III.
"LE LION AMOUREUX."
The morning after, as they were going into the Exposition des Beaux Arts, they met Vaughan; and no ghost would have been more unwelcome to the Warden than the distingué figure of his fashionable cousin. Nina was the only one who looked pleased to recognise him, and she, as she returned his smile, forgot that the evening before it had been given to Bluette.
"Are you coming in too?" she asked.
"I was not, but I will with pleasure," said Ernest. And into the Exhibition with them he went, to Ruskinstone's wrath and Gordon's annoyance.
Vaughan was a connoisseur in art. The Warden knew no more than what he took verbatim from the god of his idolatry, Mr. John Ruskin. It was very natural that Nina should listen to the friend of Ingres and Vernet instead of to the second-hand worshipper of Turner. Vaughan, by instinct, dropped his customary tone of compliment—compliment he never used to women he delighted to honor—and talked so charmingly, that Nina utterly forgot the luckless Eusebius, and started when a low, sweet voice said, close beside her, "What, Ernest, you here?"
She turned, and saw a woman about eight-and-twenty, dressed in perfection of taste, with an exquisite figure, and a face of brunette beauty; the rouge most undiscoverable, and the eyes artistically tinted to make them look larger, which, Heaven knows, was needless. She darted a quick look at Vaughan's companion, which Nina gave back with a dash of hauteur. A shade came over his face as he answered her greeting.
"Will you not introduce me to your friend?" said the new comer. "She is of your nation, I fancy, and you know I am entêtée of everything English."
Ernest looked rather gloomy at the compliment, but turning to Nina, begged to introduce her to Madame de Mélusine. The gay, handsome baronne, taking in all the English girl's points as rapidly as a groom at Tattersall's does a two-year-old's, was chatting volubly to Nina, when the others came up. Gordon, though wont to boast that he belonged to the aristocracy of money, was always ready to fall in the dust before the noblesse of blood, and was gratified at the introduction, remembering to have read in the Moniteur the name of De Mélusine at the ball at the Tuileries. And the widow was very charming even to the professedly stoical eyes of a Brutus of sixty-two. She soon floated off, however, with her party, giving Vaughan a gay "A ce soir!" and requesting to be allowed the honor of calling on the Gordons.