The Baronet's Bride Part 17

They rode together to Carteret Park. Sir Everard had the privilege of a.s.sisting her to dismount.

"You must be fatigued, Miss Hunsden," he said. "With a ball in prospective, after your hard gallop, I should recommend a long rest."

"Sir Everard, I don't know the meaning of that word 'fatigue.' I never was tired in my life, and I am ready for the ball to-night, and a steeple-chase to-morrow."

She tripped off as she spoke, with a mischievous glance. She wanted to shock him, and she succeeded.

"Poor girl!" he thought, as he slowly turned homeward, "she is really dreadful. She never had a mother, I suppose, and wandering over the world with her father has made her a perfect savage. She is truly to be pitied--so exceedingly beautiful as she is, too!"

Sir Everard certainly was very sorry for that hoidenish Miss Hunsden.

He thought of her while dressing for dinner, and he talked of her all through that meal "more in sorrow than in anger."

Sybilla Silver, quite like one of the family already, listened with greedy ears and eager black eyes.

"You ought to call, mother," the baronet said, "you and Mildred.

Common politeness requires it, Captain Hunsden was my father's most intimate friend, and this wild girl stands sadly in need of some matronly adviser."

"I remember Captain Hunsden," Lady Kingsland said, thoughtfully, "and I remember this girl, too, when she was a child of three or four years.

He was a very handsome man, I recollect, and he married away in Canada or the United States. There was some mystery about that marriage--something vague and unpleasant--no one knew what. She ought to be pretty, this daughter."

"Pretty!" Sir Everard exclaimed; "she is beautiful as an angel! I never saw such eyes or such a smile in the whole course of my life."

"Indeed!" his mother said, coldly--"indeed! Not even excepting Lady Louise's?"

"Oh, Lady Louise is altogether different! I didn't mean any comparison. But you will see her to-night at Lady Carteret's ball, and can judge for yourself. She is a mere child--sixteen or seventeen, I believe."

"And Lady Louise is five-and-twenty," said Mildred, with awful accuracy.

"She does not look twenty!" exclaimed my lady, sharply. "There are few young ladies nowadays half so elegant and graceful as Lady Louise."

Miss Silver's large black eyes glided from one to the other with a sinister smile in their shining depths. Her soft voice broke in at this jarring juncture and sweetly turned the disturbed current of conversation, and Sir Everard understood, and gave her a grateful glance.

The young baronet had gone to many b.a.l.l.s in his lifetime, but never had he been so painfully particular before. He drove Edward, his valet, to the verge of madness with his whims, and left off at last in sheer desperation and altogether dissatisfied with the result.

"I look like a guy, I know," he muttered, angrily, "and that pert little Hunsden is just the sort of girl to make satirical comments on a man if his neck-tie is awry or his hair unbecoming. Not that I care what she says; but one hates to feel he is a laughing-stock."

The ball-room was brilliant with lights, and music, and flowers, and diamonds, and beautiful faces, and magnificent toilets when the Kingsland party entered.

Lady Carteret, in velvet robes, stood receiving her guests. Lady Louise, with white azaleas in her hair and dress, stood stately and graceful, looking from tip to toe what she was the descendant of a race of "highly-wed, highly-fed, highly-bred" aristocrats.

But at neither of them Sir Everard glanced twice. His eyes wandered around and lighted at last on a divinity in a cloud of misty white, crowned with dark-green ivy leaves aglitter with diamond drops.

While he gazed, Lord Ernest Strathmore came up, said something, and whirled her off in the waltz. Away they flew. Lord Ernest waltzed to perfection, and she--a French woman or a fairy only could float like that.

A fierce, jealous pang griped his heart; a second, and they were out of sight. Sir Everard roused himself from his trance and went up to his hostess to pay his respects.

"Ah!" Lady Carteret said, a little spitefully, "the spell is broken at last! There was no mistaking that look, Sir Everard! My dear Lady Kingsland"--laughing, but malicious still--"take care of your son. I'm afraid he's going to fall in love."

CHAPTER XI.

"FOR LOVE WILL STILL BE LORD OF ALL."

My Lady Carteret's ball was a brilliant success, and, fairest where all were fair, Harrie Hunsden shone down all compet.i.tors. As she floated down the long ball-room on the arm of Lord Ernest, light as a swimming-sprite, a hundred admiring male eyes followed, and a hundred fair patrician bosoms throbbed with bitterest envy.

"The little Hunsden is in full feather to-night," lisped George Grosvenor, coming up with his adored Lady Louise on his arm. "There is nothing half so beautiful in the room, with one exception. And only look at Kingsland! Oh, he's done for, to a dead certainty!"

Sir Everard started up rather confusedly. He had been leaning against a pillar, gazing after the divinity in the ivy crown, with his heart in his eyes, and Lady Louise was the last person in the universe he had been thinking of.

"We are losing our waltz, Mr. Grosvenor," she said, frigidly, "and we are disturbing Sir Everard Kingsland. The 'Guards' Waltz' is a great deal too delightful to be missed."

"I fancied the first waltz was to be mine, Lady Louise," Sir Everard said, with an awful sense of guilt.

Lady Louise's blue eyes flashed fire.

"With Miss Hunsden, perhaps--certainly not with me. Come, Mr.

Grosvenor."

It was the first spiteful shaft Lady Louise had ever condescended to launch, and she bit her lip angrily an instant after, as George whirled her away.

"Idiot that I am," she thought, "to show him I can stoop to be piqued--to show him I can be jealous--to show him I care for him like this! He will get to fancy I love him next, and he--he has had neither eyes nor ears for any one else since he saw Harrie Hunsden this morning."

A sharp, quick pain pierced the proud breast of the earl's daughter, for she did love him, and she knew it--as much as it was in her lymphatic nature to love at all.

"I will never forgive him--never!" her white teeth clinched. "The dastard--to play the devoted to me, and then desert me at the first sight of a madcap on horseback. I will never stoop to say one civil word to him again."

Lady Louise kept her vow. Sir Everard, penitent and remorseful, strove to make his peace in vain.

Lord Carteret's daughter listened icily, sent barbed shafts tipped with poison from her tongue in reply, danced with him once, and steadily refused to dance again.

Sir Everard gave it up and went in search of Miss Hunsden, and was accepted by that young lady for a redowa.

"I thought you would have asked me ages ago," said Harrie, with delicious frankness. "I saw you were a good dancer, and that is more than I can say for any other gentleman present, except Lord Ernest.

Ah, Lord Ernest can waltz! It is the height of ball-room bliss to be his partner. But you stayed away to quarrel with Lady Louise, I suppose?"

"I have not been quarreling with Lady Louise," replied, Sir Everard, feeling guiltily conscious all the same.

"No? It looked like it, then. She snubs you in the most merciless manner, and you--oh, what a penitent face you wore the last time you approached her! I thought she was a great deal too uplifted for flirting, but what do you call that with George Grosvenor?"

"George Grosvenor is a very old friend. Here is our redowa, Miss Hunsden. Never mind Lady Louise."

His arm encircled her waist, and away they flew. Sir Everard could dance as well as Lord Ernest, and quite as many admiring eyes followed him and the bright little belle of the ball. Mr. Grosvenor pulled his tawny mustache with inward delight.

"Handsome couple, eh, Carteret?" he said to his host; "it is an evident case of spoons there. Well, the boy is only two-and-twenty, and at that age we all lost our heads easily."

Two angry red spots, quite foreign to her usual complexion, burned on Lady Louise's fair cheeks. She turned abruptly away and left the gentlemen.