to complain to the princess of Lady Betty’s unkindness to him, when she would be called up and be gravely admonished; at which she would say such droll things that the princess would laugh heartily,—and the poor princess had only too few things to make her laugh. De Bourmont whispered to Lady Betty, therefore:—

“If you are so cruel to me, I shall report you to the princess;” but Lady Betty flashed him such a look of anger that he said no more to her.

A man will not stand much of that sort of thing, so, as soon as their Royal Highnesses retired, De Bourmont left Lady Betty and, rather ostentatiously, sought out the Mackenzies. The counsellor burst out laughing when De Bourmont appeared.

“So, Monsieur de Bourmont,” he said, “you are a gentleman, after all!”

“But it is not my fault,” answered De Bourmont, with his usual air of well-bred impudence. “I was born so, without anybody’s asking me if I wished to be a gentleman or not. I had no choice at all.”

The counsellor was not very deeply offended with him for masquerading as a tutor, although De Bourmont explained to them that the money did not go amiss, as he was uncommonly in need of it. And all of them laughed at De Bourmont’s plea of poverty, which, although very real, he always put in such an amusing way that people could not but smile.

Then De Bourmont, who had not said a word to Flora, asked her to join in the quadrille which was then being formed. She simply bowed silently, and he led her to a place in the dance; and there, as soon as he looked up, he saw Lady Betty Stair and Bastien standing up to dance opposite them.

It was then too late to retreat, and, besides, De Bourmont would not seem to run away from either Lady Betty or Bastien. The two girls looked haughtily at each other. In Lady Betty’s eyes was a cool, fine-lady air of scorn which was not wasted on the lawyer’s daughter. Flora asked De Bourmont carelessly who Lady Betty was, and, in spite of his cool and self-possessed manner, she shrewdly guessed out in an instant something very near the truth, and returned Lady Betty’s look of haughty contempt with interest.