“Of course she would, dear little puss, and quite right; but she won’t be too hard on him for all that.”
It required all Sir Simon’s powers of persuasion to make Raymond promise that he would leave things alone, and not speak either to Clide or Franceline on the subject of this conversation. He gave the promise, however, feeling in some intangible way that the possibility of Franceline’s marriage under such unprecedented, such unnatural circumstances, in fact, was a phenomenon too far beyond his ken for him to meddle with in safety. It was decided that she should go to London on the day appointed, as if nothing had transpired between the friends since the proposed visit had been agreed to.
A ball anywhere at Dullerton was always a momentous occasion, stirring the stagnant waters with pleasurable agitation; but a ball at the Court was an event of such magnitude that it set the neighborhood in movement like a powerful electric shock. It was, compared to ordinary entertainments of the kind, what a Royal coronation is to a Lord Mayor’s show. Wonderful reports were afloat as to the magnificence of the preparations that were going on. Nobody had been allowed to see them; but conjecture was busy, and enough transpired to excite expectation to the highest pitch. It was known that men had been brought down from London with vans full of all sorts of appliances for transforming the solemn Gothic mansion into a fairy palace. How the transformation was to be effected no one had the vaguest idea, and this made expectation all the more thrilling.
It was indeed but too true that Sir Simon had abandoned his first wise intention of making it no more than a gay mustering of the clans. Fate so ordained that just at this time he got news of the rapidly declining health of his interesting relative, Lady Rebecca Harness. “She cannot possibly hold out over the autumn; her physician allowed as much to transpire to a professional friend of mine, so we must be prepared for the worst,” wrote Mr. Simpson; “it is certainly providential that the £50,000 and the reversion of her ladyship’s jointure should fall in at this moment.” And Sir Simon felt that he could not better express his grateful sense of the providential coincidence, and at the same time cheer himself up under the impending bereavement, than by giving for once full play to the oriental element of hospitality and magnificence, so long pent up in him by a sordid bondage to economy.
“Clide, that idea of yours about turning the Medusa gallery into a moonlight walk, with palms and ferns, and so on, was really too good to be lost. I think we must have the Covent Garden people down to do it. And then the Diana gallery would make a capital pendant in the Chinese style. It’s really a pity to do the thing by halves; I owe it to Bourbonais to do it handsomely on an occasion like this; and, hang it! a couple of hundreds more or less won’t break a man, eh?”
And Clide being decidedly of opinion that it would not, the Covent Garden people were had down, and preparations went on in right royal style.
M. de la Bourbonais had been informed that a dance was in view for the purpose of introducing Franceline, and accepted the intelligence as a part of the mysterious web that was being woven round him by unseen hands. Perhaps he vaguely connected the event with something like a soirée de contrat, or a forerunner of it, and this would account for his passive acquiescence, and the tender, preoccupied air that marked his manner during the foregoing week. Sir Simon, like a wily diplomatist as he was, managed to keep Clide from going to The Lilies for nearly the entire week, by throwing the whole burden of overseer on him, filling his hands so full of commissions for London, and shifting the responsibility of everything so completely on his shoulders that he had scarcely time to eat or sleep, being either on the railroad or in a state of workmanlike déshabillé that made it impossible for him to show himself beyond the precincts of the scene of action until dinner-hour, when Sir Simon was always abnormally disinclined for a walk, and insisted on being read to or otherwise entertained by his young friend till bed-time.
Franceline, meanwhile, had her own preoccupations. Not about her dress—that had been settled to her utmost satisfaction, being aided by the combined action of Mrs. de Winton and that lady’s French milliner. But there was another important matter weighing heavily upon her mind. It was just three days before the great day. Mr. de Winton had rushed down with the Edinburgh Review for M. de la Bourbonais, apologizing profusely to Franceline, who was sitting in the summer-house, for presenting himself in such a state of undress, and saying something to the effect that it was the servants’ dinner-hour, and they were so much engaged, etc. But he could not keep the count waiting for the book, which ought to have been sent several days ago. No, he would not disturb the count at that hour, if Mlle. Franceline would be kind enough to take the book and explain about the delay. Franceline promised to do so; which was rash, considering that she did not understand a word about it, or that there was any delay whatever.
“Oh! I may as well profit by the opportunity to ask if you are engaged for the first waltz on Thursday?” said Mr. de Winton, turning back after he had gone a few steps, as if struck by a happy thought.