And in private they nodded their heads at each other and talked of its being time to make their wills, and spoke of young Mr. Worth as their heir and executor.
Ishmael for his part treated the old ladies with all the reverential tenderness that their age and womanhood had a right to expect from his youth and manhood. He never dreamed that the "sweet, small courtesies," which it was his happiness to bestow alike on rich and poor, had won for him such signal favor in the eyes of the old ladies. He knew and was happy to know that they loved him. That was all. He never dreamed of being their heir; he never even imagined that they had any property to bequeath. He devoted himself with conscientious zeal to his profession, and went on, as he deserved to go on, from success to success.
CHAPTER XIII.
LADY VINCENT'S RECEPTION.
The folds of her wine-dark violet dress
Glow over the sofa fall on fall.
As she sits in the light of her loveliness,
With a smile for each and for all.
Could we find out her heart through that velvet and lace,
Can it beat without rumpling her sumptuous dress?
She will show us her shoulder, her bosom, her face,
But what her heart's like, we must guess.
—O. M.
The evening of Lady Vincent's reception arrived. At an unfashionably early hour Judge Merlin's country house was filled.
All the county families of any importance were represented there.
The rustic guests, drawn, no doubt, not more by their regard for
Judge Merlin and his daughter than by their curiosity to behold a
titled foreigner.
Mr. and Mrs. Middleton and Beatrice came very early, encumbered with several bandboxes; for their long ride made it necessary for them to defer their evening toilet until after their arrival.
They were received and conducted to their rooms by old Aunt Katie.
"Lady Vincent," she said, "has not yet left her dressing room."
When their toilets were made, Mr. and Mrs. Middleton came to Bee's door to take her down to the drawing room.
Very beautiful indeed looked Bee, in her floating, cloud-like dress of snow-white tulle, with white moss-roses resting on her rounded bosom and wreathing her golden ringlets; and all her beauty irradiated with the light of a happy love.
Her father smiled proudly and her mother fondly on her as she came out and joined them.
The found the drawing rooms already well filled with guests.
Lord and Lady Vincent stood near the door to receive all comers. To them the Middletons first went.
Very handsome and majestic looked Claudia in her rich robe of royal purple velvet, with her raven black hair crowned with a diadem of diamonds, and diamonds blazing on her neck and arms and at her waist. Strangers looked upon her loveliness with unqualified delight. Her "beauty made them glad." But friends who saw the glittering surface and the alloy beneath it, admired and sighed. Her dark eyes were beaming with light; her oval cheeks were burning with crimson fire. Mrs. Middleton thought this was fever; but Bee knew it was French rouge.
Claudia received her friends with bright smiles and gay words. She complimented them on their good looks and rallied them on their gravity. And then she let them lightly pass away to make room for new arrivals, who were approaching to pay their respects.
They passed through the crowd until they found Judge Merlin, to whose care Mr. Middleton consigned Bee, while he himself, with his wife on his arm, made a tour of all the rooms, including the supper room.
The party, they saw, was going to be a successful one, notwithstanding the fact that the three great metropolitan ministers of fashion had nothing whatever to do with it.
Sam and Jim, with perfect liberty to do their worst in the matters of garden flowers and wax lights, had decorated and illuminated the rooms with the rich profusion for which the negro servants are notorious. The guests might have been in fairy groves and bowers, instead of drawing rooms, for any glimpse of walls or ceilings they could get through green boughs and blooming flowers.
In the supper room old Aunt Katie with her attendant nymphs had laid a feast that might vie in "toothsomeness" if not in elegance with the best ever elaborated by the celebrated caterer.
And in the dancing room the local band of negro musicians drew from their big fiddle, little fiddle, banjo, and bones notes as ear- piercing and limb-lifting, if not as scientific and artistic, as anything ever executed by Dureezie's renowned troupe.
The Englishman, secretly cynical, sneered at all this; but openly courteous, made himself agreeable to all the prettiest of the country belles, who ever after had the proud boast of having quadrilled or waltzed with Lord Vincent.
The party did not break up until morning. The reason of this was obvious—the company could not venture to return home in their carriages over those dangerous country roads until daylight.
It was, in fact, sunrise before the last guests departed and the weary family were at liberty to go to bed and sleep. They had turned the night into day, and now it was absolutely necessary to turn the day into night.
They did not any of them awake until three or four o'clock in the afternoon, when they took coffee in their chambers. And they did not reassemble until the late dinner hour at six o'clock, by which time the servants had removed the litter of the party and restored the rooms to neatness, order, and comfort.
The Middletons had not departed with the other guests. They joined the family at dinner. And after dinner, at the pressing invitation of Judge Merlin, they agreed to remain at Tanglewood for the few days that would intervene before the departure of Lord and Lady Vincent for Europe. Only Bee, the next morning, drove over to the Beacon to give the servants there strict charges in regard to the girls and boys, and to bring little Lu back with her to Tanglewood.
The next week was passed in making the final preparations for the voyage.
And when all was ready on a bright Monday morning, the first of October, Lord and Lady Vincent, with their servants and baggage, departed from Tanglewood.
Judge Merlin, leaving his house to be shut up by the Middletons, accompanied them to see them off in the steamer.
It was quite an imposing procession that left Tanglewood that morning. There were two carriages and a van. In the first carriage rode Lord and Lady Vincent and Judge Merlin. In the second my lord's valet and my lady's three servants. And in the van was piled an inconceivable amount of luggage.
This procession made a sensation, I assure you, as it lumbered along the rough country roads. Every little isolated cabin along the way turned out its ragged rout of girls and boys who threw up their
