A Story of Two Birthdays
by Babington White, author of "Circe," "At Daggers Drawn," etc. [Mary Elizabeth Braddon].
Originally published in Belgravia (John Maxwell) vol.4 #15 (Jan 1868).
Birthday the First.
On a certain Christmas-eve, some eight or nine years ago, there was a very noisy gathering on the third-floor of a house in Hyde-park-gardens. The party had assembled very early in the afternoon, and the great bare branches of the trees, tossed savagely by bleak December winds, and groaning as in mortal agony, were still visible in the winter dusk. Below, in the Bayswater-road, the lights were twinkling; and the bell of the muffin-man, plying his plebeian trade even in that patrician district, made merry music. Upstairs, in the spacious, cheery third-floor sitting-room, the Christmas firelight shone brightly upon the happy faces of a circle of young people, who were seated on the carpet for the performance of the mystic rites of that favourite Christmas game called "hunt the slipper."
The ages of the revellers ranged from five to fifteen. One of the eldest amongst them was the damsel in whose honour the festival was held— Miss Laura de Courcy, who had made her first appearance on the stage of life on a Christmas-eve fifteen years before, and who was entertaining her cousins of all degrees with certain mild dissipations appropriate to the occasion. They were to drink tea in these third-floor regions, which were sacred to Miss de Courcy, her younger brother, her reliable English governess, her accomplished Parisian governess, and the patient maid who brushed the damsel's silken curls some sixteen times in the day, after those hoydenish skirmishings with her younger brother in which the vivacious young person was wont to indulge.
Miss de Courcy was an only daughter, and an heiress to boot. A grandmamma of unspeakable descent and incalculable wealth had bequeathed all her possessions to this favoured damsel; and the damsel carried the sense of her wealth and her dignity as lightly as if it had been one of the normal attributes of girlhood.
It was her own pretty little black-satin slipper for which the disputants were now struggling. The door was opened suddenly while the noise was loudest, and a young man put his head into the room.
"Our bear-fights at Maudlin are nothing to this," he said.
Laura sprang to her feet as he spoke.
"How dare you come here, sir? This is my room, sir, and my party. You are to be downstairs, with papa and mamma. I won't have grown-up people intruding on my friends."
"Not if grown-up people bring you a pair of bullfinches?"
"Bullfinches! 0, cousin George, that is quite a different thing! I have never had bullfinches. O, what a pretty cage!"
The cage was a Chinese pagoda, in delicate fretwork, with little bells that rang merrily as the intruder carried the cage to a table. There was a diversion among the slipper-hunters, and the children all clustered round the new-comer. This new-comer was Viscount Abberdale, a dark-eyed, handsome young fellow, with a kind pleasant face, and one amongst Miss de Courcy's numerous cousins.
"So you remembered that to-day is my birthday, George?" said Laura, when the bullfinches had been rapturously admired.
"My dear Laura, you know how kind your cousin always is," remonstrated Miss Vicker, the reliable English governess.
"Ah, mon Dieu! is it not that he is good?" exclaimed the irrepressible Parisienne in her native tongue.
"As if I could forget your birthday, Laura! Who was that unfortunate person who had Calais written on her heart? I have your name, and the date of your birthday, and ever so many memoranda respecting you, written on my heart, Laura. I don't think there can be room for any more writing."
"We all know that Lord Abberdale possesses a talent for talking nonsense," said the reliable one, as a hint that this kind of nonsense was inappropriate to the third-floor.
"But I have disturbed all the fun, Lorry," cried the Viscount. "Get away, Lio," he added unceremoniously to the heir of the De Courcys, who was dragging at his coat-tails; "it isn't your birthday; and if you're looking out for anything from Siraudin or Boissier, you won't find it in my dress-coat. I left a greatcoat in the hall, and I shouldn't be surprised if there were a few thousand boxes of goodies in the pockets of that." Off sped the heir, swift as a lapwing.
"And now we'll have 'hunt the slipper,'" cried George.
"Ah, that it is a droll of a young man!" shrieked the irrepressible.
"Laura, my love, I think the little ones will be anxious for their tea," said the Reliable; "suppose we adjourn to the next room.—Lord Abberdale, may we give you a cup of tea?"
"Thanks—yes. But why not more 'hunt the slipper'?"
"Miss de Courcy's little friends will be leaving her very early, and tea is ready. If you would really like a cup, you can go into the next room with us, Lord Abberdale."
