A Changed Heart Part 48

"Five feet six, I should say, was mademoiselle's height," remarked Val, with mathematical precision. "I like tall women. How stately she walks!"

"I suppose she'll be putting on airs now," remarked Miss McGregor, with true feminine dislike to hear another woman praised; "and forget she ever had to work for her living in New York. Or perhaps she'll go back there and take her fortune with her."

"You wouldn't be sorry, Jeannette, would you?" said Laura. "She's a terrible rival, I know, with her thirty thousand pounds, and her stately stature. Val, I wish you would find out what she is like before you come to our house this evening. You can do anything you please, and I am dying to know."

"All right," said Val; "shall I drop into Darcy's, and ask Miss Henderson to stand up for inspection, in order that I may report to Miss Blair?"

"Oh, nonsense! you can go into Mr. Darcy's if you like, and see her, without making a goose of yourself."

"And I'll go with him, Miss Laura," said Mr. Tom Oaks, sauntering up.

"Blake has no more eye for beauty than a cow, or he would not have lived in Speckport all these years, and be a single man to-day. We'll both drop in to Darcy's on our way to you, Miss Blair, with a full, true, and particular account of Miss Henderson's charms."

"Oh, her charms are beyond dispute, already," said Captain Cavendish; "she has thirty thousand, to our certain knowledge."

"And of all charms," drawled Lieutenant the Honorable Blank, "we know that golden ones are the most to your taste, Cavendish. You'd better be careful and not put your foot in it with this heiress, as they tell me you did with the last."

Very few ever had the pleasure of seeing Captain Cavendish disconcerted.

He only stared icily at his brother-officer, and offered his arm to Miss McGregor to lead her to her carriage, which was in waiting, while Mr.

Oaks did the same duty for Laura. Mr. Blake saw her led off under his very nose, with sublimest unconcern, and lounged along the wharf, watching the deck-hands getting out freight, with far more interest than he could ever have felt in Laura's pretty t.i.ttle-tattle. If that lady felt disappointed, she knew the proprieties a great deal too well to betray it, and held a laughing flirtation all the way up the wharf with Mr. Tom Oaks.

"You will be sure to find out what the heiress is like," she said, bounding into the carriage. "I shall never know a moment's peace until I ascertain."

"I will go to Darcy's with Blake," answered Tom; "that's all I can do.

If she shows it is all right; if she don't, a fellow can't very well send word to her to come and exhibit herself. Adieu, mesdemoiselles!"

The two gentlemen tipped their chapeaux gallantly as the carriage rattled off up the hilly streets of Speckport; for every street in Speckport is decidedly "the rocky road to Dublin." Mr. Oaks hunted up Mr. Blake, and led him off from the fascinating spot, where the men were noisily getting out barrels, and bales and boxes.

"I'll call round for you, Blake," he said; "and we'll drop into Darcy's, promiscuous, as it were, before going to Laura's. I want to see the heiress myself, as much as the girls do."

Mr. Blake was of much too easy a nature to refuse any common request; and when, about seven o'clock, Mr. Oaks, magnificently got up in full evening costume, partly concealed by a loose and stylish overcoat, called at Great St. Peter's Street, he found the master of No. 16 putting the finishing touches to a characteristically loose and careless toilet.

The two young men sallied forth into the brightly starlit March night, lighting their cigars as they went, and conjecturing what Miss Henderson might be like. At least Mr. Oaks was, Mr. Blake being const.i.tutionally indifferent on the subject.

"What's the odds?" said Val; "let her be as pretty as Venus, or as ugly as a blooming Hottentot, it makes no difference to you or I, does it?"

"Perhaps not to you, you dry old Diogenes," said Tom; "but to me it's of the utmost consequence, as I mean to marry her, should she turn out to be handsome."

Mr. Blake stared, for Mr. Oaks had delivered himself of this speech with profoundest gravity; but as they were at the lawyer's door, there was no time for friendly remonstrance on such precipitate rashness. Val rang, and was shown by the young lady who answered the bell, and did general housework for Mrs. Darcy, into the parlor. Mr. and Mrs. Darcy were there, and so was the new heiress, to whom they were presented in form.

She still wore her black silk dress, and lay back in a cushioned rocker, looking at the bright coal-fire, and talking very little. It was very easy to look at her; had she been a tall statue, draped in black, it could scarcely have been easier; and the two gentlemen took a mental photograph of her, for Miss Blair's benefit and their own, before they had been two minutes in the room.

"We were on our way to Miss Blair's tea-splash," Mr. Blake explained, "and dropped in. You're not coming, I suppose?"

No, a note-apology had been sent. They were not going. Mrs. Darcy was saying this when the young lady looked suddenly up.

"I beg you will not stay on my account," she said. "I am rather fatigued, and will retire. I shall be sorry if my arrival deprives you of any pleasure."

She had a most melodious voice, deep, but musical, and her smile lit up her whole dark face with a luminous brightness, most fascinating, but not easily described. You know the magnetic power some of these dark faces have, of kindling into sudden light, and how bewitching it is. Mr.

Oaks seemed to find it so; for she was gazing with an entranced absorption that rendered him utterly oblivious of all the rules of polite breeding.

Mr. and Mrs. Darcy hastened to disclaim the idea of her presence depriving them of any pleasure whatever, as people always do on these occasions, and repeated their intention of not going. Messrs. Blake and Oaks accordingly took their leave, and sallied forth again under the quiet stars for the residence of Miss Laura Blair.

