By and by, however, the door of the box opened, and Mr. Rutledge entered. He had exchanged a few words with me before Josephine saw him; her face lighted up instantly, and after a cordial welcome from mamma, a place was made for him in front. This, however, he declined to occupy, as the captain had been on the ground before him, and was better ent.i.tled to the position. He had an opera-gla.s.s, which he handed to Josephine, and good humor was partially restored. The captain availed himself of the front seat, and criticised the dancers for madame's benefit; Phil stood behind his cousin's chair, and Mr. Rutledge was left to me. I knew this arrangement did not suit; I knew my aunt was hearing very little of the captain's commentary; I knew that Josephine, but for Phil's jealous watchfulness, would have paid much more heed to Mr.

Rutledge's low conversation with me, than to her desired opera-gla.s.s. I remembered, but too vividly, the conversation at dinner; and though I struggled hard with my pride and my timidity, the words died on my lips, my answers were hesitating and reserved, and for the most part, insincere; I said the very things that, the next moment, I would have given worlds to have unsaid; I felt that every word was estranging us more hopelessly, and yet there seemed a spell upon us--I could not be myself. The questions I had meant to ask him, if I should ever have a chance, the sentences of which I had said to myself a hundred times, I could now no more have uttered than if they had been in an unknown tongue.

When he spoke of Rutledge, the blood that always flashed into my face at the name, now rushed to my heart, and left me paler and more listless than before. If my manner wore any change while he talked of his return there in a few days, and of my friends, Kitty and Stephen, Madge and Tigre, it was an increased indifference and coldness. I said no more than "yes" when he asked me if I still remembered them with interest, and "I don't know exactly," when he asked what message he should take to them from me. Then he changed the subject, and with his accustomed way of reading my face while he talked, he asked me about my impressions of society. Which was most to my taste now, city or country?

"I don't know exactly," I said, hesitatingly.

"I think I know," he said, with a laugh that nettled me, low and pleasant as it was. "I think there is small doubt about your preferences just now. You acknowledge my wisdom at last, do you not? You see it was best for you to come to the city?"

"Yes," I said, lifting my eyes for a moment. "You were very right. I ought to thank you very much for your advice."

"My dear," said my aunt, leaning toward us, "you cannot see at all there. You must take my place for a little while, I insist upon it."

The captain rose with great _empress.e.m.e.nt_, and insisted upon my accepting his seat, and in the midst of the confusion consequent upon this change, the door of the box opened again, and Mr. Viennet entered.

Mr. Rutledge was placing a chair for me as I looked up and recognized the new comer. The chilled and frightened blood that had crept fluttering round my heart, at this moment rushed into my face, and burned guiltily in my cheeks, as I caught Mr. Rutledge's eye. Mr.

Viennet, after a moment devoted to salutation, inquiry and compliment, entered a protest against our remaining any longer in such a detestable corner, p.r.o.nouncing it _de_testable, in his charming little French way.

No one could get at us; he had only found us by the merest chance. We must come downstairs--everybody was on the floor--everybody was dancing.

He a.s.sured madame it was perfectly _convenable;_ it was spoiling the pleasure of too many to hide ourselves any longer.

This met Josephine's views exactly, and she importuned "mamma" very prettily to yield. "Mamma" looked doubtingly for a moment at Mr.

Rutledge, who responded to the look by saying that he really thought her strict ideas of propriety might allow this liberty without suffering any outrage. It was something new for New York, but these b.a.l.l.s had taken very well, and the best people attended them, not only as spectators, but as partic.i.p.ators. As for dancing, he said, with a slight shrug, he rather wondered at any lady's liking such an exhibition; but a promenade on the floor for half an hour or so, he really should think we would find more entertaining than remaining in our box.

This partly settled the wavering in Mrs. Churchill's mind, and with a dainty sort of reluctance, she gave her consent to our going on the floor for a little while.

