Invitations were soon issued. Colonel Hargrave was persuaded to give up a hunting party he had intended joining, and even to discuss the numerous arrangements, of which none but good entertainers can appreciate the difficulty. The music, the dances, the company, the decorations of the rooms, were all thoroughly talked over, and everything promised to make it the most popular party of the Bath season.
The girls were in high spirits, and congratulated themselves on Hargrave's continued good humour.
Selina declared he must have made up his mind, at last, and anticipated looking pretty on a Shetland pony, at Aston, while Maria declared that she had nearly "hooked" a Gloucestershire squire, and hoped Caroline would give her an opportunity of landing him.
On the morning of the party, Mabel was sitting in the library alone, finishing some ornaments for the wax tapers, which her aunt had requested her to make. Mr. Villars was gone to put a letter to a London publisher in the post—and finding herself alone, she had given herself up to thoughts of her mother and Amy—that dear sister, whose life she had hoped to see so much happier than her own—then came to her memory, which was well stored with every antidote to discontent, those beautiful lines of Milman—
"We thank thee for our lost, our beauteous child,
The tears less bitter she has made us shed."
And these told her how Amy's artless love had beguiled her first disappointment of its bitterness, and called her to exert her energies in a life of activity.
As she continued this more cheerful train of thought, she heard a step in the passage, whose echo thrilled to her very heart. How often had she sprung at that signal in all the buoyancy of unchecked love; cold and dark had been the change—the elastic step was now firm and majestic, and she listened to it with attempted indifference, for they had learnt to meet as strangers.
Colonel Hargrave entered, and instead of leaving the room, as he now always did, when he found her alone, he walked up to the fire, and stood looking at her, for a moment, as her varying color made her face look something more than beautiful.
"I have a request to make," he said, at length.
"One that I can grant, I hope," said Mabel; for the silence broken, her courage was at once restored.