The dance began. De Bourmont noticed Bastien whispering in Lady Betty’s ear and laughing, and he saw the blood mount slowly but redly into her clear cheek. Bastien was telling some story about him—probably more about the wager—to Lady Betty. And he caught something about “a great fortune,” in the turn of the dance—for Flora Mackenzie was a very great fortune. Lady Betty carefully avoided De Bourmont’s eye, and once, when in the dance their hands met and he gave her fingers a faint pressure, she looked into his eyes with such an air of cold surprise that he dared not repeat it.
At last the ball was over, and De Bourmont and Lady Betty, each angry, chagrined, and burning with love for the other, parted, after having plagued each other exquisitely for the whole evening.
III
“I WILL not forgive him. No, I will not. I do not like his conduct with the lawyer’s daughter who has forty thousand pounds.” So said Lady Betty Stair to herself many times a day; yet within a week, after a five minutes’ talk with De Bourmont in the embrasure of a window, they both came forth with happy, glorified faces, and De Bourmont was indeed forgiven. He had told her that the Comte d’Artois had “voluntarily” given him permission to return to France and he only awaited a chance of a vessel sailing for Brittany, which was the only coast in France where a royalist could land without being clapped into prison before he had time to explain why he came. And then, looking searchingly at Lady Betty, De Bourmont had said:—
“I cannot tell the woman I love, that I love her, until I have my sword in my hand—but then—! Lady Betty, if I leave a letter for you when I go away, will you read it?”
“Yes,” answered Lady Betty, blushing and trembling very much.
And so it came that their faces had a look of Paradise in them. This was not the French way of proceeding, but the Scotch way; and it was De Bourmont’s fixed opinion that the Scotch way was best.
Only a few weeks more passed before De Bourmont left for France, but in that time many strange things happened. The first was, the news that Bastien had been left a considerable fortune, not in assignats, but in good English gold. Lady Betty, who could not forbear once in a while whetting her wit on Bastien, made him a laughing-stock the very night the great news came, while the ladies and gentlemen were awaiting in the salon the coming of their Royal Highnesses. Everybody was congratulating Bastien, and when it came to Lady Betty’s turn she said, courtesying low:—
“A thousand congratulations, Monsieur Bastien, and don’t be too generous with your fortune. You are not called upon to spend it all in the service of the royal cause, as the Macdonalds of Stair did with the Stuart cause.”
As Bastien was notoriously close with his money and had got more out of exiled royalty than he ever gave it, these words caused a smile to go around the circle,—not even Abbé de Ronceray being entirely free from suspicion,—and Bastien longed to clap his hand over Lady Betty’s rosy mouth.