第7章

A glaring gaslight flashed into the carriage, right into the face of Isabel. "I declare," uttered Mrs. Vane, "you are crying again! I tell you what it is, Isabel, I am not going to chaperone red eyes to the Duchess of Dartford's, so if you can't put a stop to this, I shall order the carriage home, and go on alone."

Isabel meekly dried her eyes, sighing deeply as she did so. "I can have the pieces joined, I dare say; but it will never be the same cross to me again."

"What have you done with the pieces?" irascibly asked Mrs. Vane.

"I folded them in the thin paper Mrs. Levison gave me, and put it inside my frock. Here it is," touching the body. "I have no pocket on."

Mrs. Vane gave vent to a groan. She never had been a girl herself--she had been a woman at ten; and she complimented Isabel upon being little better than an imbecile. "Put it inside my frock!" she uttered in a torrent of scorn. "And you eighteen years of age! I fancied you left off 'frocks' when you left the nursery. For shame, Isabel!"

"I meant to say my dress," corrected Isabel.

"Meant to say you are a baby idiot!" was the inward comment of Mrs. Vane.

A few minutes and Isabel forgot her grievance. The brilliant rooms were to her as an enchanting scene of dreamland, for her heart was in its springtide of early freshness, and the satiety of experience had not come. How could she remember trouble, even the broken cross, as she bent to the homage offered her and drank in the honeyed words poured forth into her ear?

"Halloo!" cried an Oxford student, with a long rent-roll in prospective, who was screwing himself against the wall, not to be in the way of the waltzers, "I thought you had given up coming to these places?"

"So I had," replied the fast nobleman addressed, the son of a marquis.

"But I am on the lookout, so am forced into them again. I think a ball-room the greatest bore in life."

"On the lookout for what?"

"For a wife. My governor has stopped supplies, and has vowed by his beard not to advance another shilling, or pay a debt, till I reform.

As a preliminary step toward it, he insists upon a wife, and I am trying to choose one for I am deeper in debt than you imagine."

"Take the new beauty, then."

"Who is she?"

"Lady Isabel Vane."

"Much obliged for the suggestion," replied the earl. "But one likes a respectable father-in-law, and Mount Severn is going to smash. He and I are too much in the same line, and might clash, in the long run."

"One can't have everything; the girl's beauty is beyond common. I saw that rake, Levison, make up to her. He fancies he can carry all before him, where women are concerned."

"So he does, often," was his quiet reply.

"I hate the fellow! He thinks so much of himself, with his curled hair and shining teeth, and his white skin; and he's as heartless as an owl. What was that hushed-up business about Miss Charteris?"

"Who's to know? Levison slipped out of the escapade like an eel, and the woman protested that he was more sinned against than sinning.

Three-fourths of the world believed them."

"And she went abroad and died; and Levison here he comes! And Mount Severn's daughter with him."

They were approaching at that moment, Francis Levison and Lady Isabel.

He was expressing his regret at the untoward accident of the cross for the tenth time that night. "I feel that it can never be atoned for," whispered he; "that the heartfelt homage of my whole life would not be sufficient compensation."

He spoke in a tone of thrilling gentleness, gratifying to the ear but dangerous to the heart. Lady Isabel glanced up and caught his eyes gazing upon her with the deepest tenderness--a language hers had never yet encountered. A vivid blush again arose to her cheek, her eyelids fell, and her timid words died away in silence.

"Take care, take care, my young Lady Isabel," murmured the Oxonian under his breath, as they passed him, "that man is as false as he is fair."

"I think he is a rascal," remarked the earl.

"I know he is; I know a thing or two about him. He would ruin her heart for the renown of the exploit, because she's a beauty, and then fling it away broken. He has none to give in return for the gift."

"Just as much as my new race-horse has," concluded the earl. "She is very beautiful."