Chapter V. Lady Glossop's Ball—The New Beauty Miss Tabitha Toogood.

About a year subsequent to the interview related above a brilliant company filled the splendid reception rooms of Lady Honoria Glossop, one of the leaders of ton in the great metropolis. The assemblage was composed of the cream of high society. Fair women in hooped skirts and powdered hair, whose eyes vied with the sparkle of their jewels; beaux of the period in lace ties, kneebreeks and buckled shoon; great lords and high-bred ladies; chaperones of all kinds on the war-path; stately nobles and titled rakes; bewigged bucks and powdered blades; all of the polished speech and stately manners characteristic of the age, mingled together in the pursuit of pleasure. Floods of light dazzled the vision, dainty perfumes oppressed the senses. The hum of many voices, and now and again the ripple of well-bred laughter, blent with the music to which the more youthful feet were tripping, while above the general buzz rose, intermittently, the rattle of the dice boxes. Round the faro tables fashionable gamesters of both sexes gathered, and the clink of coin sounded incessantly. The scene was one of splendour and sensuous enjoyment. ‘Nods, becks, and wreathed smiles’ were the order of the hour, and each member of the gay-throng seemed bent on adding his or her quota to the general gaiety.

‘May I venture to enquire of your ladyship the name of that demoiselle with the pearls?’ asked a distinguished-looking stranger, with a faintly foreign accent, of the hostess, with whom he was for a moment conversing.

‘With the pearl ropes? Ah, la! Monsieur, are they not magnificent? How softly they gleam in her coiffure, and round her lovely throat and arms! That, Monsieur, is the new beauty, a considerable heiress, and this is her first season. She has been kept back, I fancy, for one rarely sees that development under twenty-five. Is she not splendid? Such eyes and hair! She is an orphan; at least she lost her father suddenly a year since. As for her mother, she has never been seen in England; died abroad, it is said. I cannot furnish you with her history myself, but sooth, I see a wallflower yonder who can, for she is from the same county. Let me present you. Nay, look not so melancholy, my dear page break

At Lady Glossop's Ball.

page 25 Comte, the damsel dances not amiss, and it she chatters over-much, why, you will learn the more, and I see you are already enamoured of la belle brune. Come, be agreeable, and by and bye if you are very good. I shall present you to the heiress.’

A few seconds later they stood before a buxom damsel, no wise remarkable in point of looks, nestling beside a portly chaperone.

‘My dear Florinda, Monsieur le Comte de Pignerolles desires to be presented to you. Monsieur, my young friend. Miss Florinda Greenacre.’

‘I am deeply honoured. Mees Florinda. May I venture to express the hope that you will favour me with one, just one, leetle dance?’

‘Oh, la! With pleasure, Monsieur,’ exclaimed the enraptured maiden, who would gladly have promised the modest Frenchman half a dozen.

‘There is a cotillon forming. If you are not engaged, permit me. I pray you, the honour of leading you out.’

The buxom Florinda did not need much pressing, and as she proved a fairly good dancer, Monsieur le Comte had not such a bad quarter of an hour as he expected. The dance over, he led her, nothing 10th, to the conservatory, where he artfully drew from her an epitome of the history of Eleanor Radcliffe, as it was known to her contemporaries, for it was no other than she whose radiant eyes, or gleaming pearls, one or both, had made such an impression on the noble foreigner.

From the fair Florinda's narration it appeared that about twelve months previously Mr Roger Radcliffe had been found one morning dead in the library where his brother had left him on retiring to rest the evening before. His death the doctors had declared the result of apoplexy, and after the funeral the Hall had been shut up, the family going to the Isle of Wight for change of scene, Mr Horace's health having been seriously affected by the shock of his brother's unexpected demise.

The reading of the deceased gentleman's will had created quite a sensation—short only of scandal—in the country, for by it Eleanor—who had been brought up as the daughter of Mr Horace—was claimed by the elder brother, who had been supposed to have lived and died a bachelor. ‘Whether or not he had ever been married was,’ Miss Florinda said, ‘still problematical.’

‘Perhaps,’ she added with a sage head-shake and a prudish little flirt of her fan, ‘the less said about that the better.’

Another subject of comment had been the fact that while he acknowledged Miss Radcliffe as his daughter, Mr Roger had directed that his wealth should be equally divided betwixt her and his brother, bequeathing each share absolutely. The will had been proved at over a hundred thousand, and as Miss Radcliffe was her uncle's heiress page 26 presumptive, she was regarded as a fair prize in the matrimonial market.

‘She has a fair figure and modish manners, but I admire not that style myself,’ said Miss Florinda, who was a light blonde. ‘Yet I doubt not that, like the rest of your sex, you think her divine, Count. She has scarce been in town a week, and all the men are raving about her, ready to cross swords over her before breakfast, and to expire at her feet after dinner. Think you she is very handsome, Monsieur?’

‘Mdlle, will pardon me if, at present. I have eyes only for the Saxon type of beauty.’

‘Ah, la! what flatterers men are?’ giggled the gratified fair. ‘But, flattery apart, prithee tell me what you think of her. I am dying to hear your opinion, for you must needs be a judge of female charms.’

‘And wherefore, Mdlle.?’

