you cannot discover for yourselves when they are both before your eyes, I will do nothing so invidious as to say which is the pretty one. I’ll tell which is the eldest and which the youngest, but the rest you must decide for yourself.’
‘I should like to know them,’ said Miss Alston. ‘Oh! they are both very nice-looking girls.’
‘There, that is Laura—Miss Edmonstone,’ said Guy, ‘that tall young lady, with the beautiful hair and jessamine wreath.’
He spoke as if he was proud of her, and had a property in her. The tone did not escape Philip, who at that moment was close to them, with Amy on his arm; and, knowing the Alstons slightly, stopped and spoke, and introduced his cousin, Miss Amabel Edmonstone. At the same time Guy took one of the Miss Alstons away to get some tea.
‘So you knew my cousin at Oxford?’ said Philip, to the brother.
‘Yes, slightly. What an amusing fellow he is!’
‘There is something very bright, very unlike other people about him,’ said Miss Alston.
‘How does he get on? Is he liked?’
‘Why, yes, I should say so, on the whole; but it is rather as my sister says, he is not like other people.’
‘In what respect?’
‘Oh I can hardly tell. He is a very pleasant person, but he ought to have been at school. He is a man of crotchets.’
‘Hard-working?’
‘Very; he makes everything give way to that. He is a capital companion when he is to be had, but he lives very much to himself. He is a man of one friend, and I don’t see much of him.’
Another dance began, Mr. Alston went to look for his partner, Philip and Amy moved on in search of ice. ‘Hum!’ said Philip to himself, causing Amy to gaze up at him, but he was musing too intently for her to venture on a remark. She was thinking that she did not wonder that strangers deemed Guy crotchety, since he was so difficult to understand; and then she considered whether to take him to see King Charles, in the library, and concluded that she would wait, for she felt as if the martyr king’s face would look on her too gravely to suit her present tone.
Philip helped her to ice, and brought her back to her mother’s neighbourhood without many more words. He then stood thoughtful for some time, entered into conversation with one of the elder gentlemen, and, when that was interrupted, turned to talk to his aunt.
Lady Eveleen and her two cousins were for a moment together. ‘What is the matter, Eva?’ said Amy, seeing a sort of dissatisfaction on her bright face.
‘The roc’s egg?’ said Laura, smiling. ‘The queen of the evening can’t be content—’
‘No; you are the queen, if the one thing can make you so—the one thing wanting to me.’
‘How absurd you are, Eva—when you say you are so afraid of him, too.’
‘That is the very reason. I should get a better opinion of myself! Besides, there is nobody else so handsome. I declare I’ll make a bold attempt.’
‘Oh! you don’t think of such a thing,’ cried Laura, very much shocked.
‘Never fear,’ said Eveleen, ‘faint heart, you know.’ And with a nod, a flourish, of her bouquet, and an arch smile at her cousin’s horror, she moved on, and presently they heard her exclaiming, gaily, ‘Captain Morville, I really must scold you. You are setting a shocking example of laziness! Aunt Edmonstone, how can you encourage such proceedings! Indolence is the parent of vice, you know.’
Philip smiled just as much as the occasion required, and answered, ‘I beg your pardon, I had forgotten my duty. I’ll attend to my business better in future.’ And turning to a small, shy damsel, who seldom met with a partner, he asked her to dance. Eveleen came back to Laura with a droll disappointed gesture. ‘Insult to injury,’ said she, disconsolately.
‘Of course,’ said Amy, ‘he could not have thought you wanted to dance with him, or you would not have gone to stir him up.’
‘Well, then, he was very obtuse.’
‘Besides, you are engaged.’
‘O yes, to Mr. Thorndale! But who would be content with the squire when the knight disdains her?’
Mr. Thorndale came to claim Eveleen at that moment. It was the second time she had danced with him, and it did not pass unobserved by Philip, nor the long walk up and down after the dance was over. At length his friend came up to him and said something warm in admiration of her. ‘She is very Irish,’ was Philip’s answer, with a cold smile, and Mr. Thorndale stood uncomfortable under the disapprobation, attracted by Eveleen’s beauty and grace, yet so unused to trust his own judgment apart from ‘Morville’s,’ as to be in an instant doubtful whether he really admired or not.
‘You have not been dancing with her?’ he said, presently.
‘No: she attracts too many to need the attention of a nobody like myself.’
That ‘too many,’ seeming to confound him with the vulgar herd, made Mr. Thorndale heartily ashamed of having been pleased with her.
Philip was easy about him for the present, satisfied that admiration had been checked, which, if it had been allowed to grow into an attachment, would have been very undesirable.
The suspicions Charles had excited were so full in Philip’s mind, however, that he could not as easily set it at rest respecting his cousin. Guy had three times asked her to dance, but each time she had been engaged. At last, just as the clock struck the hour at which the carriage had been ordered, he came up, and impetuously claimed her. ‘One quadrille we must have, Laura, if you are not tired?’
‘No! Oh, no! I could dance till this time to-morrow.’
‘We ought to be going,’ said Mrs. Edmonstone.
‘O pray, Mrs. Edmonstone, this one more,’ cried Guy, eagerly. ‘Laura owes me this one.’
‘Yes, this one more, mamma,’ said Laura, and they went off together, while Philip remained, in a reverie, till requested by his aunt to see if the carriage was ready.
The dance was over, the carriage was waiting, but Guy and Laura did not appear till, after two or three minutes spent in wonder and inquiries, they came quietly walking back from the library, where they had been looking at King Charles.
All the way home the four ladies in the carriage never ceased laughing and talking. The three gentlemen in theirs acted diversely. Mr. Edmonstone went to sleep, Philip sat in silent thought, Guy whistled and hummed the tunes, and moved his foot very much as if he was still dancing.
They met for a moment, and parted again in the hall at Hollywell, where the daylight was striving to get in through the closed shutters. Philip went on to Broadstone, Guy said he could not go to bed by daylight, called Bustle, and went to the river to bathe, and the rest crept upstairs to their rooms. And so ended Lord Kilcoran’s ball.
CHAPTER 8
Like Alexander, I will reign,
And I will reign alone,
My thoughts shall ever more disdain
