Molly Bawn Part 64

"Law, Miss Molly, do you say so?" says her handmaid, suddenly depressed. "Well, of course, miss, you--who are so much with London gentlemen--ought to know. And don't they mean what they say to you, Miss Molly?"

"I, eh?" says Molly, rather taken aback; and then she bursts out laughing. "Sarah, only I know you to be trustworthy, I should certainly think you sarcastic."

"What's that, miss?"

"Never mind,--something thoroughly odious. You abash me, Sarah. By all means believe what each one tells you. It may be as honestly said to you as to me. And now, how do I look, Sarah? Speak," says Molly, sailing away from her up the room like a "white, white swan," and then turning to confront her and give her a fair opportunity of judging of her charms.

"Just lovely," says Sarah, with the most flattering sincerity of tone.

"There is no doubt, Miss Molly, but you look quite the lady."

"Do I really? Thank you, Sarah," says Molly, humbly.

"I agree with Sarah," says Cecil, who has entered unnoticed. She affects blue, as a rule, and is now attired in palest azure, with a faint-pink blossom in her hair, and another at her breast. "Sarah is a person of much discrimination; you do look 'quite the lady.' You should be grateful to me, Molly, when you remember I ordered your dress; it is almost the prettiest I have ever seen, and with you in it the effect is maddening."

"Let me get down-stairs, at all events, without having my head turned,"

says Molly, laughing. "Oh, Cecil, I feel so happy! To have a really irreproachable ball-dress, and to go to a really large ball, has been for years the dream of my life."

"I wonder, when the evening is over, how you will look on your dream?"

Cecil cannot help saying. "Come, we are late enough as it is. But first turn round and let me see the train. So; that woman is a perfect artist where dresses are concerned. You look charming."

"And her neck and arms, my lady!" puts in Sarah, who is almost tearful in her admiration. "Surely Miss Ma.s.sereene's cannot be equaled. They are that white, Miss Molly, that no one could be found fault with for comparing them to the dribbling snow."

"A truly delightful simile," exclaims Molly, merrily, and forthwith follows Cecil to conquest.

They find the drawing-rooms still rather empty. Marcia is before them, and Philip and Mr. Potts; also Sir Penthony. Two or three determined ball-goers have arrived, and are dotted about, looking over alb.u.ms, asking each other how they do, and thinking how utterly low it is of all the rest of the county to be so late. "Such beastly affectation, you know, and such a putting on of side, and general straining after effect."

"I hope, Miss Amherst, you have asked a lot of pretty girls," says Plantagenet, "and only young ones. Old maids make awful havoc of my temper."

"I don't think there are 'lots' of pretty girls anywhere; but I have asked as many as I know. And there are among them at least two acknowledged belles."

"You don't say so!" exclaims Sir Penthony. "Miss Amherst, if you wish to make me eternally grateful you will point them out to me. There is nothing so distressing as not to know. And once I was introduced to a beauty, and didn't discover my luck until it was too late. I never even asked her to dance! Could you fancy anything more humiliating? Give you my honor I spoke to her for ten minutes and never so much as paid her a compliment. It was too cruel,--and she the queen of the evening, as I was told afterward."

"You didn't admire her?" asks Cecil, interested. "Never saw her beauty?"

"No. She was tall and had arched brows,--two things I detest."

The ball is at its height. Marcia, dressed in pale maize silk,--which suits her dark and glowing beauty,--is still receiving a few late guests in her usual stately but rather impa.s.sive manner. Old Mr.

Amherst, standing beside her, gives her an air of importance. Beyond all doubt she will be heavily dowered,--a wealthy heiress, if not exactly the heir.

Philip, as the supposed successor to the house and lands of Herst, receives even more attention; while Molly, except for her beauty, which outs.h.i.+nes all that the room contains, is in no way noticeable. Though, when one holds the ace of trumps, one feels almost independent of the other honors.

The chief guest--a marquis, with an aristocratic limp and only one eye--has begged of her a square dance. Two lords--one very young, the other distressingly old--have also solicited her hand in the "mazy dance." She is the reigning belle; and she knows it.

