"Law, now! Mr. Jordan, ain't this just splendid? You are making up a party for supper, I see, and I am a hungry party that will be most pleased to join you;" and Randolph felt a fat arm slip through that arm of his own which he had been offering so pressingly to Muriel. There was a vision of geranium-coloured poplin flapping against him, and when he looked round, behold, Miss Betsey had him in possession. There was nothing for it but to submit and lead the way while the other two followed; even though a smothered "haw, haw," which he could hear behind him, filled his heart with fury, and made him long to face about and brain the offender on the spot. The natural man is a savage still, especially when his inclination to the fair is crossed; culture, good-manners, and white kid gloves notwithstanding.
Betsey was exuberant. Thanks to Muriel's efforts, she had danced and eaten ice with Randolph, and Gerald, and a good many more--danced almost continuously, and quite energetically--having, in her own words, "a real good time." And now she was a little hungry, but in overflowing spirits, as she trotted beside her tall cavalier, with her chin pressed into the dimpling redundancy of her short thick neck, where every line and crease seemed to vie with the parted lips in smiling content.
Randolph stalked gloomily by her side, realizing his helplessness, and resenting the amused glances which met him as he proceeded. But what could he do? He could only submit, and get through with the interlude as quickly as possible. He was lucky enough to find a small table vacant in a retired corner of the supper-room, where he placed himself and his little companion, ignoring tugs and nods and pointings to more conspicuous places, where the lights would have shone brighter on her beauty and her revelry--which were just the things he wished to keep out of sight. Betsey had the best of everything to eat, however, which was compensatory, and her companion had at least the satisfaction of sitting opposite Muriel. He had secured them for the rest of his own table, and if he was unable to say much to her himself, it was something to have prevented a tête-à-tête with his rival.
Randolph's disturbed feelings were subsiding into sullen calm. He was eating his supper. He had filled his companion's glass and his own; and Betsey, smiling to pledge him, held her foaming goblet in her hand awaiting his answering glance, when a sombre body--the back and shoulders of a man's coat--interposed itself between them.
"Jordan! Here you are at last," it said. It was only a man's coat, so far as Betsey could see, intruding most impertinently between herself and her beau. "I have been looking for you everywhere. Now I have found you. Madame Rouget has done supper, and is waiting for you to go back to the dancing-room."
Betsey made a little gulp of indignation; but no one perceived it, or seemed to heed her. Randolph rose like a truant returning to school, led away by the man in the coat; and she, poor Betsey! was left--lamenting? No--finishing her supper. She held her glass across to Gerald for a little more champagne, and thereby tacitly placed herself under his protection for the rest of the meal. There was much natural adaptability to circumstances in Betsey, notwithstanding her too evident lack of polish. Like the celebrated brook, she went tranquilly forward, however "men might come, or men might go," in a consistent following out of what seemed the attainably best for herself. With opportunity and culture Betsey might have gone far.
Madame Rouget rose at Randolph's approach, and took his arm to leave the room. She showed no displeasure or cognisance of his desertion, but there was a distinct refrigeration of the graciousness with which she had accepted his escort to the supper-table half-an-hour before. In leaving the room they were stopped for an instant in front of the little table which Randolph had risen from. Madame lifted her eye-glass just where geranium-coloured poplin made the feature of the view, and its wearer in much comfort held a wine-glass to her lips, smiling across to Gerald Herkimer, a modernized suggestion of one of Jourdain's carousing beauties, though with the flesh tints far less delicately rendered. She dropped the eye-glass with a click, and a French shrug, and that accompanying rise of the eyebrows so infinitely more expressive of scorn and contempt than any word.
"I am desolée, to have take Mistaire Jordain from ze plaisirs of his soopaire. But ze demoiselle aippears herself to console ver well. Wich rassure me ver much."
Madame must certainly have been indignant when she used these words, for, when quite herself, her English was grammatically correct enough if the vocabulary was restricted and a word was sometimes used in a wrong sense. It is a woman's right to take offence at the formam spretam by a suitor, and if the form despised be her daughter's instead of her own, she can resent it with even better grace.
Not long after, Mr. Jordan senior came upon Mr. Rouget leaving the card-room, and expressed a hope that he had been able to amuse himself.