Volume 2, Chapter II.

LOVE PAINTS AND DECORATES.

The change at the Honourable Misses Dymc.o.x's home was something so startling that Ruth was almost bewildered. Even on the following morning at breakfast, after Joseph had brought in the urn, the alteration had begun.

The wine of the last night's party might have been fancied to be still having its influence, the ladies were so much less austere.

"I'm very, very glad you enjoyed yourselves so much, my dears," said the Honourable Philippa, smiling.

"You feel none the worse, my loves?" said the Honourable Isabella.

"Oh no, aunt," said Clotilde; "I feel better. Don't you, Marie?"

"Oh yes," said that young lady; "it was a delightful party."

"It was, my dears," said the Honourable Philippa, letting the water from the urn run over the top of the teapot. "Bless me, how careless! I am glad I consented to allow you both to go, for you see how necessary to a proper state of existence a due amount of money becomes."

"How admirably dear Lady Littletown manages her income!" said the Honourable Isabella.

"Yes, and how needful a good income really is! Yes, it was a very _distingue_ dinner. Marie, my child, Lord Henry Moorpark is most gentlemanly, is he not?"

"Oh yes, I like him very much," replied Marie, with animation, and a slight flush in her cheek, for she had been suddenly appealed to when thinking about Marcus Glen, and the way he had glanced at her more than once. "He seems a very nice old gentleman."

"Hem!" coughed the Honourable Philippa austerely. "I do not think him old."

"Certainly not!" exclaimed the Honourable Isabella; "hardly elderly."

"Decidedly no," continued the Honourable Philippa. "By the way, Clotilde, my love, you found Mr Elbraham very pleasant?"

"Oh yes, aunt."

"I am glad of it," said the Honourable Philippa, smiling graciously, while Ruth, open-eyed and listening, went on with her breakfast, wondering at the change. "He is the great financier--enormously wealthy. I hear that he is to be made a duke by the Austrian emperor.

He is already a chevalier."

"Indeed, aunt?" said Clotilde, who also was thinking of Captain Glen.

"Yes, my dear; his houses are a marvel, I believe, for their wealth and display."

"Is he a Jew, aunt?" said Marie innocently.

"My dear child, no! How can you ask such a question, Marie? I have heard something about his family being of Hebrew descent--Eastern Hebrew descent--Elbraham, Abraham, very ancient, no doubt; but I don't know for certain, and really I do not care to know: for what does it matter?"

"Yes, what indeed?" said her sister. "A very gentlemanly, highly-cultured man."

"With a wonderful knowledge of the world and its ways. He has been a deal in Egypt, did not Lady Littletown say, Isabella?"

"Yes, with the Khedive," was the reply. "Enormously wealthy."

The breakfast ended, the young ladies were dismissed.

"I would not go to the schoolroom this morning, my dears," said the elder sister; "go and lie down for an hour or two and rest. After lunch Lady Littletown is coming with the carriage to take you for a drive, and I should like you to look your best."

"Rie," exclaimed Clotilde, as soon as they were in their room with Ruth, who was debating in her own mind whether she ought not to take her cousins into her confidence about Mr Montaigne, but shrinking from relating the communication to such unsympathetic ears.

"Well?"

"You, Ruth, if you dare to say a word about what we talk about, I'll kill you!" cried Clotilde.

"I think you may trust me," said Ruth, smiling.

"Then mind you do keep secret," continued Clotilde. "Rie," she cried again, "I can see through it all; I know what it means."

"Do you?" said Marie quietly.

"Yes, they're going to sell us both--a bargain."

"Are they?" said Marie, who was thinking she would like to be sold to Marcus Glen.

"Yes, it's going to be like it was in that novel of Georges Sand. We're to be married to rich old men because we are young and beautiful; and if they marry me to one, I'm sorry for the old man."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes, I do," exclaimed Clotilde: "else why were we dressed up, and sent down to dinner with that old Jew, and that old, yellow Lord Henry Moorpark, when there were those young officers there?"

"I don't know," said Marie thoughtfully, as once more her mind reverted to Captain Glen.

"Then I do," cried Clotilde, with flashing eyes. "I should like to be married, and have an establishment, and diamonds, and servants; but if they make me marry that dreadful man--"

"Well, what?" said Marie, with a depth of thought in her handsome eyes.

"You'll see!" cried Clotilde; and thrusting her hand in between the mattress and the pallia.s.se, she dragged out the highly-moral paper-covered French novel that had lain there _perdu_.

After the genial thawing of the ice there could be no more such severe and cutting behaviour as that which marked the meeting of Captain Glen and Richard Millet with the Dymc.o.x family; and a day or two later, when the two officers were idling about the broad walks, with the boy's eyes watching in all directions, but only to be disappointed at every turn, they came suddenly upon the party taking their morning walk.

"No, my dears," the Honourable Philippa was saying, in reply to a request made by Clotilde; "the park is impa.s.sable, for the scenes that take place there are a disgrace to humanity, and the Government ought to be forced to interfere. It is not so very long ago that your aunt and I were thoughtfully walking beneath the trees--that glorious avenue of chestnuts, that we poor occupants of the Palace can only view free from insult at early morn or late in the evening--I say your aunt and I were pensively walking beneath the trees, when we stumbled full upon a coa.r.s.e-minded crew of people sitting eating and drinking upon the gra.s.s, and a dreadful-looking man with a shiny head held up a great stone bottle and wanted us to drink. You remember, Isabella?"

"Yes, sister; and we fled down the avenue, to come upon another party engaged in some orgie. They had joined hands in a circle like savages, and one dreadful man was pursuing a woman, whom he captured, and in spite of her shrieks--"

"I think we had better not pursue the subject further, Isabella," said the Honourable Philippa; "it is not a seemly one in the presence of young ladies. I need only tell you, my dears, that they were engaged in a rite popular among the lower orders--a sort of sport called 'kiss-in-the-ring'."

"Hush, sister!" whispered the Honourable Isabella; "the gentlemen."

Poor Isabella's hands began to tremble in a peculiar, nervous way as tall, English-looking Marcus Glen approached, appearing so much the more manly for having dapper Richard Millet by his side. The lady was not foolish enough to imagine that Glen wished to be attentive to her, but there was a sweet, regretful kind of pleasure in his presence, and when he spoke her withered heart seemed to expand, and old affections that had been laid up to dry, like sweet-scented flowers between leaves, began to put forth once again their forgotten odours, as if they were evoked by the presence of the sun.

The Honourable Philippa looked stern, and would have pa.s.sed on with a bow; but when her sister put forth her trembling hand, and smiled with satisfaction at meeting the young officer again, such a line of conduct was impossible; and, as a matter of course, there was a very friendly greeting all round.

The Honourable Philippa felt frigid as she saw Marie's eyes brighten, and that a charmingly ingenuous blush rose in her cheeks; she felt more frigid as she saw the greeting between Clotilde and Glen; for if ever girl looked her satisfaction at seeing anyone again, the ascetically-reared Clotilde was that maiden, and, truth to tell, in the innocency and guiltlessness of her heart she returned the pressure of the young officer's hand as warmly as it was given.

As for Richard Millet, he began by blushing like a girl; then, making an effort, he mastered his timidity, and shone almost as brightly as his new patent-leather boots, thinking, too, how well he managed to get the young ladies all to himself; while Marcus talked quietly, and in a matter-of-fact way, to the Honourable Misses Dymc.o.x, till Philippa grew a little less austere, and her hand felt at parting not quite so much like five pieces of bone in as many finger-stalls.