"Cheek by jowl with Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry," muttered Phil, giving his arm to Josephine, who took it with but indifferent grace, and bit her lip in annoyance, as, standing nearest the door, Mr. Rutledge and Mr. Viennet at the same moment offered me an arm. Can any girl understand the impulse that made me accept Mr. Viennet's? No man possibly can; my only hope of comprehension is from my own incomprehensible, perverse, self-torturing s.e.x.

Once on the floor, it was hardly to be expected that we could obey my aunt's injunction to keep together, and within sight of her. In five minutes her ermine and diamonds, and the captain's moustache and epaulettes, were, though very dear, of course, to memory, utterly lost to sight, and Paul and Virginia were not more romantically alone than were we, in that vast human wilderness. It was a very amusing and nice thing to be lost. For half an hour we searched for our party, though not, it must be confessed, as if our whole happiness in life depended on our success, but no trace of them could be discovered.

"We must amuse ourselves _alors_, mademoiselle, and let them look for us," said my companion. "Was there ever such a waltz before? You cannot resist it any longer, I know you cannot."

Perhaps I might have resisted it, as well as his eloquent pleading, if, raising my eyes at this moment to the boxes we had occupied, I had not caught sight of Josephine and Mr. Rutledge, who had returned there, evidently much more interested in each other than in anything below them.

"I'll dance once," I said, and in a moment his arm was on my waist, and we were floating along the elastic floor to such music as the fairies dance to, on soft summer nights, with the blue vault of heaven above their heads, and the green sward beneath their feet, and all wild ecstatic and untamed rapture thrilling in their elfin bosoms.

Conscience was drugged that night; self-will and pride, self-appointed regents, were holding sway as only usurpers can; and the glowing hours fled away without record or remorse.

"_N'importe_," murmured my companion, when I suggested a doubt, and _n'importe_ I allowed it to be, as, whirling giddily from end to end of the vast area, or sauntering slowly through the gradually lessening crowd, we let the minutes slip away into hours. It was rather a startling recall to stern reality, when, at one end of the hall, suddenly encountering Phil, he laid a heavy hand on my partner's arm, exclaiming:

"Victor, my boy, if you've any mercy on that unlucky girl, come this way. There is such a scolding in store for her as she never had before.

The carriage has been waiting an hour, and the captain and I, being detailed for the detective service, have pursued you faithfully, but you have eluded us most skillfully, I'll do you the justice to say! And Mr.

Rutledge and the ladies have watched you from upstairs, and said--well, we won't say what pretty things."

"Extraordinary!" exclaimed Victor. "Why, _we_ have been hunting for _you_ till we were entirely discouraged, disheartened, in despair!"

"Ah, well!" exclaimed Phil, with a laugh, leading the way. "I only hope you'll be able to make Mrs. Churchill believe it. It's my duty to prepare you for the worst, however."

"And our duty to be brave," said my comrade. "And fortune favors such, they tell us, mademoiselle."

Certainly I could not feel otherwise than grateful to my protector for his ingenious and powerful defence, as we appeared before the offended group at the door of the cloakroom. Though my aunt received it politely, I well knew the wrath that her knit brow portended, and Josephine's look of contempt was unmistakable. Mr. Rutledge had his visor down; no earthly intelligence could discover anything of his emotions through that impa.s.sive exterior. Even the captain was irritated; Phil was neutral, but Victor was my only friend.

"Good night," he whispered, as he put me into the carriage. "We'll finish that redowa at Mrs. Humphrey's to-morrow night."

I wished, with all my heart, it was to-morrow night, and all that I foresaw must intervene, safely past. The scolding was not to come before morning, I saw at once, and when my aunt, on our arrival at home, dismissed me to my room, it was with a cold, "I wish to have a few minutes' conversation with you after breakfast to-morrow."

With that dread before me--with a guilty sense of wrong-doing, and a bitter sense of shame, a humbled condemnation of myself, and an angry resentment toward others, the restless hours of that night offered anything but repose, anything but pleasant retrospect or antic.i.p.ation.

CHAPTER XXII.

"And if some tones be false or low, What are all prayers beneath But cries of babes, that cannot know Half the deep thought they breathe?"

KEBLE.

