"Happy!" Galliard repeated, with a cynical accent.
"A man must be very happy when he allows it," replied Miss Vernon.
"E vero," cried Galliard, laughing.
"Or so very proud that he will not admit the contrary," suggested Langley.
"If you knew Mr. Gilpin," began Kate, when their hostess advancing, interrupted her, and begged for a song, to which request Kate at once acceded.
Then the hostess proposed a quadrille, and introduced a young gentleman, redolent of eau de mille feurs, with an elaborately worked shirt front, lined with pink, and a white pastry face, to Kate, whispering, in a jocose manner, "is quite a catch, junior partner in the great firm of Jones, Brown and Tuckett;" and, with a knowing nod, she walked away, leaving Kate half amused at the extraordinary confidences of her communicative hostess; but feeling through all that, had she still been heiress of Dungar, and any strange chance had thrown Mrs. Storey in her way, the acquaintanceship would have been conducted on very different terms.
She stood up very good-humouredly, however, and replied to all her partner's vapid remarks, very readily; yet, somehow, Tuckett, junior, though he was "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," to Hammond-court, Mincing-lane, did not feel at his ease with her; and she, in the innocence of her heart, believing that all firms dwelt in the city, and never dreaming that a man could be so silly as to blush because he was a worker instead of an idler, put him to torture by her unconscious questions.
"I am anxious to explore the city," she said, while the side couples were dancing La Poule. "I suppose you know all its charming nooks by heart."
"Aw, no, indeed, it's a place I have too great a distaste for, to stay in, except when obliged."
"For shame," said Kate, "A citizen of 'famous London Town,' ought to know, and prize the various interesting 'locales' in the mighty capital."