“We are later than I expected,” said Lady Cheynes. “You see it was such a sudden idea of mine.”
“A delightful idea,” Mrs Belvoir replied. “Where will you establish yourself, Lady Cheynes? There are a few seats in the ball-room—or would you prefer staying here?”
“I will stay here, thank you,” Ella’s godmother replied, seating herself beside her hostess. “But this child here,” she added in a lower voice, “I should like her to dance. Her sisters don’t know she is coming. It will be quite a surprise to them to see her.”
“They are both dancing,” said Mrs Belvoir. “Of course she must dance. Ah! there is Louis,”—as she caught sight of one of her sons and beckoned to him. “Louis,” and a word or two of whispered explanation followed, before he was brought up and introduced, nothing loth, to the lovely stranger.
He did not catch the name clearly; Mrs Belvoir’s special care to introduce the young girl correctly, as “Miss Ella St Quentin,” had a curious result.
“Miss Ellison Winton,” young Belvoir repeated to himself; “who in the world can she be? I have never seen her before, that’s certain.”
But long ere his fragment of a dance with her came to an end, he found himself hoping that he should see her again!
“She is quite bewitching,” he thought, “and she dances beautifully. I wish I were not engaged so deep.”
“May I introduce a partner or two to you, Miss—Miss Winton?” he said, and Ella did not notice the mistake, as she acquiesced, and two or three new men were led up to her.
“Major Frost, Mr Littleton, Sir Philip Cheynes,” followed each other in quick succession, and each in turn was informed privately by young Belvoir that the young lady was “a Miss Ellison Winton, a perfect stranger,” he added, “staying at some house in the neighbourhood;” and Ella herself, a little bewildered still, heard the various names but indistinctly—the “Sir Philip,” she caught but not the surname. And it never occurred to her to associate the bearer of it with her godmother’s grandson, whom she believed to be still in the north.