"O, yes, if you please, Miss Vicker; I want to drink tea with my cousin on her birthday."
They went into the next room, another sitting-room, brightly but plainly furnished, like the first; and here was a table spread with all that is prettiest and most tempting in the way of tea.
"O, what pretty-looking cakes!" cried the undergraduate of Maudlin; "a dinner-table isn't half as pretty as a tea-table; and there's something so social and pleasant about tea. We always have coffee at our 'wines,' you know, but they don't allow us such cakes as those when we are training."
Lord Abberdale insisted upon staying all tea-time, and further insisted upon making himself very busy with the dealing out of cups and saucers, and the nice admeasurement of cream and sugar.
Lionel de Courcy came shouting up the staircase, laden with bon-bon boxes; and the tea-table was thrown into confusion presently by the appearance of these treasures, and the excitement caused thereby.
All quiet Miss Vicker's excellent arrangements for her pupil's youthful guests were thrown out of gear by this wild Oxonian. The two white-aproned waiting-maids could scarcely make head against the confusion; and that Babel and riot arose which is common to all juvenile communities, unless kept down by the iron hand of despotism. Little ones clambered from their chairs, and bigger ones stretched eager arms across the table to clutch some satin bag of pralines or daintily-painted box of violettes glacées. Cups of tea were spilt over pretty fantastic dresses, devised by fond mothers and clever maids for this special occasion; pyramids of cake were overthrown, a glass preserve-dish was broken,—all was chaos; and across the "wrack" which she surveyed from her seat at the head of the table, Miss Vicker beheld, as in a vision, George Abberdale and Laura de Courcy seated calmly side by side, engaged in that kind of discourse which, had the damsel been "out," would have been called flirtation.
"How very wrong of Mrs. de Courcy to allow him to come upstairs!" she said to herself. And then she sank back in her chair, and abandoned herself, with a sigh of resignation, to the inevitable.
"What an awfully rigid individual your Miss Vicker is!" said the young man; "she will hardly allow me to look at you: as if we were not cousins, and as if we are not going to be something more than cousins one of these days."
"And pray what more than cousins shall we ever be, sir?" asked Laura, who was quite able to hold her own against this impertinent young nobleman.
"Never mind now; you will find out by and by. Do you know, I have secured a talisman which I shall keep as long as I live?"
"What kind of talisman?"
"The magic slipper,—la pianella magica! The slipper you were playing with just now. Was it made for Titania?"
"It was made for me, sir; and it is too large."
"You won't be troubled with it any more: I hope you have one on."
"Of course. That slipper was fetched from my room. Do you think 1 would hop about with one shoe on this cold winter's night? O dear, I hope there are no poor people without any shoes!"
"I'm afraid there are, my dear. But don't think of them now; it makes you look so sorrowful. I mean to keep this slipper."
"You are a most presuming person; and I shall tell Miss Vicker."
*O, no, you won't! Poor Miss Vicker! She is watching us now. How awful she looks, doesn't she? Quite a genteel Medusa."
"And pray what are you going to do with my slipper?"
"Keep it to be thrown after you on your wedding-day."
"You will throw it?" "O dear, no!" "And why not?"
"For the best possible reason: I shall be with you in the carriage."
Miss de Courcy blushed and laughed. For a beauty of three lustres she was tolerably advanced in the art of coquetry.
Tea was finished by this time. The younger guests were cloaked and shawled, and hooded and muffled, for departure. The elders were to go down to the drawing-room after dinner for a quadrille or two. There were visitors to the heads of the house expected; but not many. Town was empty; and only urgent parliamentary business had induced Mr. de Courcy to spend his Christmas in Hyde-park-gardens. Far away on the Scottish border there was a noble old castle where the family were wont to pass this pleasant season, with much festivity, and great advantage to the poor of the district. Of course arrangements had been made whereby the poor should be no losers because of the family's absence; but their absence was regretted in that Border district nevertheless; and blankets and flannel cloaks and comfortable winter gowns scarcely seemed of as good a quality when received from the hands of a grim old housekeeper, instead of the ladies of the mansion.
The party in the drawing-room assembled between nine and ten. Miss de Courcy and her three or four chosen friends came down at nine, and met her cousin ascending from the dining-room. She sat down to the piano and played to him, while her mamma dozed in the farther drawing-room; and then the grown-up company arrived, and there was a great deal of music and a little impromptu dancing. It was altogether a delightful evening, Laura thought.
"I shall keep my next birthday at Courcy," she said. "Shall you be with us, George?"
