“What a strange congregation of people,” continued Pynsent. “I have had to go up and perform the agreeable to most of them—the attorney’s daughters—the apothecary’s wife—I scarcely know whom. There was a man in the refreshment-room, who insisted upon treating me to champagne—a seafaring-looking man—extraordinarily dressed, and seeming half tipsy. As a public man one is bound to conciliate all these people, but it is a hard task—especially when one would so very much like to be elsewhere”—and he blushed rather as he spoke.
“I beg your pardon,” said Laura—“I—I was not listening. Indeed—I was frightened about that quarrel between my cousin and that—that—French person.”
“Your cousin has been rather unlucky to-night,” Pynsent said. “There are three or four persons whom he has not succeeded in pleasing—captain Broadwood; what is his name—the officer—and the young lady in red with whom he danced—and Miss Blanche—and the poor chef—and I don’t think he seemed to be particularly pleased with me.”
“Didn’t he leave me in charge to you?” Laura said, looking up into Mr. Pynsent’s face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little story-telling coquette.
“Indeed, I can forgive him a good deal for that,” Pynsent eagerly cried out, and she took his arm, and he led off his little prize in the direction of the supper-room.
She had no great desire for that repast, though it was served in Rincer’s well-known style, as the county paper said, giving an account of the entertainment afterwards; indeed, she was very distraite; and exceedingly pained and unhappy about Pen. Captious and quarrelsome; jealous and selfish; fickle and violent and unjust when his anger led him astray; how could her mother (as indeed Helen had by a thousand words and hints) ask her to give her heart to such a man? and suppose she were to do so, would it make him happy?
But she got some relief at length, when, at the end of half an hour—a long half-hour it had seemed to her—a waiter brought her a little note in pencil from Pen, who said, “I met Cooky below ready to fight me; and I asked his pardon. I’m glad I did it. I wanted to speak to you to-night, but will keep what I had to say till you come home. God bless you. Dance away all night with Pynsent, and be very happy.—PEN.” Laura was very thankful for this letter, and to think that there was goodness and forgiveness still in her mother’s boy.
Pen went downstairs, his heart reproaching him for his absurd behaviour to Laura, whose gentle and imploring looks followed and rebuked him; and he was scarcely out of the ballroom door but he longed to turn back and ask her pardon. But he remembered that he had left her with that confounded Pynsent. He could not apologise before him. He would compromise and forget his wrath, and make his peace with the Frenchman.
The Chevalier was pacing down below in the hall of the inn when Pen descended from the ballroom; and he came up to Pen, with all sorts of fun and mischief lighting up his jolly face.
“I have got him in the coffee-room,” he said, “with a brace of pistols and a candle. Or would you like swords on the beach? Mirobolant is a dead hand with the foils, and killed four gardes-du-corps with his own point in the barricades of July.”