Lady Marabout was silent: no Andalusian ever worried her fan more ceaselessly in coquetry than she did in perplexity. Her heart was appealed to, and when that was enlisted, Lady Marabout was lost!
"But—but—my dear Major Cardonnel, you are aware——" she began, and stopped. I should suppose it may be a little awkward to tell a man to his face he is "not desirable!"
"I am aware that I cannot match with Goodwood? I am; but I know, also, that Goodwood's love cannot match with mine, and that your niece's affection is not his. That he may win her I know women too well not to fear, therefore I ask you to be my friend. If she refuse me, will you plead for me?—if she ask for counsel, will you give such as your own heart dictates (I ask no other)—and, will you remember that on Valencia's answer will rest the fate of a man's lifetime?"
He rose and left her, but the sound of his voice rang in Lady Marabout's ears, and the tears welled into her eyes: "Dear, dear! how like he looked to his poor dear mother! But what a position to place me in! Am I never to have any peace?"
Not at this ball, at any rate. Of all the worried chaperones and distracted duennas who hid their anxieties under pleasant smiles or affable lethargy, none were a quarter so miserable as Helena, Lady Marabout. Her heart and her head were enlisted on opposite sides; her wishes pulled one way, her sympathies another; her sense of justice to Cardonnel urged her to one side, her sense of duty to "dearest Adeliza" urged her to the other; her pride longed for one alliance, her heart yearned for the other. Cardonnel had confided in her and appealed to her; sequitur, Lady Marabout's honor would not allow her to go against him: yet, it was nothing short of grossest treachery to poor Adeliza, down there in Devon, expecting every day to congratulate her daughter on a prospective duchy won, to counsel Valencia to take one of these beggared Cardonnels, and, besides—to lose all her own laurels, to lose the capture of Goodwood!
No Guelphs and Ghibelins, no Royalists and Imperialists, ever fought so hard as Lady Marabout's divided duties.
"Valencia, Major Cardonnel spoke to me to-night," began that best-hearted and most badgered of ladies, as she sat before her dressing-room fire that night, alone with her niece.
Valencia smiled slightly, and a faint idea crossed Lady Marabout's mind that Valencia's smile was hardly a pleasant one, a trifle too much like the play of moonbeams on ice.
"He spoke to me about you."
"Indeed!"