"I think not. I am going in for travelling when I leave Oxford."
"You will go to Switzerland and Italy? How delightful!"
"I shall do nothing so slow. I shall go to Africa, or the Caucasus. I mean to do the Caucasus completely."
"Is the Caucasus a nice place?"
"O, it's perfectly sweet! And the Amoor, and the Himalayas. When one considers the encroachments of Russia upon our Indian empire, you see, Lorry, it's a kind of duty every man owes his country to get himself coached-up in the Amoor and the Himalayas."
"Shall you be long away?" asked Laura, with a disappointed face.
"O, no; only half-a-dozen years or so. Of course I shall go in for the North Pole. A man who isn't well up in his Arctic regions gets snubbed by somebody every time he goes out to dinner. In fact, the Arctic regions are getting almost as common as the Matterhorn."
"Then if you're going to all these places, I'm sure you won't be at home when I come of age. And papa has promised me all sorts of grand doings then. A fancy ball at Courcy. And I have so longed for a fancy ball: but I shall be dreadfully disappointed if you are not at my ball. I have always thought what fun it would all be, and what an absurd dress you would wear—a dress that no one would know you in, you know—a chimneysweep or a baker's man."
"I should like amazingly to come as a chimneysweep. You will be something magnificent, of course—a princess of the Middle Ages, in that dim period of shadowy kings and queens, and Princes of Wales trying on their fathers' crowns before the cheval-glass in the royal bed-chamber, when there were sumptuary laws to regulate the weight of the women's head-gear. I can fancy you in one of those high-peaked head-dresses, with a cloth-of-gold gown. You would look very jolly."
"Jolly!" repeated Miss de Courcy; "I shall not spend poor dear grandmamma's money on cloth-of-gold dresses in order to look jolly."
"You will look an angel; and I shall dance the first quadrille with you—chimneysweep and princess. The contrast will be sweet."
"Very sweet. You will be at the Caucasus, or on the North Pole, I daresay, when I come of age."
"From the heights of Caucasus, from the remotest depths of Polar regions, from the snow-drifts where the bleached bones of perished wanderers gleam ghastly white against the ghastly snow, from the Ganges, from the Chinese Wall, I shall come."
"Very well, sir. I shall remember your rash promise when my ball begins without a chimneysweep. However, the loss will be yours if you forget the occasion."
"I shall not forget."
"Mamma is beckoning to me," said Miss de Courcy, and thereupon slipped away to take shelter beneath the maternal wing. Miss Vicker, the reliable, had just drawn Mrs. de Courcy's attention to the fact that Lord Abberdale's attentions to his cousin were rather more pronounced than was consonant with the damsel's tender years.
"You are not paying any attention to your friends, Lorry," said mamma; "there is Bella Hargrave turning over a book of photographs in the dreariest manner. I shall not give you birthday-parties unless you behave better. You are always laughing with your cousin George."
"George is so funny. What do you think, mamma? He has actually pledged himself to appear at my birthday ball when I come of age. It is to be a fancy ball, you know—that's an old promise of papa's; and George declares he will dance the first quadrille with me dressed as a chimneysweep."
"D.V.," murmured the Reliable One piously.
After this, Laura de Courcy danced more than one dance with her cousin George. When eleven o'clock chimed from the clock on the chimneypiece, Miss Vicker came in search of her charge. The young friends had all departed within the last half-hour: only grown-up company remained. A young lady was singing an Italian canzonette in the second drawing-room. George and his cousin were almost alone in the large southward-looking room where they had danced. The birthday was over. Miss de Courcy was no longer queen of the occasion: she was there on sufferance, and was liable to be sent to bed at any moment. Miss Vicker and the moment came.
"I was just coming, Carry," cried Miss Laura. She called her monitress by her Christian name on occasions.—"Good-night, George."
"Good-night and good-bye, Lorry; I'm off to Norfolk for the shooting to-morrow, and then back to Oxford, and then—"
"What then?"
"Two fellows and I have planned a trip to Africa in the spring."
"To Africa! You really mean it? But there are tigers and crocodiles, and dreadful things like that, are there not?"
"O dear, no: not the genuine Bengal animal; not the splendid striped monster of India. The African tiger is only a paltry spotted thing. There's no credit in shooting such an impostor."
"But that kind of impostor might eat you," cried Laura in terror.
