'It brings good luck,' said Trecarrel. The same words that Herring had employed. Mirelle's hand trembled, and she looked timidly, flutteringly, at Herring.
'Ah!' said he, 'all the bells have fallen off.'
Then she said, in a half-pleading tone, 'Mr. Herring, I was once very rude and very wrong when I refused the same from you. Now I am rightly punished.'
She removed the sprig. 'You see, Captain,' she said, as she handed it back to Trecarrel, 'the heath has rained off all its white bells. I am not destined to receive good luck from either you or Mr. Herring. I thank you for the kind attention. I cannot wear the heath now.'
'Are you engaged for the first dance?' asked Herring.
Mirelle looked at Trecarrel, who turned his head away. He must, of course, open the ball with Orange. After a pause, in a tone tinged with disappointment, she said she was not engaged, and Herring secured her.
The appearance of Mirelle in the ball-room caused general surprise. It was an apparition rather than an appearance. The prevailing opinion admitted her beauty, but decided that it was of too refined and pure a type to be pleasing; it was a type suitable for a statue but not for a partner. Men love after their kind; blood calls for blood, not for ice.
The ladies discussed her diamonds, and concluded unanimously that they were paste. No one allows to another what he does not possess himself.
'You know, my dear, she comes from Paris, and in Paris they make 'em of paste for tenpence to look as natural as real stones worth a thousand pounds.'
'But her father was a diamond merchant.'