"To a Mr. Reginald Ponsonby--an Englishman settled in Australia somewhere. They were to have been married last summer, but he had business losses. She is perfectly devoted to him. He wrote and offered to release her, but she would not hear of it. She was very much admired; don"t you think her pretty?"
"Will you introduce me to Miss Carey? I see Mr. Freeman is coming to ask you for a turn--will you be so kind as to present me first?"
There was a sort of cool determination about this young man which Ada, or any other girl, would have found it hard to resist. She did as she was bid, not ill-pleased at the general stir she excited as she crossed the floor with her two satellites and walked up the platform steps.
"Mrs. Freeman, Miss Morgan, allow me to introduce Mr. Van Voorst. Miss Carey, Mr. Van Voorst;--I think you know my mother and Mrs. Allston."
And having touched off her train, she whirled away with Robert Freeman, her observation still on the alert.
Mrs. Thorne and Mr. Van Voorst exchanged civilities; Mrs. Allston said Jack was coming soon and would be glad to see him, making room for him at her side.
"No, thank you, Mrs. Allston. Miss Carey, may I have the pleasure of a turn with you?"
"Oh, Mr. Van Voorst! You are quite out of rule--tempting away our chaperons--you should ask some of the young ladies; we did not come here to dance."
"I shall not dare to ask you, then, Mrs. Allston," he said, smiling, and offered his arm without another word to Lily. She rose without looking at him, with a quick furtive motion pulled off her left-hand glove--the right was off already--got out of the crowd about her and down the steps, she hardly knew how, and in a moment his arm was around her and they were floating down the long hall. The quartette left behind looked rather blankly at each other.
"Well," said Mrs. Thorne at last, "it really is too bad for Lily Carey to come and say she did not mean to dance, and then walk off with Arend Van Voorst, who has not asked another girl here----"
"And in that old gown!" chimed in Mrs. Allston.
"It is certainly very unkind in her to look so well in an old gown,"
said Aunt Sophia; "it is a dangerous precedent."
"Oh, auntie!" said Emmeline, who had come up to have her dress adjusted.
"Poor Lily! She has been so very quiet all the winter, never going to anything, it would be too bad if she could not have a little pleasure."
"Very kind in you, my dear; but I don"t see the force of your "poor Lily." I shall reserve my pity for poor Mr. Ponsonby--he needs it most."
It was long since Lily had danced, and as for Mr. Van Voorst, he was, as we have seen, supposed to be above it on so youthful an occasion; but perhaps it was this that gave such a zest, as if they were boy and girl together, to the pleasure of harmonious motion. Round and round again they went, till the dancing ranks grew thinner, and just as the music gave signs of drawing to a close, they pa.s.sed, drawing all eyes, by the doorway. The line of men looking on opened and closed behind them. They had actually gone out to sit on the stairs, leaving a fruitful topic behind them for the buzz of talk between the figures. Eleanor Carey, a pretty girl, and not unlike her sister, bloomed out with added importance from her connection with one who might turn out to be the heroine of a drawing-room scandal.
Meanwhile the two who were the theme of comment sat silent under the palms and ferns. No one knew better when to speak or not to speak than Lily, and her companion was looking at her with a curiously steady and absorbed gaze, to which any words would have been an interruption. It was not "the old black silk" which attracted his attention, except, perhaps, so far as it formed a background for the beautiful hands that lay folded together on her lap, too carelessly for coquetry. No such motive had influenced Lily when she had pulled off her gloves; it was only that they were not fresh enough to bear close scrutiny; but their absence showed conspicuous on the third finger of her left hand her only ring, a heavy one of rough beaten gold with an odd-looking dark-red stone in it. Not the flutter of a finger betrayed any consciousness as his eye lingered on it; but as he looked abruptly up he caught a glance from under her eyelashes which showed that she had on her part been looking at him. An irresistible flash of merriment was reflected back from face to face.
"What did you say?" she asked.
"I--I beg your pardon, I thought you said something."
