She had suddenly become aware of this fact, and was subsiding into a plaintive and resigned condition, a prey to dismal anticipations, when Mr. Hope suddenly appeared in company of a naval lieutenant, whom he begged leave to introduce.
Linda bowed with acquiescence, and the next moment was whirling around with the joyous throng, conscious that she danced well, feeling herself to be one of the leading performers, and quite on a par with all other individuals of her age and sex.
The young officer danced well, as do naval men generally. He talked easily and agreeably, with that happy mixture of brusquerie and refinement which renders the service so irresistible. Linda apparently came up to his standard of a nice girl and a desirable partner, since he begged leave to put down his name for two more dances; he also brought up some brother officers, including a stout doctor and a small but preternaturally cool and amusing midshipman, so that when Mr. Hope came for his dance, he was nearly crowded out by the naval brigade, who quite encompassed Linda, to the exclusion of the most irreproachable civilians.
If Linda was a success, it seemed that Laura was destined to achieve a genuine triumph.
Shortly after her first dance with Barrington Hope there appeared to be an unusual amount of interest displayed in the vicinity of Mrs. Grandison, who, of course, was extensively known in the grande monde. A variety of entertaining conversation was indulged in with that lady, generally ending with a respectful request for an introduction to the young lady in white.
The good-natured matron did not grudge the girl her meed of praise; still she occasionally remarked without satisfaction that the great guns of the fashionable world, the inheritors of wealth and estates of proverbial grandeur, the travelled and fastidious “elegants,” contented themselves with a passing notice or a laughing exchange of badinage with Josie while they struggled for Laura’s card, and searched closely the lower figures of the programme, uncertain as she declared it to be that her party would remain to conclude it.
Mr. Grandison, who had stayed rather late at the club over a seductive hand of whist, now came up in time to glance at things generally. He was extremely complimentary as to the appearance of his young friends, and declared that Laura had been voted the belle of the ball by several of the leading authorities of the club, against whose decision there was manifestly no appeal.
“There’s a sort of freshness, and, well, I hardly know what to call it,” he said, “about girls that come from the country that fetches the men of taste. The town girls are better millinered and so on; but they can’t get the colour and the innocent look, the—ah—dew-drop, early morning sort of brightness,” continued Mr. Grandison, who had refreshed liberally with the Heidsiek dry monopole which the club imported, and was becoming poetical. “That’s what there’s no standing against. Dash it, Stamford, old fellow! Laura’s cut ’em all down to-night. White dress, rose in her hair, and so on. It’s the real thing when the complexion will stand it. There’s not a girl here to-night who’s a patch on her. I heard Donald M’Intosh say so himself.”
This stupendous announcement produced no reply for the moment. That the bachelor eligible, par excellence, the man of estates and establishments, who had travelled, had taken an English University degree, distinguished equally for tennis play as for parliamentary influence, who was generally an invited member of the Vice-regal party at public demonstrations and amusements, that he should have awarded the golden pippin to the unknown provincial damsel, struck Mrs. Grandison dumb with astonishment, and caused Josie to turn paler with envy than even her ordinary complexion warranted.
When Mrs. Grandison recovered herself, she said, “Upon my word, Mr. Grandison, you’re determined to make the girl vain—though she is dancing now, and can’t hear. One would think you hadn’t a daughter of your own. Not but what Laura does look very nice, Mrs. Stamford, only it seems to me the champagne’s very good to-night.”