“As you say.... Fate has been cruel to both of us.... And—and I am engaged. She lives in Leicestershire. I met her one hunting season. She is in Paris, staying at Meurice’s with her mother now. They’re buying the trousseau.... God help me!� groaned Angus Dunbar.
But the little lady of the Faubourg Saint-Germain drew back the hand he snatched at, and swept him a haughty little curtsy, looking straight in his face: “The State Quadrille is beginning. Be so good as to take me to Mamma.... And I wish you all happiness, sir, and your fiancée also.� Another little curtsy he got, poor lad, with her “Adieu, and a thousand thanks, Monsieur!� and then—he walked the dusty streets of Paris until morning; while Mademoiselle lay sleepless on her tear-drenched lace pillows. And——
Grandmamma awakened as though from a dream, to meet the frank hazel eyes of Mr. Brown, the English tutor.
“Monsieur will forgive the curiosity of an old woman,� she said, with her inimitable air of grace and sweetness. “I wished to ask whether you were not of Northern race—a Scot, for example? Yes? Ah, I thought I had guessed correctly. The type is not to be mistaken, and I once had—a dear friend!—whom Monsieur resembles to identity. But his name was not Brown.�
“I was within an ace of telling her mine was not, either,� reflected the English tutor as, an hour or so later, he got into bed. “How perfectly beautiful Madame—not the agaçante, espiègle little Madame, but the old one—must have been in the rich prime of her womanhood! Did she and my uncle ever meet again, I wonder? No, I should think not. The dear old boy is just the sort of character to hug a romance all his life, and she—she is just the woman to be the heroine of one. Are all French country-house beds in this style, and is one supposed to draw these rosebudded chintz curtains modestly round one, or let them alone?� Mr. Brown concluded to let them alone, and fell very soundly asleep.
At the late breakfast, an elaborate meal, beginning with soup and fish, and ending with tea and cakes, it was explained to the tutor that no English lesson was to be given that day, as a costume ball of the calico type was to take place that evening, and the children’s study, a homely, comfortable little wainscoted parlor on the ground floor, looking out upon a grass-grown courtyard with a bronze fountain in the middle, was to be given up to hats, coats, and opera cloaks. Monsieur Frédéric was to personate one of his own ancestors, page to the Duke of Burgundy, killed in a jousting match in 1369, Monsieur le Marquis and Madame respectively appearing as the Chevalier de Courvaux and his lady, parents of the youth referred to, represented in a miniature by Othea. Mademoiselle Lucie chose to be “Undine� in gauze and water-lilies. For Monsieur Brown a character could surely be found, a costume devised, even at the eleventh hour. There were jack-boots, salades, and coats of mail innumerable in the great hall, Mr. Brown, who shared the objection of his British countrymen to being made to appear ridiculous, shook his head. He preferred not to dress up; but he had, or thought he had, packed away in one of his portmanteaux (which were too numerous for a tutor) something that would do. A Highland costume, in fact, of the modified kind worn by gentlemen of Caledonia as dinner dress or upon occasions of festivity.
Thus Mr. Brown unconsciously pledged himself to bring about a crisis in the lives of two people, one of whom was actively engaged at that moment in trying to find him. For Lord Hailhope was genuinely attached to his nephew, and the basis of the quarrel between them, never very secure, had been shaken and shattered, firstly, by the indifference manifested by the young lady concerned, a rather plain young heiress, at the news of the said nephew’s disappearance, and, secondly, by her marriage with her father’s chaplain, a Presbyterian divine of thunderous eloquence and sweeping predestinary convictions.
“Tell him that I was in the wrong—that I apologize—that everything shall be as it was before, if he will come back! The money shall be secured to him; I will guarantee that,� Lord Hailhope wrote to the London solicitor employed in the search for Young Lochinvar, who had sprung to the saddle and ridden away—without the lady. “If he will not come to me, I will go to him. The insult was gross; I admit it, and will atone to the best of my ability!�
“The hot-headed old Highlander!� commented the man of law, as he filed the letter. “He adopts the boy—his dead brother’s son—brings him up in the expectation of inheriting his private fortune as well as the title, and then turns him out of doors because he won’t marry a girl with teeth like tombstones and a fancy for another man. If Master Angus Dunbar is wise, he will hold out against going back until that question of the money has been disposed of irrevocably. Though people never have sense—lucky for my profession!�
Meanwhile, at Charny les Bois preparations for the ball—the materials of which owed much more to the lordly silkworm than the plebeian cotton pod—went on apace. Evening came, the band of the cuirassiers, generously lent by Monsieur the Colonel, drove over from the barracks in a couple of chars-à -bancs, the Colonel and the officers of that gallant regiment, arrayed to kill in the green and gold costumes of the hunt of the Grand Monarque, followed upon their English drague. Voitures of every description disgorged their happy loads. Monsieur, Madame, the young ladies and the young gentlemen, hot, happy, smiling, and fearfully and wonderfully disguised.