I descended next morning, listless, unrested. Sir Adrian, my father, and Clarence Fairfax, were at the breakfast-table, and an aide-de-camp came in at an opposite door, as I entered. Lady Amabel was in her room. I took my seat by my father. The usual salutations passed; Clarence recognised me by one of his brilliant smiles.
“Oh! Miss Daveney,” observed Sir Adrian, “you were the envy of all the women last night.”
The colour rushed into my face.
“Why so, sir?” I asked.
“You monopolised the young Prince for the first dance. Mrs Vanderlacken expected to be taken out.”
“And,” remarked Captain W, the other aide-de-camp, “Mrs Rashleigh was taken in; for she has established Fairfax as her cavalier servant, and he hung back last night.”
Involuntarily I looked at Clarence.
“Ah!” remarked Sir Adrian, who was a thorough man of the world, “she is a little too old for you, Fairfax; she owns to three-and-thirty.”
“I thought,” said I, surprised into volunteering a remark, “that Mrs Rashleigh’s husband was alive.”
They burst into a fit of laughter at my naïveté.