"O dear, no. The genuine man-eater is only to be found in the jungle. Besides, we shall have a tutor with us, to take care of the luggage and coach us in our classical geography, and all that kind of thing; and, as a conscientious person, it will be his duty to be eaten first. Good-bye, Lorry, until this night six years."
"Until this night six years!" repeated the young-lady, almost crying; "I think you might kiss me, cousin George, if you are going to stay away as long as that."
Lord Abberdale obeyed this hint, heedless of Miss Vicker's murmured protest. He blushed like a girl as he set his lips on the innocent upturned face, bade the governess a hurried good-night, and was gone.
BIRTHDAY THE SECOND.
Miss de Courcy at twenty-one was a lady of vast accomplishments and considerable experience. She could converse very agreeably, within ballroom limits, in three or four continental languages— could give her opinion of the arrangements of a court-ball in Italian; decline refreshments in Danish; accept a partner for the next waltz in German; and chatter gaily all the evening through in very pure French. She was musical, and had been taught the piano by Madame Arabella Goddard, the harmonium by Herr Engel; and beyond all this, in the eyes of that, unhappily, shallow-minded section of humanity in which her lot was cast, she was undeniably beautiful. The cold-hearted worldling who, when first introduced to her, remembered that she had forty thousand pounds in her own right, had not been half-an-hour in her society before he forgot everything except that she was one of the loveliest and most charming of women.
More than one advantageous opportunity of settlement in life had offered itself to Miss de Courcy before her one-and-twentieth birthday; but she had refused the most brilliant of these opportunities without a moment's hesitation. She had been something of a flirt, but had given no man the right to consider himself ill-used by her. She was eminently popular. Men called her a jolly girl, a lovely girl, no end of a nice girl, according to their lights—or their darkness; but all agreed in the broad fact, that she was a good girl—good in the widest sense of the word; a girl to whom the simulation of demi-mondain audacities and the lying arts of Rachel and enamel were "hateful as the gates of hell"—a genuine, true-hearted Englishwoman, worthy to become the mother of brave and noble Englishmen in the time to come.
In the middle of December in that year, a British yacht, built for honest work, and bearing traces of hard usage, lay at anchor off the coast of Norway. This yacht was the Lorley, commanded by George Lord Abberdale; and that young nobleman, with three chosen friends, was roughing it in a Norwegian hostelry while the Lorley was refitted for her homeward voyage. Lord Abberdale and his companions had spent their summer in the neighbonrhood of Baffin's Bay, and having been very fortunate in the matter of sport, were returning to their native shores in excellent spirits and temper. Vasco di Gama or Marco Polo, Columbus or Raleigh, would have been struck with amazement on perusing the notebook of Lord Abberdale, in which was recorded the extent of country that young nobleman had travelled. But the heir of all the ages has the advantage of medieval explorers, and the day may come when, in the handsome squares and crescents, streets and terraces of Baffin's Town or Behringville, the dwellers of a northern world may marvel to hear how English travellers once perished, forlorn and hopeless, in the regions of untrodden snow.
Lord Abberdale had "gone in" for Arctic exploration, and the last few years of his life had been given entirely to the pursuit of the explorer's renown. He had not even had time to regret his long separation from that favourite cousin who, he had long ago promised himself, should some day be something nearer and dearer than cousinship, pleasant as that tie between them had been to him. He told his love-story to his companions to-night in the Norwegian hostelry. He had no idea that reticence as to the liege lady of his love was a point of honour.
"I shall call that love-story of yours the thousand-and-one nights, George," said one of his friends. "I'm sure we've heard it a thousand-and-one times. It seems to me rather a spoony notion of yours, falling in love with a chit of fifteen."
"Fifteen!" cried George, "I've been over head and ears in love with my cousin Laura ever since she was seven. Not having any people of my own, you know, and De Courcy being my guardian, I used to spend my holidays at Courcy; and sometimes in the summer months they used to have a place at Maidenhead, or Old Windsor, or somewhere thereabouts, while I was at Eton, and of course I was always hanging about the place—boating and fishing—and, in a general way, playing Old Gooseberry. I was within an inch of drowning Lorry half-a-dozen times or so; but she didn't seem to mind it. And her brother Lionel has no end of pluck, and used to take his duckings sweetly."
And then Lord Abberdale told the story of the birthday ball, and produced the treasured slipper, which he carried in a pocket of his log-book, the log and the slipper being about equally sacred in his eyes.
"And you mean to be home in time for the fancy ball?" asked one of his companions.