Beautiful, sparkling, brilliant, she moves through the rooms. A great delight, a joyous excitement, born of her youth, the music, her own success, fills her. She has a smile, a kindly look, for every one. Even Mr. Buscarlet, in the blackest of black clothes and rather indifferent linen, venturing to address her as she goes by him, receives a gracious answer in return. So does Mrs. Buscarlet, who is radiant in pink satin and a bird-of-paradise as a crown.

"Ain't she beautiful?" says that substantial matron, with a beaming air of approbation, as though Molly was her bosom friend, addressing the partner of her joys. "Such a lovely-turned jaw! She has quite a look of my sister Mary Anne when a girl. I wish, my dear, she was to be heiress of Herst, instead of that stuck-up girl in yellow."

"So do I; so do I," replies Buscarlet, following the movements of Beauty as she glides away, smiling, dimpling on my lord's arm.

"And--ahem!"--with a meaning and consequential cough--"perhaps she may.

Who knows? There is a certain person who has often a hold of her grandfather's ear! Ahem!"

Meantime the band is playing its newest, sweetest strains; the air is heavy with the scent of flowers. The low ripple of conversation and merry laughter rises above everything. The hours are flying all too swiftly.

"May I have the pleasure of this waltz with you?" Sir Penthony is saying, bending over Lady Stafford, as she sits in one of the numberless small, dimly-lit apartments that branch off the hall.

"Dear Sir Penthony, do you think I will test your good-nature so far?

You are kind to a fault, and I will not repay you so poorly as to avail myself of your offer. Fancy condemning you to waste a whole dance on your--wife!"

The first of the small hours has long since sounded, and she is a little piqued that not until now has he asked her to dance.

Nevertheless, she addresses him with her most charming smile.

"I, for my part, should not consider it a dance wasted," replies he, stiffly.

"Is he not self-denying?" she says, turning languidly toward Lowry, who, as usual, stands beside her.

"You cannot expect me to see it in that light," replies he, politely.

"May I hope for this waltz?" Sir Penthony asks again, this time very coldly.

"Not this one; perhaps a little later on."

"As you please, of course," returns he, as, with a frown and an inward determination never to ask her again, he walks away.

In the ball-room he meets Luttrell, evidently on the lookout for a missing partner.

"Have you seen Miss Ma.s.sereene?" he asks instantly. "I am engaged to her, and can see her nowhere."

"Try one of those nests for flirtation," replies Stafford, bitterly, turning abruptly away, and pointing toward the room he has just quitted.

But Luttrell goes in a contrary direction. Through one conservatory after another, through ball-room, supper-room, tea-room, he searches without success. There is no Molly to be seen anywhere.

"She has forgotten our engagement," he thinks, and feels a certain pang of disappointment that it should be so. As he walks, rather dejectedly, into a last conservatory, he is startled to find Marcia there alone, gazing with silent intentness out of the window into the garden beneath.

As he approaches she turns to meet his gaze. She is as pale as death, and her dark eyes are full of fire. The fingers of her hand twitch convulsively.

"You are looking for Eleanor?" she says, intuitively, her voice low, but vibrating with some hidden emotion. "See, you will find her there."

She points down toward the garden through the window where she has been standing, and moves away. Impelled by the strangeness of her manner, Luttrell follows her direction, and, going over to the window, gazes out into the night.

It is a brilliant moonlight night; the very stars s.h.i.+ne with redoubled glory; the chaste Diana, riding high in the heavens, casts over "tower and stream" and spreading parks "a flood of silver sheen;" the whole earth seems bright as gaudy day.

Beneath, in the shrubberies, pacing to and fro, are Molly and Philip Shadwell, evidently in earnest conversation. Philip at least seems painfully intent and eager. They have stopped, as if by one impulse, and now he has taken her hand. She hardly rebukes him; her hand lies pa.s.sive within his; and now,--_now_, with a sudden movement, he has placed his arm around her waist.

"Honor or no honor," says Luttrell, fiercely, "I will see it out with her now."

Drawing a deep breath, he folds his arms and leans against the window, full of an agonized determination to know the worst.

Molly has put up her hand and laid it on Philip's chest, as though expostulating, but makes no vehement effort to escape from his embrace.