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"You would do well," she said, "to make yourself acquainted with some of these subjects. I think you would find them more interesting than ball-rooms and Paris toilettes." Mrs Jefferson recovered her tongue at that slight to her beloved vanities. "Tastes differ," she said coolly. "I'm very well content with the world as it is and with myself as I am.
It still remained a polished cravat, a worldly cravat, the cravat seen in ball-rooms, drawing- rooms, in the theater stalls and boxes, anywhere but in the servants' hall. Oh, for the ready-made cravat that hitched to the collar- button! And then there was that servant's low turned-down collar, glossy as celluloid.
The most! unsatisfactory material consists of those officers who, on account of inherited wealth, look upon their profession as a kind of sport, attractive, abounding in superficial honours, and for that reason very agreeable. These latter are apt to regard court ball-rooms and racecourses as more important fields of action than drill-grounds and barracks.
"When Master Clinton was about the age I mentioned, namely, fourteen, a gentleman of the name of Sir Clinton Manners became a constant visitor at the house. Report said that he was always about my lady in London at Ranelagh, and the ball-rooms and routs, and all the fine places; and certainly he was scarcely ever from her side in the pleasure parties at the Park.
I then took Julius Hammer into my confidence, and he thought that I had given expression to the overflowing emotion of two loving young hearts in a very felicitous and charming way. While my friends were enjoying themselves in ball-rooms or exciting society, Fate still condemned me to careful seclusion in my mother's house.
Nothing could be lovelier than the last rosebuds, or than the delicate gaufred edges of the strawberry leaves embroidered with hoar-frost, while above them Arachne's delicate webs hung swaying in the green branches of the pines, little ball-rooms for the fairies carpeted with powdered pearls and kept in place by a thousand dewy strands hanging from above like the chains of a lamp and supporting them from below like the anchors of a vessel.
With this restoration of public gayety came a liberal sprinkling of uniforms to the throngs that crowded the ball-rooms, tea-gardens and gambling halls. Blanco was standing apart, looking on, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder and turned to find a young officer at his back who smilingly begged him for a moment in the gardens.
Then came my lord the Marquess a cousin privileged to familiar intimacy to visit at will, to ride with you, dance with you, sit side by side with you in quiet corners of thronging ball-rooms, to call you 'Caroline. Tut, tut they are only cousins, and cousins are as brothers and sisters in the affectionate House of Vipont; and gossips talk, and young ladies envy finest match in all England is the pretty-faced Lord of Montfort!
Soon they had carried out a comfortable leather arm-chair of unusual proportions, four other chairs, a stand, and various smaller pieces of substantial make. And all the while, dancers whirled on in the ball-rooms, seductive strains of music were wafted on the air, mingled with the hum of joyous talk and gay laughter; yet in the background were these dark happenings with tragedy ahead!
Keen-eyed and hook-nosed, like a bird of prey, she glowers from the corner of crowded ball-rooms upon the unconscious heir, hunts him untiringly from house to house, marries him remorselessly to her eldest daughter, and then never loses sight of him till his spirit is broken, his old friends discarded, and his segar-case thrown away.
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