Chapter XIII: Lady Horatia Somerton

I thought Lady Horatia Somerton looked rather displeased when we at last succeeded in getting through the crowd, and reached the raised sofa where she sat.

“Have you been dancing together all this time?” she inquired.

“Only one waltz and a quadrille,” said Sir Alfred; “but I have been showing Miss Vivian the pictures.”

“But I found them in the conservatory,” said Lord Woodford, “engaged--I may say that I surprised them--in a very interesting _tête-à-tête_, I assure you.”

I felt much annoyed, and could not help blushing, as I feared, by Lady Horatia’s looks of displeasure, that I had been doing something wrong.

“Well, but you are engaged for the next quadrille to Lord Woodford, are you not?” inquired Lady Horatia; “and it will soon begin, so you had better go at once, and get a good place, and a _vis-à-vis_.”

I could no longer refuse Lord Woodford’s arm; and as I reluctantly went with him towards the dancers, I was somewhat relieved by seeing Sir Alfred soon follow with a young lady, and insist on being our _vis-à-vis_. So I enjoyed the dance extremely, for he contrived to look towards me several times. But I saw that Lord Woodford did not seem to like this, and was annoyed because I would not attend much to his trifling talk. At least it seemed to me trifling, because I did not like his manner or tone.

When the dance was over, Lady Horatia said it was time to go home, and she asked Sir Alfred to get her carriage. The irrepressible Lord Woodford again offered his arm to take me down to the cloak-room, while some other young men offered theirs to Lady Horatia. She accepted the assistance of a little man with a turned-up nose, who had danced with me twice, and had buzzed about me a good deal. I did not know who he was, but, as we drove home, Lady Horatia told me he was the young Marquis of Lorrington, one of the richest men of the day.

“You have made no end of conquests,” she said. “Your success has been even greater than I anticipated. But now I am going to give you a serious piece of advice. I am going to place you as our parents were in the Garden of Eden. You may freely flirt with all the men, who are only too willing to fall in love with you, except one; and with him,” she added, in a tone partly mocking, but with a great mixture of serious anxiety--“with him thou shalt not flirt, nor allow him to fall in love; and that is the man you unfortunately monopolised so long this evening, Sir Alfred Rivers.”

“Why?--is he engaged to be married?” I asked, with a sudden anxiety.

“I cannot explain my reasons; only remember, they are very weighty. I shall be extremely displeased if you do not fulfil my wishes to the letter in this case; nay, more, you will bitterly repent it yourself if you disregard my commands.”

Her tone was more serious, and her looks more dark and angry, than I fancied such cheery and sunshiny features could have assumed; so, feeling half frightened and half angry, I said--

“I am sure I don’t want any of the gentlemen to like me. I--in fact----” I was going to say, “I am engaged,” but the recollection of Carlo’s supposed indifference made me stop, when it roused still more my proud and rebellious feelings.

“But they do, and will care for you,” said Lady Horatia, in her usual pleasant tone. “There are two great _partis_ at your feet already. You may be Lady Woodford, with a fine castle and park in Wales, and twelve thousand a year; or the Marchioness of Lorrington, with thirty thousand a year. Yes, I have asked Lorrington to dinner to-morrow, for he would suit you best. He is a good little man, and if you managed him well, he would make a very fair husband.”

“But I should not like to marry either of them,” I said; “and besides, they cannot possibly care for me.”

“Perhaps not for you, but for the reigning beauty of the season they will. I mean, they do not understand you so well as I do. I was prepared for your not caring much about rank or fortune, if you could but love the person who offers it. Still you like luxury and splendour, and you may get to like that young Marquis.”

“Impossible!”

“Well, we shall see; only remember my orders about Sir Alfred. I am sorry he is coming also to dinner to-morrow, but it can’t be helped now. I could not foresee that he would take such----”

“We met before, when I was a little girl at Pompeii,” I said, as if to excuse him in her eyes, “and he liked my singing some Neapolitan barcarolle.”

“Ah, yes; you have a splendid voice too, of course you have, and he is the best tenor of the day.”

She was silent during the rest of the drive home, and looked thoughtful and not well pleased.

“What can it be?” I thought. “Can she care for him herself, or has she a bad opinion of him?”

This mysterious prohibition made me think still more of him, and in the rebellious frame I was in rather seemed to stimulate my spirit of contradiction. Then I determined to be cautious, and not appear to be ungrateful for all her kindness to me, by apparently going against her wishes.

Had she but known me better still, and confided the whole truth about Sir Alfred, what years of trouble and misery and remorse might have been spared! This was the great turning-point of my life.

“I should not fall in love--no, of course not. I would never care for anyone again; it would be impossible.” Still my last thoughts, as I went to sleep that night, were of Sir Alfred; and his looks, the tone of his voice, haunted my dreams all night with a wild, intoxicating kind of delight.

But the next morning I got up with a feeling of disenchantment and depression. The cold light of a cloudy morning, that penetrated the dingy blinds, seemed to awaken me to the realities of life, and my peculiar position in it. The transient gleam of wild bliss I had enjoyed the night before was exchanged for a dreary feeling of disbelief in all happiness.