Lord Kew, however, had been seen walking with her in public, and particularly attentive to her during her brief appearance in the ballroom; and the old Dowager, who regularly attended all places of amusement, and was at twenty parties and six dinners the week before she died, thought fit to be particularly gracious to Madame d’Ivry upon this evening, and, far from shunning the Duchesse’s presence or being rude to her, as on former occasions, was entirely smiling and good-humoured. Lady Kew, too, thought there had been a reconciliation between Ethel and her cousin. Lady Anne had given her mother some account of the handshaking. Kew’s walk with Ethel, the quadrille which she had danced with him alone, induced the elder lady to believe that matters had been made up between the young people.
So, by way of showing the Duchesse that her little shot of the morning had failed in its effect, as Frank left the room with his cousin, Lady Kew gaily hinted, “that the young earl was aux petits soins with Miss Ethel; that she was sure her old friend, the Duc d’Ivry, would be glad to hear that his godson was about to range himself. He would settle down on his estates. He would attend to his duties as an English peer and a country gentleman. We shall go home,” says the benevolent Countess, “and kill the veau gras, and you shall see our dear prodigal will become a very quiet gentleman.”
The Duchesse said, “my Lady Kew’s plan was most edifying. She was charmed to hear that Lady Kew loved veal; there were some who thought that meat rather insipid.” A waltzer came to claim her hand at this moment; and as she twirled round the room upon that gentleman’s arm, wafting odours as she moved, her pink silks, pink feathers, pink ribands, making a mighty rustling, the Countess of Kew had the satisfaction of thinking that she had planted an arrow in that shrivelled little waist, which Count Punter’s arms embraced, and had returned the stab which Madame d’Ivry had delivered in the morning.
Mr. Barnes, and his elect bride, had also appeared, danced, and disappeared. Lady Kew soon followed her young ones; and the ball went on very gaily, in spite of the absence of these respectable personages.
Being one of the managers of the entertainment, Lord Kew returned to it after conducting Lady Anne and her daughter to their carriage, and now danced with great vigour, and with his usual kindness, selecting those ladies whom other waltzers rejected because they were too old, or too plain, or too stout, or what not. But he did not ask Madame d’Ivry to dance. He could condescend to dissemble so far as to hide the pain which he felt; but did not care to engage in that more advanced hypocrisy of friendship, which for her part, his old grandmother had not shown the least scruple in assuming.
Amongst other partners, my lord selected that intrepid waltzer, the Gräfinn von Gumpelheim, who, in spite of her age, size, and large family, never lost a chance of enjoying her favourite recreation. “Look with what a camel my lord waltzes,” said M. Victor to Madame d’Ivry, whose slim waist he had the honour of embracing to the same music. “What man but an Englishman would ever select such a dromedary?”
“Avant de se marier,” said Madame d’Ivry, “il faut avouer que my lord se permet d’enormes distractions.”
“My lord marries himself! And when and whom?” cried the Duchesse’s partner.
“Miss Newcome. Do not you approve of his choice? I thought the eyes of Stenio” (the Duchess called M. Victor, Stenio) “looked with some favour upon that little person. She is handsome, even very handsome. Is it not so often in life, Stenio? Are not youth and innocence (I give Miss Ethel the compliment of her innocence, now surtout that the little painter is dismissed)—are we not cast into the arms of jaded roues? Tender young flowers, are we not torn from our convent gardens, and flung into a world of which the air poisons our pure life, and withers the sainted buds of hope and love and faith? Faith! The mocking world tramples on it, n’est-ce pas? Love! The brutal world strangles the heaven-born infant at its birth. Hope! It smiled at me in my little convent chamber, played among the flowers which I cherished, warbled with the birds that I loved. But it quitted me at the door of the world, Stenio. It folded its white wings and veiled its radiant face! In return for my young love, they gave me—sixty years, the dregs of a selfish heart, egotism cowering over its fire, and cold for all its mantle of ermine! In place of the sweet flowers of my young years, they gave me these, Stenio!” and she pointed to her feathers and her artificial roses. “Oh, I should like to crush them under my feet!” and she put out the neatest little slipper. The Duchesse was great upon her wrongs, and paraded her blighted innocence to every one who would feel interested by that piteous spectacle. The music here burst out more swiftly and melodiously than before; the pretty little feet forgot their desire to trample upon the world. She shrugged the lean little shoulders—“Eh!” said the Queen of Scots, “dansons et oublions;” and Stenio’s arm once more surrounded her fairy waist (she called herself a fairy; other ladies called her a skeleton); and they whirled away in the waltz again and presently she and Stenio came bumping up against the stalwart Lord Kew and the ponderous Madame de Gumpelheim, as a wherry dashes against the oaken ribs of a steamer.
The little couple did not fall; they were struck on to a neighbouring bench, luckily: but there was a laugh at the expense of Stenio and the Queen of Scots—and Lord Kew, settling his panting partner on to a seat, came up to make excuses for his awkwardness to the lady who had been its victim. At the laugh produced by the catastrophe, the Duchesse’s eyes gleamed with anger.