Hilary was annoyed, but she soon forgot the ugly slippers in the fascination of a drive through the brightly-lighted streets, and when the carriage drew up beneath an awning, and she had a peep at a beautiful hall, decorated with palms and flowering plants, and saw the crowd flocking up the staircase, her breath came fast with excitement. Her father led her into the house and disappeared through a doorway on the left, while she herself was shown into a room on the right, wherein a throng of fashionable ladies were divesting themselves of their wraps, and giving finishing touches to their toilets before the mirrors. Those who were nearest to Hilary turned curious glances at her as she took off her shawls, and the girl felt a sudden and painful consciousness of insignificant youth. They were so very grand, these fine ladies. They wore such masses of diamonds, and such marvellous frocks, and mantles, and wrappings, that she was over-awed, and hurried out of the room as quickly as possible, without daring to step forward to a mirror. Such a crowd of guests were making their way up the staircase, that Hilary and her father could only move forward a step at the time, but after they had shaken hands with a stout lady and a thin gentleman at the head of the stairs, there was a sudden thinning off, for a suite of reception rooms opened out of the hall, and the guests floated away in different directions.
Mr Bertrand led the way into the nearer of the rooms, and no sooner had he appeared in the doorway, than there came a simultaneous exclamation of delight from a group of gentlemen who stood in the centre of the floor, and he was seized by the arm, patted on the shoulder, and surrounded by a bevy of admiring friends. Poor Hilary stood in the background, abashed and deserted. Her father had forgotten all about her existence. The group of friends were gradually drawing him further and further away. Not a soul did she know among all the brilliant throng. Several fashionably dressed ladies put up their eye-glasses to stare at her as she stood, a solitary figure at the end of the room, then turned to whisper to each other, while the youngest and liveliest of the party put her fan up to her face and tittered audibly. They were laughing at her, the rude, unkind, unfeeling creatures.
“What could there be to laugh at?” asked Hilary of herself. Her dress had been made by a fashionable modiste; Miss Carr’s own maid had arranged her hair. “I may not be pretty, but there’s nothing ludicrous about me that I know of,” said the poor child to herself, with catching breath. In spite of her seventeen years, her new dress, and all her ecstatic anticipations, a more lonely, uncomfortable, and tearfully-inclined young woman it would be difficult to find. She looked round in despair, espied a seat in a retired corner, and was making for it as quickly as might be, when she came face to face with a mirror, and in it saw a reflection which made the colour rush to her cheeks in a hot, crimson tide. A girlish figure, with a dark head set gracefully upon a slender neck, a dainty dress, all cloudy chiffon, satiny ribbons, and nodding snowdrops, and beneath—oh, good gracious!—beneath the soft frilled edgings, a pair of enormous, shapeless, scarlet worsted bed slippers! It would be difficult to say which was the more scarlet at that moment—the slippers themselves or Hilary’s cheeks. She shuffled forward and stood in the corner, paralysed with horror. There had been such a crowd in the cloak-room, and she had been so anxious to get away, that she had forgotten all about the wretched slippers. So that was why the ladies were laughing! Oh, to think how she must have looked—standing by herself in the doorway, with those awful, awful scarlet feet shown up against the white skirts!
“Sit down and slip them off, and hide them in the corner. No one will see you!” said a sympathetic voice in her ear, and Hilary turned sharply to find that one end of the seat was already occupied by a gentleman, who was regarding her with a very kindly smile of understanding. His face was thin, and there were signs of suffering in the strained expression of the eyes, so that Hilary, looking at him, found it impossible to take his advice otherwise than in a friendly spirit.
“Th–ank you,” she stammered, and pulling off the offending slippers, hid them swiftly behind the folds of the curtains, and seated herself on the sofa by his side.
“That’s better!” cried the stranger, looking down with approving eyes at the little satin shoes which were now revealed. “Forgot to take them off, didn’t you? Very natural. I did the same with snow-shoes once, and was in the room for half an hour before I discovered that I still had them on.”
“But snow-shoes are black. They wouldn’t look half so bad. I saw those ladies laughing at me. What must they have thought?”
“Do you think it matters very much what they thought?” The stranger turned his face towards Hilary, and smiled again in his slow, gentle manner. “Why trouble yourself about the opinion of people whom you don’t know, and whom you will probably never see again? I suppose it is a matter of perfect indifference to them, but what I think about them is, that they were exceedingly ill-bred to behave as they did, and I should attach no value whatever to their opinions. Have you—er—lost sight of your friends?”
“No, they have lost sight of me.” The stranger was at once so kind, and so sensible, that Hilary began to feel a delightful sense of restored equanimity, and even gave a little laugh of amusement as she spoke. “I came with my father, and he has gone off with some friends and forgotten all about my existence. He is over there at the end of the room; the tall man with the brown moustache—Mr Austin Bertrand.”
The stranger gave a little jump in his seat, and the colour tinged his cheek. “Bertrand!” he exclaimed. “You are Bertrand’s daughter!” He stared at Hilary with newly-awakened interest, while she smiled, well pleased by the sensation which the name caused.