‘He! he!’ simpered Florinda. ‘You are modest, Count, yet I dare be sworn not a whit less gallant than the rest of your gay countrymen,’ and she leered roguishly behind her fan.

‘Nay, Mdlle., you do me too much honour. But my compatriots would assuredly admire your Mdlle. Radcliffe, for, apart from the question of her beauty, she is undoubtedly tres distingué.’

‘Oh, she is uncommon, certainly. And a good thing too,’ she added inwardly, ‘forward wench.’

Half an hour later the stranger reminded his hostess of her promise to present him to the heiress.

‘In sooth, Monsieur, I shall be charmed when I see her for a moment disengaged. I fear, however, you are too late for a dance for this evening. Nathless, you may secure one for to-morrow night, for you, too, I make no doubt, are going with all the world to Lady Buttercup's masquerade?’

‘Assuredly, Madame. But pardon me—how divinely la belle Radcliffe dances. What dignity! what grace!’

‘She is without doubt an elegant dancer. We were just—for the ninety-ninth time—discussing her points as you came up. She differs so from our ordinary English beauties that we are piqued to discover how she comes by that foreign bearing and cast of feature. You have travelled, Monsieur. To what nationality should you assign her mother? For her father must needs have been married abroad—that is, always supposing that little formality to have been gone through—which the gossips insinuate a doubt upon. Not that anyone believes them, for we all know what liars they be. Come, Count, let us hear your judgment.’

‘It desolates me, Madame, that I cannot positively enlighten you, but to me that supple grace, that pliancy of figure, so to speak, suggests only Andalusia.’

‘Marry, then! Perhaps she was Spanish. Mayhap a Gitana. Who knows? That undulating movement is certainly very remarkable, and it undoubtedly adds to la belle Radcliffe's fascinations. But entre nous, Comte, I like it not. It reminds me of that terrible, beautiful creature the panther.’

‘The panther! Ha, ha! You are truly complimentary. Madame et pardieu, your description is good. Better could not be. To me la belle Radcliffe shall in future be la belle panthere!’

‘Oh, fie, Monsieur! It is not pretty to nickname gentlewomen.’

‘Ma chére Madame, it shall be used only as a term of endearment.’

‘La! Then let me warn you, Monsieur. Sound not your terms of endearment too loudly, or it may end in an early meeting in Hyde Park Ring, for, if report speaks truly, there is a hot-blooded Irishman who arrogates a preemptive right to apply such terms to Eleanor Radcliffe.’

‘C'est possible, Madame? Truly you pique me into a desire to question such arrogance. And how, Madame, does this hot-blooded Irlandais call himself?’

‘He is a Captain O'Halleran, a handsome penniless officer of the 23rd regiment—the Welsh Fusiliers. 'Tis said that the pair are actually betrothed, and that now the year of mourning has expired the nuptials will soon be celebrated.’

‘Le diable! Pardon, Madame, but this is scurvy treatment of us poor bachelors who have hitherto had no opportunity to pay our devoirs at the shrine of la belle Radcliffe.’

‘Alack! Monsieur, you are like the rest, over head and ears in love. But have a care. Let not Captain O'Halleran overhear you.’

‘Pardieu! Madame. I could desire nothing better than to measure swords with le brave Capitaine.’

‘Oh fie! What a dreadful sentiment. I declare you are quite shocking! But see the minuet is ended, and the damsel is being led back to her chaperone. Make we our way to them, and meanwhile, let me advise you that a veritable she-dragon guards the shrine of the new divinity. She is a virgin cousin of Mr Radcliffe, and, as you see, a decided contrast to her beautiful charge.’

‘Dieu m'en garde! That vinegar visaged maypole! Is she then the duenna? She is without doubt designed to be what you English call “scare the crow.”’

‘Scarecrow! Oh fie, Comte!’ laughed Lady Glossop, tapping his cheek with her fan. ‘However, with all her meagreness and frigidity she cannot scare the beaux, and that you will find. But if you desire access to the damsel, take my advice and first become au mieux with the chaperone.’

‘C'est bien, Madame. You shall see how I can play the courtier. And how call you, Madame, this attenuated virgin?’

‘Her name is Tabitha Toogood. And beware, Monsieur, that you do not Madame her. Such an affront Miss Tabitha would neither forget nor forgive.’

With honeyed phrases and much palaver the introductions were effected, and the party soon engaged in amicable chat, rippling out every now and again into tinkling laughter as one or another indulged in a sally of wit.

The wily foreigner, whose sounding title and elegant air evidently impressed Miss Tabitha, was quick to note the fact, and careful to deepen the impression by the flatteringly deferential mode in which he addressed her, in tone and manner evincing a respectful homage which sent her home at the close of the rout—which he sat out in conversation with her—in ecstasies with ‘the perfect breeding, the inherent politeness of the French noblesse.’ He had found Miss Radcliffe fully engaged, and expressing his despair with French exaggeration, had won a half promise for the ensuing night, and, rather pleased than otherwise, devoted himself for the rest of the evening to the task of securing the good graces of Miss Tabitha, with the gratifying result that he was graciously favoured by that austere spinster with permission to pay his respects at the home of the heiress on the following day.