“Who is he?” asked the girl, a stranger to the neighbourhood, to whom five minutes before Mr Thompson had pointed out Miss Eyrecourt, condescendingly, as “one of our belles—has been, that is to say.”
“He is a sort of a connection of hers,” he replied, “that is to say, a brother of Mrs Eyrecourt’s. He and she—Captain Chancellor and Miss Eyrecourt, are engaged to be married, though it is not generally known. There he is,” he added, lowering his voice, for at that moment, as if in confirmation of his statement, Beauchamp, conspicuous by running against the supper-seeking stream, passed them, on his way back to the ball-room.
“Oh, indeed!” replied Miss Smith, with the sex’s usual keen interest in such matters. “I am glad you told me. It is such fun to watch engaged people.”
She communicated the fact in all good faith to her next partner, who happened to be one of the officers in the cavalry regiment stationed in the neighbouring town. This gentleman, not personally acquainted with either of the two people it chiefly concerned, mentioned it again casually as an undoubtedly well-authenticated piece of local news to a brother officer, whose wife, an old school-friend of Mrs Dalrymple’s, happened to be writing to that lady the next day. The object of her letter being to ask for an introduction to the family at Winsley Grange, the major’s wife naturally alluded to the engagement as a “just announced” occurrence, not forgetting, on the principle of “the three black crows,” to add, what she probably really thought she had been told, that “she understood the marriage was to take place almost immediately.”
Roma was sitting quite alone in the empty ball-room, when, to her great surprise, Beauchamp rejoined her. She had not liked his deserting her so unceremoniously, but this unexpected reappearance alarmed her: still she determined to seem to suspect nothing out of the common.
“So you haven’t forgotten me after all, Beauchamp?” she said good-humouredly. “You needn’t have come back for me though, I don’t care about any supper.”
“Don’t you really? Come now, that’s quite a fortunate coincidence,” said Captain Chancellor, seating himself deliberately beside her, “for as it happens I don’t want any either. We can spend the interval that less ethereal beings than you and I, Roma, devote to vulgar eating and drinking in a little congenial conversation.”
“But your partner?” objected Roma; “that is to say, the lady you took in to supper. What will she be thinking of you?”
“I didn’t take any one in to supper,” replied Captain Chancellor, composedly. “The reason I deserted you so unceremoniously was only that I had promised Lady Exyton to tell Vandeleur where she was to be found, and I had forgotten.”
Roma, who was really rather hungry, began to long for the comparative safety of the crowded supper-room. How she wished now she had not told that useless little fib about not wanting anything to eat.