CHAPTER XLV.
Betty Kingsward lived in what was to her a whirl of pleasure at Portman Square, where everybody was fond of her, and all manner of entertainments were devised for her pleasure. And her correspondence was not usually of an exciting character. Her morning letters, when she had any, were placed by her plate on the breakfast-table. If any came by other posts, she got them when she had a spare moment to look for them, and she had scarcely a spare moment at this very lively and very happy moment of her young career. Besides, that particular evening when Bee’s note arrived was a very important one to Betty. It was the evening on which Miss Lance was to dine with the Lyons. And it was not a mere quiet family dinner, but a party—a thing which in her newness and inexperience still excited the little girl, who was not to say properly “out,” in consequence of her mourning; still wearing black ribbons with her white frocks, and only allowed to accept invitations which were “quiet.” A dinner of twenty people is not exactly an entertainment for a girl of her years, but Betty’s excitement in the debût of Miss Lance was so great that no ball could have occupied her more. There was an unusual interest about it in the whole house, even Mrs. Lyon’s maid, the most staid of confidential persons, had begged Betty to point out to her over the baluster “the lady, Miss Betty, that is coming with your papa.”
“Oh, she’s not coming with papa,” Betty had cried, with a laugh at Hobbs’ mistake, “she is only a great, great friend, Hobbs. You will easily know her, for there is nobody else so handsome.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” said the woman, and she patted Betty on the shoulder under pretence of arranging her ribbon.
Betty had not the least idea why Hobbs looked at her with such compassionate eyes.
Miss Lance, however, did come into the room, to Betty’s surprise, closely followed by Colonel Kingsward, as if they had arrived together. She was like a picture, in her black satin and lace, dressed not too young but rather too old for her age, as Mrs. Lyon pointed out, who was as much excited about her new guest as Betty herself; and the unknown lady had the greatest possible success in a party which consisted chiefly, as Betty did not remark, of old friends of Colonel Kingsward, with whom she had been acquainted all her life. Betty did not remark it, but Gerald Lyon did, who was more than ever her comrade and companion in this elderly company.
“Why all these old fogies?” he had asked irreverently, as the gentlemen with stars on their coats and the ladies in diamonds came in.
Betty perceived that it was an unusually solemn party, but thought no more of it. It was the evening of the first levee, and that, perhaps, was the reason why the old gentlemen wore their orders. Old gentlemen! They were the flower of the British army. Generals This and That, heads of departments; impossible to imagine more grand people—in the flower of their age, like Colonel Kingsward. But eighteen has its own ideas very clearly marked on that subject. Betty and Gerald stood by, lighting up one corner with a blaze of undeniable youth, to see them come in. The young pair were like flowers in comparison with the substantial size and well worn complexions of their seniors, and they were the only little nobodies, the sole representatives of undistinguished and ordinary humanity round the table. They were not by any means daunted by that. On the contrary, they felt themselves, as it were, soaring over the heads of all those limited persons who had attained, spurning the level heights of realisation. They did not in the least know what was to become of them in life, but naturally they made light of the others who did know, who had done all they were likely to do, and had no more to look to. The dignity of accomplished success filled the young ones with impulses of laughter; their inferiority gave them an elevation over all the grizzled heads; they felt themselves, nobodies, to be almost ludicrously, dizzily above the heads of the rest. Only one of the company seemed to see this, however; to cast them an occasional look, even to make them the confidants of an occasional smile, a raising of the eyebrows, a sort of unspoken comment on the fine company, which made Betty still more lively in her criticisms. But this made almost a quarrel between the two.
“Oh, I wish we were nearer to Miss Lance, to hear what she thinks of it all,” Betty said.
“I can’t think what you see in that woman,” cried Gerald. “I, for one, have no desire to know her opinion.”