Mrs. Villars sought for Lucy, to impart these particulars, but was not sorry to find her waltzing with Mr. Beauclerc.
"What a handsome couple they would make," thought she; "and, oh, if Caroline and Hargrave were but here, I should be quite happy." But she little dreamt of the pleasure yet in store for that evening.
Mr. Villars soon beginning to feel impatient, she was compelled to draw her party together. Beauclerc accompanied them to the door; and as he handed Lucy into the carriage, she fancied his hand trembled. With this pleasing impression, she leant back in the fly which conveyed them home, and gave herself up to pleasant reverie, and castle building. She ran over every word which had passed in their long conversations, and thought they were an easy beginning to a more pleasing acquaintance than they often met with—she began then to feel quite surprised that she ever had given a tear to Captain Clair.
"Willingly," she said to herself; "will I resign him to Mabel, if she will have him; yet there was something in him I liked, though I cannot well remember what it was now. Why, he never talked in six weeks, half the sense which Mr. Beauclerc has thrown into one conversation. I feel quite grateful to him for deserting me, since, otherwise, I never should have met this very superior man, who, as he himself observed, though not in plain words exactly, possesses the key to my mind—and does not that seem like affection?"
These pleasing considerations were interrupted by their stopping at their own door, paying the driver, and running gaily up stairs.
"Hark," said Mrs. Villars, "there are voices in the drawing-room, I am certain. There are, I do believe."
"Why mamma," said Maria, who, with more courage, had applied her eye to the key-hole; it is only Caroline talking to somebody. When, upon this information, they opened the door, Caroline was discovered tête-à-tête, with a strange gentleman, with as much ease and nonchalance as if at the regular calling hour.
There was a slight tone of triumph in her voice as she said:—
"Colonel Hargrave, papa?"
"Oh, Colonel," said Mrs. Villars, taking the words out of her husband's mouth; "I can scarcely forgive you for obliging us to go to the ball without you."