“If you will allow me, I will take back the rubies, and desire sapphires to be sent instead.”
“Oh, no, no! it would scarcely be worth the trouble of changing them, these will do very well,” she answers in a tone of languor, but she remembers the vulgar old adage of “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush,” and to put a bar on any chance of losing the disparaged rubies, she quietly clasps the morocco cases, and locks them into an ivory and ebony Indian box.
The big drawing-room in Belgrave Square is very dull. From outside comes the rush of vehicles, and the June sunshine tries to peer through the closed jalousies that fine ladies love. The clock ticks rather obtrusively, but Trixy likes to hear it, for it tells of the flight of time; a prospect she has at heart at this moment, and a short silence falls upon as ill-assorted a pair as ever a longing for the world’s vanities has brought together. Looking at them, the story of Beauty and the Beast presents itself, excepting that the Beast is not likely to turn out anything else, save as far as riches are concerned. From the day Mr. Stubbs popped the question, as Baby has it, and Trixy accepted him, Lady Beranger has thankfully thrown off the onus of chaperonage, which a rigid adherence to her beloved convenances insisted on before, and long tête-à-têtes are vouchsafed to the “happy young couple,” as she calls them (Extract from the Stubbs’ family bible—Peter Robinson Stubbs, born July 12th, 1820, rather upsets the word young), but her ladyship cannot stand the man in spite of his youth and happiness, and slips out of the way whenever his loud knock resounds through the mansion. She has no fear that Trixy will prove refractory now that the die is cast, and the match has been announced formally in the columns of the Court Journal and other Society papers. Besides, a dissolution of the contract would involve a return of very expensive presents, including the despised rubies, and Lady Beranger’s insight into human nature, or rather into her eldest daughter’s nature, leads her to think rightly. Trixy is her mother’s child to the backbone.
In spite of her utter loathing for the man to whom she is going to swear glibly love and eternal fealty, she has received too heavy substantial tokens of his regard to allow her golden calf to drift away. She has thoroughly made up her mind—such as it is—to cast away all romantic nonsense, i.e., her adoration of Carlton Conway, for the sake of worldly benefits, and now it is ten to one, that if the all-conquering C. C. came in his noble person to woo her, she would deliberately weigh against his undeniable fascination the prospect of being a leader of Society, with magnificent diggings in Park Lane, and the very comfortable sensation of a heavy balance at Coutts’.
“You think you really would prefer Park Lane to Carlton Gardens?” Mr. Stubbs inquires deferentially.
Under the powerful glamour of Trixy’s beauty he feels as if he could buy up the Fiji Isles, or even that very uncomfortable residence, Bulgaria, if she wills it. Of course, she likes the big house in Park Lane. What woman, especially a daughter of Belgravia, would not? with its superb array of balconies, and galleries, and conservatories, and its vast reception rooms, where Trixy fully intends to queen it over other leaders of Society, but she just bends her pretty little yellow-crowned head in assent.
One may have a dancing bear, but one is not forced to converse with him, she thinks, and she gives him a long, level look, wondering what animal he is really like. Gabrielle had likened him to a frog, but he is too bulky for that; a bear or a buffalo, she decides, and while she does so, he has come to the decision that no cage can be too gorgeous for his radiant Bird of Paradise, and he glances, but covertly, at her in a sort of maze at the curious freak of fortune that is going to bestow on him such a rara avis.
He looks sideways at her sweet scarlet lips, and marvels what he has ever done in his prosy money-making life to make him worthy of their being yielded to him—not yet, no, certainly—not yet, he is aware of that, but perhaps, some day! He gloats with an elderly gentleman’s gloating on the supple young form and perfect face, and quite a delightful awe creeps over him at the very idea of the future presence of this flesh and blood divinity at his hearth and board.
Nature has not been munificent to him in the way of looks. He has a broad, florid, rather flaccid physiognomy, and his proportions are not symmetrical, but taking him all round, he is not a bad sort, and he has a good heart.
True it beats beneath a huge mountain of flesh, but, never mind, it beats all the same with a good deal of honest warmth. His feelings towards his fair autocrat are a mixture of profound admiration and profound gratitude—the last sentiment being born of the first.