“Well plastered down with pomade, and not safe to touch,” said Nelly, shaking her own brown locks. “But I agree with you, Frederick, there is no hair so lovely as golden hair. Is your beauty going to stay long in town? Do we know any one who knows her? Has she come for the season?”
“They are staying at an hotel,” said Frederick, very seriously. “I met the father in Paris, quite by chance, when I was getting better. That is how I came to know them. They are not quite in your set, I suppose. But she is simply the most radiant, dazzling creature——”
“All red and white and green and blue,” said the irrepressible Dick, “with her hair growing down to her eyes—oh, I know! seven feet high, and weighing twelve stone.”
“Yes, that is odd too,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “people like that kind of huge woman. In my days, now, a light, elastic figure——”
“They all died of consumption,” said Nelly. She was herself exactly the kind of being whom her mother described; but she took up the cause of the other with natural perverseness. A curious sense of possible help gleamed across Frederick’s mind as he listened. He would not allow himself to realize under what possible circumstances Nelly’s championship might be useful to him; but his mind jumped at the thought, with a sudden perception of possibilities which he by no means wished to follow out at once to their full length and breadth. When he went to the office he congratulated himself secretly on his skill in having thus introduced the subject so as to awaken no suspicion—and he went into the conservatory, and cut a lovely little white camellia bud, which Nelly had been saving up for quite another button-hole. It was just after the exciting moment of Nelly’s betrothal, and the house was full of a certain suggestion of love-making, which, perhaps, helped to stimulate Frederick’s thoughts; but his blaze of sudden passion was very different from the sentiments of the others. He went to the office first, feeling it too early to be admitted to Amanda’s beautiful presence. Happily, there was not very much to do at the Sealing Wax Office. He spent an hour or two there, in a feverish flutter, disturbing the others (who, fortunately, were not very hard at work), and throwing all his own occupations into confusion. At twelve he went out, and made his way to the hotel. He found Batty there, but not his daughter.
“’Manda? Oh, she’s all right,” said the father; “but the laziest girl in Christendom. Pretty women are all lazy. I haven’t seen her yet, and don’t expect to for an hour or more. Have a glass of something, Eastwood, to fill up the time?”
Frederick winced at this free-and-easy address, and hastened to explain that he was on his way to keep a pressing engagement, and would return in the afternoon, to pay his respects to Miss Batty. At three o’clock he went back, and found her indeed; but found also Lord Hunterston and another visitor, with whom Miss Amanda kept up a very lively conversation. Batty himself filled up the centre of the scene, and made a variety with talk of horses and feats in the hunting field. Frederick was left in the background, to his intense misery. He heard one of the other visitors asked in easy terms to dinner that evening, with again the thrilling prospect of the play after it. He himself, it would seem, had had his day. The only crumb of comfort he procured from the visit was the name of the theatre they were going to. He rushed to Covent Garden after this, poor wretch, and bought the costliest bouquet he could find and sent it to her. Then he dined, miserable and solitary, at his club, speaking no word to any man, and went afterwards to the blessed theatre in which she was to exhibit her beauty to the world. He saw her from the first moment of her arrival, and watched with horrible sensations from his stall the comfortable arrangement of Lord Hunterston in his corner beside her, and the large figure of the father behind dropping into a gentle doze. He sat and gazed at them in tortures of adoration and jealousy, wondering if she was saying the same things to his successor as she had said to him; wondering if Hunterston, too, was being invited to Sterborne, and ridiculed about the necessity of getting “leave”—for, Frederick reflected with some satisfaction, “leave” was necessary also to that distinguished guardsman. As soon as it was practicable he made his way up to the box; but gained little by it, since Mr. Batty insisted upon waking up, and entertaining him, which he did chiefly by chuckling references to their previous meeting in Paris, and the amusements of that gay place. Frederick went home half wild to the calm house where his mother and sister were sleeping quietly; and where poor little Innocent alone heard his step coming up-stairs, and longed to get up and say good-night to him, though he had “scolded” her. Had she known it, Innocent was deeply avenged. Amanda Batty had not spared the rash adorer. She had “made fun” of him in a hundred refined and elegant ways, joking about his gravity and serious looks, about his fondness for the theatre, and his kindness in coming to speak to herself. “When I am sure you might have gone behind the scenes if you liked,” she said, with a laugh that showed all her pearly teeth. “You, who know so much about the theatres: how I should like to go behind the scenes!”
Frederick, who had made so many sacrifices to appearances, and who was distinguished in society for the stateliness of his demeanour, would have been infinitely insulted had any one else said this—all the more insulted for his own consciousness of those moments of aberration in which he had been behind a great many scenes—- though never, so far as he was aware, where he could be found out. But a man in love is compelled, when the lady of his affections is like Miss Amanda, to put up with insults, and does so in scores of cases with a meekness which is nowhere apparent in his domestic character. Frederick felt himself punctured by shafts of ridicule not too finely pointed. He was laughed at, he was rallied, jokes were made upon him. He was even treated with absolute rudeness, Amanda turning her beautiful shoulders upon him, and addressing Lord Hunterston, in the very midst of something Frederick was saying to her. A thrill of momentary fury went through him, but next moment he was abject in his endeavours to get a glance from her—a word of reply.
“Don’t you mind her—it’s ’Manda’s way,” said Batty, laughing as he saw the gloom on Frederick’s face. “The more insulting she is one evening, the nicer she’ll be the next. Don’t you pay any attention: it’s his turn to-night, and yours to-morrow. Don’t take it too serious, Eastwood; if you’ll be guided by me——”
“I fear I don’t quite understand you, Mr. Batty,” said poor Frederick, writhing in impotent pride at the liberties taken with him. Upon which Batty laughed again, more insolently good-humoured than ever.