Mrs. Churchill understood, if ever any did, the art of reprimand.

Without the least appearance of agitation herself, with a perfectly unmoved and stony composure, she managed to overawe and disarm the prisoner at the bar, whatever might be his or her offence, or shade or degree of guilt. Defence died on my lips at the dreaded interview, and I bore my sentence in silence, which was, a total seclusion from society after to-night--a return to the oblivion of the nursery and study. This ball at Mrs. Humphrey's was to be my last appearance in public till I should have learned how to behave myself. As I had accepted, it was proper I should go to-night, otherwise she would no means have allowed it.

"_Nous verrons_," I said to myself, as I went upstairs. "If I continue to want to go to parties, no doubt she will have to let me go. I am a fraction too old to be put in a dark closet, or sent to bed for being naughty, and Aunt Edith knows it."

That Wednesday was a very busy day to Mrs. Churchill and Josephine. A wedding reception took up the morning, from which they returned but to dress for a dinner at the Wynkars, and thence returning, made a hurried toilette for the ball. It seemed making rather a toil of pleasure, if one might judge from my aunt's haggard looks, and Josephine's impatient complaints.

There was an anxious contraction on Mrs. Churchill's brow as she came down from the nursery after breakfast, and apparently a struggle in her mind between home duties and social duties, when it became necessary for her to decide about going out. That she sincerely believed in the stringent nature of both, no one could doubt who watched her closely. It was not pleasure that took her away from little Essie that morning; it was a mistaken sense of duty. She had set up for her worship an idol, in whose hard service she had unconsciously come to sacrifice time, ease, and affection, as stoically as many have suffered in a cause whose reward is not altogether seen and ended in this world.

So it was, that, trying to make up for her absence by many injunctions and cautions to those left in charge, she turned her back upon the child for the greater part of the day.

"I hoped," said she, as she paused at the nursery door, in her rustling silk and heavy India shawl, "I hoped that the doctor would have come before I went out, but I really do not see but what you can do as well as I can, Felicie. Pay particular attention to his directions, and send John out immediately for any prescription he may leave for her. And be sure you tell him just how she was yesterday, and how well she slept last night. I don't like," she continued, taking off one glove to feel again of the child's hot forehead, "her having fever again this morning.

I thought yesterday she was so much better."

"Oh, madam is too anxious. It is nothing but a little excitement that has brought it on again," said the nurse. "If madam would tell Mademoiselle Esther how very naughty it is for her to cry to go into her cousin's room, and fret and strike me when I try to keep her quiet, perhaps she might mind better. It is that that brings her fever on, madam, I am afraid."

"Now, Esther," said her mother, with authority, "I shall have to punish you if you do so any more. I shall be very angry if you do not mind Felicie to-day, and if you hurt or strike her, remember I shall punish you when I come back--do you hear?"

Esther heard, yes. She sat bolt upright in her little bed, and looked at the speaker with her parched lips parted, and a strange, bewildered expression in her eyes, and a restless movement of her tiny hands.

Before the interview was over, however, the startled look had settled into a vacant, listless stare; and a peevish moan, after her mother left the room, was all the evidence she gave of being impressed or alarmed by the injunctions laid upon her. I heard the miserable little complainer unmoved as long as I could; after a while, putting down my book, I went into the nursery. She stretched out her arms, and cried:

"Take me to your room."

"If you will stop crying," I said, taking her up in my arms, and wrapping her dressing-gown about her.

Felicie looked up quickly, and said, "_Madame a dit que non._"

Felicie always lied in her native tongue, and this was but an additional proof to me that madame had said no such thing, and I told her so, rather strongly. Grace came in just then, and Felicie appealed to her for confirmation.

"Certainly," said Grace, promptly, "mamma's last charge was that Esther should not go out of the nursery; so, missy, you may just make yourself easy where you are. Don't suppose everybody is going to spoil you like your precious cousin there."

Essie still clung tightly round my neck; much, however, as my pride rebelled, there was no way but to submit to the orders they promulged.

So, carrying her back to the bed, and loosening her arms from my neck, I put her down with,