"I should think I do, indeed! Why, I'd smash the Lorley and every man aboard her sooner than break my word to that dear girl!"
"Then I fancy you'll have a tight squeeze of it," replied his friend. "We haven't been paying much attention to the operations of the enemy since we've left off keeping the log. This is the 15th of December, and the Lorley won't be ready for sea in less than a week."
"She shall be ready in three days, Hal," roared George; "I'd sooner miss a pot of money on next year's Derby than that ball."
"You may do it, with luck."
"I'll do it with luck or without luck," replied George, unmindful of that "D.V." piously interjected by Miss Vicker on a previous occasion.
"How about your dress?"
"What dress?"
"Your costume for the fancy ball?"
"I've got that safe enough with the rest of my traps on board the Lorley," answered George with a laugh; "I had it from a costumier in the neighbourhood of Baffin's Bay."
Late in the afternoon of December 24th, a gentleman might have been observed—if travellers generally were not too much occupied by their own affairs to observe anyone—journeying by express, northward to Kelton, the nearest station to Courcy Castle. When the train stopped at this small station, for the special accommodation of this traveller, there was some little difficulty about the luggage, and a certain black case was missing, the temporary loss of which threw the traveller into a fever of rage and impatience.
Happily, it was fished out of some darksome cavern of a luggage-van before the express—snorting defiant and angry snorts all the time of the delay—had snorted itself out of the station, with a farewell shriek of rage at having been detained at so insignificant a halting-place. The traveller glared at the porter who ultimately produced the case with a most appalling glare.
"It's very lucky for you it turned up," he said, "or I should have been very much tempted to break every bone in your body."
"Do you know who that is?" asked the porter of the station-master, when the furious traveller and his black packing-case had been driven away in a fly.
"No—do you?"
"Yes; it's Lord Abberdale, nephew to Mr. de Courcy. He's going to the ball. That's his fancy dress as he's got in that box, I'll lay."
The eventful night had arrived. Lights shone from all the windows of Courcy Castle, and the poor of the district rejoiced and made merry, inasmuch as their dole of this year was double the customary bounty, and that was a royal one. Scarlet cloaks and comfortable blankets, packets of grocery and baskets of wine, had been dealt out with liberal hands. Miss de Courcy had been driving about the neighbourhood all the week in her pretty basket-carriage; and if there were sad hearts or cheerless hearths within twenty miles of Courcy on this cold Christmas-eve, it was by no shortcoming or stint on the part of the Castle that there was sadness and cheerlessness.
In Miss de Courcy's dressing-room there was much excitement as the hands of the little timepiece drew near ten o'clock. At ten o'clock the guests had been bidden; and the guests bidden to this birthday ball included some very important people. It was to be altogether a most brilliant affair; and everybody in the Castle seemed in the highest possible spirits—except Laura, the one person who ought naturally to have been the most joyous of all. The faithful Miss Vicker—still retained as monitor and friend, though for some time superseded as instructress—watched her late pupil with mingled anxiety and wonder, as the young lady sat before the cheval-glass, while her maid was occupied with the solemn task of adjusting her head-dress.
The head-dress was a difficult one, demanding great skill and nicety in the adjustment thereof. It was one of those lofty sugar-loaf head-gears affected by the women of the Middle Ages. Mrs. de Courcy had suggested the powder and patches of the Pompadour period for her daughter's adornment; but the young lady had her own whims, and adhered obstinately to her own fancy.
"I will be a medieval princess and nothing else, mamma," she said; "and my dress must be cloth-of-gold. I have found the costume in papa's illustrated edition of Planché."
Mrs. de Courcy turned up her nose at the conical head-gear.
"Why, the hideous thing must be a foot and a half high," she said. "I'm sure I don't know what you'll look like, child,—you, who are rather too tall at the best of times."
The conical head-gear was ordered, nevertheless; and the trailing robe of cloth-of-gold, with lions and leopards in black velvet laid thereupon, with broideries in spangles and bullion of unutterable splendour. The petticoat was of cherry-coloured brocade; the shoes long and pointed; the ruff a marvel of historical research; the sugar-loaf headpiece an epitome of the old chroniclers; and the result was an embodiment of the grotesquely beautiful. The quaint moyen-âge dress imparted something weird and fantastic to the damsel's loveliness. So might appear the vision of long-buried beauty, if we could cohjure it from its chilly resting-place; and so might shine, in all the glamour of unreal loveliness, the ideal princess of a dreaming Spenser.
