CHAPTER V.
CARYLLON HOUSE.
“You loved me, and you loved me not
A little, much, and over much;
Will you forget, as I forgot?
Let all dead things lie dead—such
Are not soft to touch.”
Fanchette, having arrayed Trixy and Baby for the Duchess of Caryllon’s fancy ball, finally seeks Zai. Zai—who still lies dreaming her love’s young dream in the soft twilight, while a star or two peeps down inquisitively through the open window upon the increased loveliness that love has called up on her sweet face.
Regretfully she rises at Fanchette’s entrance, and certainly no fairer daughter of Belgravia ever tripped through Belgravian salons. When her toilette is complete, Fanchette does wonders with her little artistic touches here and there, and Zai’s costume, though simple, is exquisitely picturesque.
The bodice is long-waisted; the stomacher thickly embroidered in pearls; the Vandyke corsage is low in front, with a high ruffle behind, and the whole makes a beau-ideal of the old time Maestros; ropes of glistening pearls go round the slim throat and are wreathed in the chestnut hair. The dress of Blanche of Navarre is marvellously becoming, and would be becoming to a plain woman. What, then, must it be to this daughter of Belgravia, to whom Nature has been lavish in seductive tints?—this girl with a beauty so very fair that
“If to her share some human errors fall,
Look in her face and you’ll forget them all,”
and who is very proud of herself, as she thinks that Carlton Conway will be at Caryllon House to-night, and will see how “nice” she looks.
Let us own that a woman must be composed of very strange materials who does not feel that it is charming to be young and pretty, considering that youth and beauty are the recognised weapons for slaughtering men’s hearts.
Lady Beranger has always a fancy for “her own party” when she goes to a ball, and on this occasion the dinner in Belgrave Square has three additions to the family circle—Mr. Stubbs, Archibald Hamilton, and Percy Rayne—a connection of Lord Beranger’s—a clerk in the Foreign Office, good-looking, harum-scarum, a pauper, and a detrimental. Lord Delaval was asked, of course, but had another engagement. When all her brood is gathered together, Lady Beranger, in silver moire, with the Beranger diamonds (but no! not the Beranger diamonds, for they are under safe lock and key and surveillance of one of the many Attenboroughs—but the duplicates in finished Parisian paste, which are quite as lovely and costly to the uninitiated eye), steps into the family landau.