The pretty drawing-room of Laura's home was bright with gaslight and flowers, and fine faces and charming toilets, and red coats, for the officers were there when they entered. What Mr. Blake had denominated a "tea-splash" was a grand birth-day ball. Miss Laura was just twenty-one that night. She danced up to them as they entered, looking wonderfully pretty in rose-silk, and floating white lace, white roses in her hair and looping up her rich skirt. "So you have come at last!" was her cry, addressing Tom Oaks, and quite ignoring Mr. Blake--the little hypocrite!

"Have you seen Miss Henderson?"

"Yes," said Val, taking it upon himself to reply, "and she's homely. Her nose turns up."

There was a cry of consternation from a group of ladies, who came fluttering around them, Miss Jo, tall and gaunt, and grand, in their midst.

"Homely!" shouted Mr. Oaks, glaring upon Val. "You lying villain, I'll knock you down if you repeat such a slander. She is beautiful as an angel! the loveliest girl I ever looked upon."

Everybody stared, and there was a giggle and a flutter among the pretty ones at this refreshingly frank confession.

"Nonsense!" said Val. "You can't deny, Oaks, but her nose turns up!"

"I don't care whether it turns up or down!" yelled Mr. Oaks, "or whether she's got any nose at all! I know it's perfect, and her eyes are like the stars of heaven, and her complexion the loveliest olive I ever looked at!"

"Olive!" said Mr. Blake. "I'll take my oath it's yellow, and she's as skinny as our Jo there."

"I'm obliged to you, Mr. Blake, for the compliment, I'm sure!" exclaimed Miss Jo, flashing fire at the speaker; "and I think you might have a little more politeness than running down the poor young lady, if her nose does turn up. Sure, she is not to blame, poor creature! if she is ugly!"

"But, I tell you, ma'am," roared Mr. Oaks, growing scarlet in the face, "she is not ugly! She's beautiful! She's divine! She's an angel!--that's what she is!"

"Well," said Mr. Blake, resignedly, "if she's an angel, all I've got to say is, that angels ain't much to my taste. She is not half as pretty as yourself, Laura; and now I want you to dance with me, after that."

Miss Blair, with a radiant face, put her pretty white hand on Val's coat-sleeve, and marched him off. A quadrille was just forming, and they took their places.

"So she's really not handsome, Val? What is she like?"

"Oh, she's tall and thin, and straight as a poplar, and she has big, flashing black eyes, and tar-black hair, all braided round her head, and a haggard sort of look that I don't admire. I dare say, Lady Macbeth looked something like her; but she is not the least like poor Nathalie Marsh."

"Ah! poor Nathalie! dear Nathalie!" Laura sighed. "It seems like yesterday since that night last May, at Jeannette McGregor's, when she was the belle and the heiress of Redmon, we all thought, and Captain Cavendish came for the first time. I remember, too, Miss Rose arrived that night, and we were asking Charley--poor Charley!--what she looked like. And now to think of all the changes that have taken place! I declare, it seems heartless of us to be dancing and enjoying ourselves here, after all!"

"So it is," said Val, "and we are a heartless lot, I expect; but, meantime, the quadrille is commencing, and as you have not taken the vail yet, Miss Blair, suppose you make me a bow, and let us have a whack at it with the rest!"

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE HEIRESS OF REDMON ENTERS SOCIETY.

A pretty room--Brussels carpet on the floor, marble-topped table strewn with gayly-bound books and photograph-alb.u.ms, chairs and sofas cushioned in green billiard-cloth, hangings of lace and damask on the windows, a tall Psyche mirror, a dressing-table, strewn with ivory-backed brushes, perfume bottles, kid gloves, and cambric handkerchiefs; and marble mantel, adorned with delicate vases filled with flowers. You might have thought it a lady's boudoir but for the pictures on the papered walls--pictures of ballet-dancers and racehorses, with one or two Indian scenes of pig-sticking, tiger and jackal hunts, and ma.s.sacres of Sepoys, and the pistols and riding-whips over the mantel, and the gentleman standing at the window, looking out. He wore a captain's uniform, and nothing could have set off his fine figure so well; and this lady-like apartment was his, and told folios about the man's tastes and character.

He stood looking out on the lamp-lit street, with people pa.s.sing carelessly up and down, not looking at them, but thinking deeply--thinking how the best-laid plans of his life had been defeated by that invincible Fate, which was the only deity he believed in, and laying fresh plans, so skillfully to be carried out as to baffle grim Madam Fate herself. He was going to a party to-night--a party given by Mrs. Darcy, to introduce the new heiress of Redmon to Speckportian society.

Captain George Percy Cavendish, standing at the window, looking abstractedly out at the starlit and gaslit street, was thinking. No one had wished more to see the heiress than he. She was the fashion, the sensation, the notoriety of the day. What eclat for him, not to speak of the solid advantages in the way of dollars and cents, to carry off this heiress, in fair and open combat, from all compet.i.tors. Tom Oaks, the most insensible of mankind, had seen her but once, and had gone raving about her ever since. Then, she was the heiress of Redmon, and Captain Cavendish had vowed a vow long ago, that Redmon and its thousands should be his, in spite of the very old Diable himself. Did he think remorsefully of that other heiress who had staked all for him, and lost the game? I doubt it.

A little toy of a clock on a Grecian bracket struck ten. There had been a noisy mess-dinner to detain him, and he was late; but he did not mind that. Mr. Johnson, his man, appeared, to a.s.sist him on with his greatcoat, and Captain Cavendish started to behold his fate!