Both laughed like a couple of children; then he rose and offered his arm again, and they turned back to the ballroom.
"Good evening, Jack," said Miss Lily brightly, holding out her hand to Mr. Allston, who had just come in, and was standing in the doorway.
Jack, taken by surprise, as we all are by the sudden appearance of two people together whom we have never a.s.sociated in our minds, looked shy and confused, but made a gallant effort to rally, and got through the proper civilities well enough, till just as the couple were again whirling into the ranks, he spoiled it all by asking with an awkward stammer in his voice:
"How"s--how"s Mr. Ponsonby?"
"Very well, when I last heard," Lily flung back over her shoulder, in her clearest tone and with a laugh, soft, but heard by both men.
"What are you laughing at?" asked her partner.
"At the recollection of my copy-book--was not yours amusing?"
"I dare say it was, if it was the same as yours."
"Oh, they are all alike. What I was thinking of was the page with "Evil communications corrupt good manners.""
"Yes--Jack was a very good fellow when we were in college together--but----"
But "what" was left unsaid. On and on they went, and only stopped with the music. Lily, having broken the ice, was besieged by every man in the room for a turn. One or two she did favour with a very short one, but it was Mr. Van Voorst to whom she gave every other one, and those the longest, and with whom she walked between the figures; and finally it was Mr. Van Voorst who took her down to supper. Eleanor and she had all the best men in the room crowding round them.
"Come and sit with us, Emmie," she asked, as Emmeline Freeman pa.s.sed with her partner; and Emmeline came, half frightened at finding herself in the midst of what seemed to her a chapter from a novel. Never had the even tenor of her social experiences,--and they were of as unvarying and business-like a nature as the "day"s work" of humbler maidens--been disturbed by such an upheaval of fixed ideas; one of which was that Lily Carey could do no wrong, and another, that there was something "fast"
and improper in having more than one man waiting upon you at a time.
"Do you mind going now, Eleanor?" asked Lily of her sister, as the crowd surged back to the ballroom. Eleanor looked rather blank at the thought of missing the after-supper dance, and such an after-supper dance; no mamma to get sleepy on the platform; no old James waiting out in the cold to lay up rheumatism for the future and to look respectfully reproachful at "Miss Ellis"; no horses whose wrongs might excite papa"s wrath; nothing but that wretched impersonal slave, "a man from the livery stable" and his automatic beasts. But the Careys were a very amiable family, the one who spoke first generally getting her own way.
The after-supper dance at the Racket Club german was rather a falling off from the brilliancy at the commencement, as Arend Van Voorst left after putting his partner into her carriage, and Julian Jervis and others of the men thought it the thing to follow his example.
Two days after the german, "Richards"s Pond," set in snowy sh.o.r.es, was hard and blue as steel under a cloudless sky, while a delicious breath of spring in the air gave warning that this was but for a day. The rare union of perfect comfort and the fascination that comes of transient pleasure irresistibly called out the skaters, and "everybody" was there; that is, about fifty young men and women were disporting themselves on the pond, and one or two ladies stood on the sh.o.r.e looking on. Miss Morgan, who was always willing to chaperon any number of girls to any amus.e.m.e.nt, stood warmly wrapped up in her fur-lined cloak and snow-boots, talking to a Mrs. Rhodes, a mild little new-comer in Brookline, who had come with her girls, who did not know many people, and whom she now had the satisfaction of seeing happily mingled with the proper "set"; for Eleanor Carey, who had good-naturedly asked them to come, had introduced them to some of the extra young men, of whom there were plenty; and that there might be no lack of excitement, Mr. Van Voorst and Miss Lily Carey were to be seen skating together, with hardly a word or a look for anyone else--a sight worth seeing.
No record exists of the skating of the G.o.ddess Diana, but had she skated, Lily might have served as her model. Just so might she have swept over the ice with mazy motion, ever and ever throwing herself off her balance, just as surely to regain it. As for Arend Van Voorst, he skated like Harold Hardrada, of whose performances in that line we have not been left in ignorance. "It must be his Dutch blood," commented Miss Morgan.
