“And what a delicious fan! Do let me look at it!” panted Arabella in the same subdued tone.
“Oh! but look at her shoes,” cried Georgiana, clasping her hands and looking down, amazed, at the white satin toe, with its dainty pink rosette, that protruded from under the skirt.
“I’m so glad you like it all,” said Franceline, delighted at the naïve and good-natured expressions of admiration. They were all as artless as birds, the Langrove girls, and had not a grain of envy in their composition.
“Oh! there’s Mr. Charlton,” whispered Matilda, nudging Alice to look as the observed-of-all-observers in Dullerton appeared in the doorway.
The room was now full to overflowing, and the crowd, swayed by one of those spontaneous movements that govern crowds, suddenly poured out of the blue drawing-room into the adjoining ones, leaving the former comparatively empty. Franceline was following the stream when Sir Simon called out to her:
“Don’t run away; come here to me. I want to introduce you to my friend Lady Anwyll. Mlle. de la Bourbonais—I was going to say, my daughter, but unfortunately she is only the daughter of my oldest friend and second self, the Comte de la Bourbonais; you have met him, I believe?”
Lady Anwyll had had that distinction, and was charmed now to make his daughter’s acquaintance. She had none of her own to dispose of, which the wily Sir Simon perhaps remembered when he singled her out for this introduction.
“You’ll see that she has a few partners. I dare say they won’t be very reluctant to do their duty with a little pressing.”
“It’s the only duty young men seem equal to nowadays,” said the plump old lady, nodding in the direction of a group of the degenerate race; and she drew Franceline’s hand through her arm, and bore her off like a conquest.
“Who’s that girl? She’s awfully pretty! What color are her eyes—black, blue, or brown? I’ve not seen such a pair of eyes this season, by Jove!” drawled a blasé young gentleman from the metropolis.