II.
NINA GORDON.
"Have you been to the Hôtel de Londres, Ernest?" said De Concressault, as Vaughan lounged into Tortoni's next day, where Emile and three or four other men were drinking Seltzer and talking of how Cerisette had beaten Vivandière by a neck at Chantilly, or (the sport to which a Frenchman takes much more naturally) of how well Rivière played in the "Prix d'un Bouquet;" what a belle taille la De Servans had; and what a fool Senecterre had made of himself in the duel about Madame Viardot.
"Of course I have," said Vaughan. "The name is Gordon—general name enough in England. They were gone to the Expiatoire, the portière told me. There is the heavy father, as I feared, and a quasi-governess acting duenna; they're travelling with another family, whose name I could not hear: the woman said 'C'était beaucoup trop dur pour les lèvres.' I dare say they're some Brummagem people—some Fudge family or other—on their travels. Confound it!"
"Poor Ernest," laughed De Concressault. "Some gold hair has bewitched him, and instead of finding it belongs to a danseuse, or a married woman, or a fleuriste of the Palais Royal, or something attainable, he finds it turn into an unapproachable English girl, with no end of outlying sentries round her, who'll fire at the first familiar approach."
"It is a hard case," said De Kerroualle, a dashing fellow in one of the "Régiments de famille." "Never mind, mon ami; 'contre fortune bon cœur,' you know: it'll be more fun to devastate one of our countrymen's inviolate strongholds than to conquer where the white flag's already held out. Halloa! here's a compatriot of yours, I'd bet; look at his sanctified visage and stiff choker—a Church of England man, eh?"
"The devil!" muttered Vaughan, turning round; "deuce take him, it's my cousin Ruskinstone! What in the world does he do in Paris?"
The man he spoke of was the Rev. Eusebius Ruskinstone, the Dean's Warden of the cathedral of Faithandgrace, a tall, thin young clerical of eight or nine-and-twenty, with goodness enough (it was generally supposed) in his little finger to make up for all Ernest's sins, scarlet though they were. He had just sat down and taken up the carte to blunder through "Potage au Duc de Malakoff," "Fricassée de volaille à la Princesse Mathilde," and all the rest of it, when his eye lit on his graceless cousin, and a vinegar asperity spread over his bland visage. Vaughan rose with a lazy grace, immensely bored within him: "My dear Ruskinstone, what an unanticipated pleasure. I never hoped Vanity Fair would have had power to lure you into its naughty peep-shows and roundabouts."
The Rev. Eusebius reddened slightly; he had once stated strongly his opinion that poor Paris was Pandemonium. "How do you do?" he said, giving his cousin two fingers; "it is a long time since we saw you in England."
"England doesn't want me," said Ernest, dryly. "I don't fancy I should be very welcome at Faithandgrace, should I? The dear Chapter would probably consign me to starvation for my skeptical notions, as Calvin did Castellio. But what has brought you to Paris? Are you come to fight the Jesuits in a conference, or to abjure the Wardenship and turn over to them?"