“O my dear child!…”
“Count, take care of her roses!” cried Mrs. de Winton, ruffled into motherly alarm as she saw Franceline, utterly oblivious of her headgear, nestling into her father’s neck.
Raymond started, and looked with deep concern to see if he had done any mischief. Happily not.
“Come here and let me look at you!” said Sir Simon, holding her at arm’s length out before him. “They’ve not made quite a fright of you, I see—eh, admiral?”
“Dear Sir Simon, it’s all a great deal too pretty. It’s like being in a story-book, my lovely dress and everything?” said Franceline, standing on tip-toe to be kissed.
Mr. de Winton came in at this juncture.
“I say, Clide, it’s rather hard on us to have to stand by and not follow suit,” grumbled the admiral.
Franceline crimsoned up; the bare suggestion of such a possibility as the words implied made her heart leap up with a wild throb. She did not mean to look at Clide, but somehow, involuntarily, as if moved by some mesmeric force, their eyes met. It was only for a moment, but that rapid, mutual glance sent the life-current coursing through her young veins with strange thrills of joy. Clide had turned quickly to point out something in the decorations to his uncle, and Franceline slipped her arm into her father’s, and began to admire the beauty of the long vista of parlors leading on to the ball-room, where the orchestra was already inviting them to the dance with abrupt flashes of music, one instrument answering another in sudden preludes, or chords of sweetness “long drawn out.”
“You have not seen the galleries yet,” said Sir Simon; “come and look at them before the crowd arrives.”
They followed him into the Medusa gallery, and the transition from the brilliant glare of wax-lights to the subdued twilight of the blue dome, where mimic stars were twinkling round a silver crescent, was so solemn and unexpected that Raymond and Franceline stood on the threshold with a kind of awe, as if they had come upon sacred precincts. Tall ferns and palms nodded gently in the blue moonlight, swayed by some invisible agent. The change from this to the gaudy brilliancy of the Diana gallery was in its way as striking; myriads of Chinese lanterns were swinging from the ceiling; some peeped through flowers and plants, and some were held by Chinese mandarins with pig-tails and embroidered bed-gowns.