All the best people within a reasonable distance of Courcy, together with distinguished visitors staying at the Castle, were assembled in the great drawing-room at eleven o'clock. The costumes were good; many of them had figured at the court-balls of fifteen and twenty years ago. The people were agreeable; the arrangements seemed perfection, except to one person, and that person was the mediæval princess.
Mr. de Courcy had several times suggested that the signal should be given to the band in the gallery for the first quadrille, but the princess made some objection on every occasion.
"The bishop has not come yet, papa," she said; "it would be the worst possible taste to begin dancing before he comes. I consider it so very liberal of him to come at all, especially as he is rather low."
It must be remembered that Miss de Courcy used this last obnoxious word in the ecclesiastical, and not the vulgar, sense.
The bishop came presently, attired as William Penn, in a cheap, and not especially compromising, costume. But his daughters were all that there is of the most Pompadour, and his son was attired as Lord Dundreary, and came prepared to afflict the company with weak imitations of Mr. Sothern. Mr. de Courcy again suggested the signal for the first quadrille, but again Laura resisted.
"There is Lady Louisa Sparkleham, papa. Dobbins walked home from church with her maid last Sunday, and she is coming as Queen Elizabeth, in the costume she wore at Buckingham Palace twenty years ago; and I am sure she is just the sort of person to be offended if her appearance produces no effect; and of course it won't if we're all jogging about in a quadrille."
"I don't see why you need be jogging about," grumbled Mr. de Courcy. "It's eleven o'clock. People expect to be earlier, you know, in the country."
At last the time came when excuses would be no longer accepted. The inevitable signal was given. The band in the gallery began one of D'Albert's Introductions with a great crash; then a series of smaller crashes—slow, quick, crescendo, tremulo; a plaintive little pianissimo bit for the cornet, rallentando—and off we go into Pantalon. The medieval princess and Lord Dundreary are partners. William Penn smiles benignly on his son from the circle of lookers-on, in spite of his lowness. Is it not written in the dowager Mrs. de Courcy's will that the mediæval princess shall have forty thousand pounds?
"Eleven o'clock," says the inward voice of the princess, "and no chimneysweep! His promise is quite broken now."
The thought has scarcely shaped itself in her mind when there is a sudden confusion among the lookers-on. The low bishop is pushed irreverently on one side, Lord Dundreary recoils horror-stricken, the ladies scream in their usual charming manner, as an awful and appalling form plunges clumsily in among the dancers. A Polar bear—white as the icebergs of his native land, shaggy as the ragged drifts of snow that fringe those icebergs, awful as the dangers of those trackless regions—displaces the bishop's son, and seizes the shrinking hand of the princess in his ponderous paw.
No word spoke this hideous brute; no heed took he of Dundreary's remonstrances, the bishop's indignation, the titters and little screams of the company; but through the mazy figures of the dance—in the solemn settings of L'Eté, the see-saw movements of La Poule, the graceful advancings and retirings of Pastourelle, the whirl and riot of final gallopade—did the monster drag the mediæval princess, to the wonder and admiration of the assembled multitude.
When the quadrille was finished, he led the damsel to her parents, and lifting the grim jaw and throwing back the shaggy head as if it had been a knightly visor, the uncouth visitor revealed the countenance of Lord Abberdale.
"I'm afraid I've been very rude to a lot of people," he said; "but you must introduce me to them presently, aunt Sophia, and I must make my peace somehow. I didn't reach the Castle till five minutes before I came into the room. Six years ago, in Hyde-park-gardens, I promised Lorry I'd dance the first dance with her on this night, and I've done it. And, by Jove, I don't much care whom I have offended!"
"But you were to come as a chimneysweep," said Laura.
"Well, you see, I hadn't time to think of the elegancies of costume. I shot this poor beggar—I beg your pardon, Lorry—this unfortunate animal—in Baffin's Bay; and very sorry I was to do it, considering how tame the poor creatures are when they haven't the honour of our acquaintance."
"You see I remembered the dress you said you'd like me to wear," Miss de Courcy said later, when a compact of peace, or at least armed neutrality, had been made between Lord Abberdale and the bishop, and these two cousins had danced more than one dance together.
"Yes, darling; and very lovely you look in it. And now there is only one more dress that I languish to see you in."
"Indeed! and what may that be?"
"White, and orange-blossoms."
And to oblige this audacious young nobleman, Miss de Courcy made her appearance in this costume at St. George's, Hanover-square, early in the ensuing April.