It was a merry, merry time indeed, and everybody seemed to vie with his neighbor to see who could contribute most to the enjoyment of the occasion.
Vivien Sherbrooke and Josephine Richards were declared by each and all to be the belles of the evening, notwithstanding they were entirely different in the style of their beauty.
The former wore a dress of rose-colored silk, with overdress of tulle looped with roses. Ropes of pearls were wound around her fair neck and arms and twined in her shining brown hair. Her clear gray eyes gleamed with a brighter luster than usual, a deeper flush was on her cheeks, and her lips wreathed with happier smiles.
Josephine was in simple white, with not an atom of color to relieve it. A peculiarly dainty dress of some soft clinging stuff fell in matchless folds of grace around her lithe form, with rare, costly lace for garniture, and great poppies, in which diamonds glistened like drops of dew, fastened on her breast and in her hair.
This spotless toilet was wonderfully becoming to her clear, dark complexion, and her mother’s heart swelled with pride as she looked upon her and knew that she was the most distinguished-looking girl among all that company of aristocrats.
“She cannot fail to win a high position in the world,” she said to herself, as she saw several titled men hovering about her and hanging upon her smiles. “If she fail to win Lord Carrol—if he remains blind to her charms—there are plenty of others, thank Heaven, who will appreciate her. There is his grace, the Duke of Anerby, who admires her very much, and it would be very nice to be able to say ‘my daughter, the Duchess of Anerby;’ but I’m afraid she loves Lord Carrol altogether too well,” she concluded, with a sigh.
There could not be much doubt regarding Josephine’s sentiments toward his lordship, for, as they stood for a few moments together beneath an arch of evergreen which had been erected at one end of the hall, her face was raised to his, as she listened to what he was saying, with a tender, almost rapt expression, and her eyes were humid with the love which filled her heart for him.
He thought that she had never appeared to so much advantage as now. During all her stay at Cheshire House she had been more kind and gentle, more womanly than he had ever seen her before; and now he lingered by her side, realizing how very beautiful she was, and feeling almost as if he had wronged her in the past by judging her so harshly, and his manner involuntarily became more gracious and friendly toward her.
She saw it, and it made her heart bound with a wild hope, and she became so radiant, so fascinating and bewildering, that he wondered if he had indeed been nourishing an unjust prejudice against her.
Lady Sherbrooke saw them standing there, apparently oblivious of everything and everybody else, and an anxious look shot into her face, for she had studied Miss Richards during her unguarded moments the past week, reading her character like an open book with her womanly intuition, and she knew that she would never make a good man happy; she would never yield that wifely self-sacrifice which was necessary to domestic enjoyment; and seeing how passing fair she was to-night, she dreaded her influence over her idolized son, notwithstanding what he had already told her.