Ada Thorne, meanwhile, was skating contentedly enough under the escort of the lion second in degree--Prescott Avery, just returned from his journey round the world, about which he had written a magazine article, and was understood to be projecting a book. His thin but well-preserved flaxen locks, whitey-brown moustache, and little piping voice were unchanged by tropic heats or Alpine snows, but he had gained in consequence and, though mild and una.s.suming, felt it. He had always been in the habit of entertaining his fair friends with a number of pretty tales drawn from his varied social experiences, and had acquired a fresh stock of very exciting ones in his travels. But his present hearer"s attention was wandering, and her smiles unmeaning, and in the very midst of a most interesting narrative about his encounter with an angry llama, she put an aimless question that showed utter ignorance whether it took place in China or Peru. Prescott, always amiable, gulped down his mortification with the aid of a cough, and then followed the lady"s gaze to where the distant flash of a scarlet toque might be seen through the thin, leafless bushes on a low spur of land.
"That is Lily Carey, is it not?" he asked. "How very handsome she is looking to-day! She has grown even more beautiful than when I went away.
By-the-by, is that the gentleman she is engaged to?"
"Oh, dear, no! Why, that is Arend Van Voorst! Don"t you know him? She is engaged to a Mr. Ponsonby, an English settler in South Australia."
"I see now that it is Mr. Van Voorst, whom I met several times before I left," said Prescott, with unfailing amiability even under a snubbing.
Then, cheered by the prospect of again taking the superior position, he continued in an impressive tone: "But it is not astonishing that I should have taken him for Mr. Ponsonby. I believe I had the pleasure of meeting that gentleman in Melbourne when I was in Australia, and the resemblance is striking, especially at a little distance."
"Did you, indeed?" asked Ada, inwardly burning with excitement, but outwardly nonchalant. The remarkable extent of Miss Thorne"s knowledge of everyone"s affairs was not gained by direct questioning, which she had found defeated its own object. "It is rather odd you should have happened to meet him in Melbourne, for he very seldom goes there, and lives on a ranch in quite another part of Australia."
"But I did meet him," replied Prescott. "He had come to Melbourne on business, and I met him at a club dinner--a tall, handsome, light-haired man. He sat opposite to me and we did not happen to be introduced, but I am certain the name was Ponsonby. He took every opportunity of paying me attention, and said something very nice about American ladies, which made me feel sure he must have been here. Of course I did not know of Miss Carey"s engagement, or I should certainly have made his acquaintance."
"The engagement was not out then, and of course he could not speak of it. Now I think of it, Mr. Van Voorst does really look a great deal like Mr. Ponsonby"s photograph."
"I will speak of it to Miss Carey when I get an opportunity," said Prescott, delighted. "The experiences one has on a long journey are singular, Miss Thorne. Now as I was telling you----"
Ten minutes later the whole crowd were gathering round Miss Morgan, who made a kind of nucleus for those with homeward intentions, when Mr.
Avery and Miss Thorne came in the most accidental way right against Mr.
Van Voorst and Miss Carey. By what means half the crowd already knew what was in the wind, and the other half knew that something was, we may not inquire. It was not in human nature not to look and listen as the four exchanged proper greetings.
"Mr. Avery, Lily, has been telling me that he had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ponsonby in Melbourne," said Ada, "and thought you would be glad to hear about it."
"Oh, thank you," said Lily, quietly, "I have had letters written since, of course. You were not in Melbourne very lately, Mr. Avery?"
"Last summer--winter, I should say. You know, Miss Carey, it is so queer, it is winter there when it is summer here--it is very hard to realise it. But it is always agreeable to meet those who have really seen one"s absent friends, don"t you think so?"
"Oh, very!"
"Mr. Ponsonby was looking very well and in very good spirits. I fancied he showed a great interest in American matters, which I could not account for. I wish I had known why, that I might have congratulated him. I hope you will tell him so."