And Stanley Lake glided slowly away, and was lost
in the crowd. He went into the supper-room, and
had a glass of seltzer water and sherry. He loitered
at the table. His ruminations were dreary, I fancy,
and his temper by no means pleasant; and it needed
a good deal of that artificial command of countenance
which he cultivated, to prevent his betraying something
of the latter, when Sir Harry Bracton, talking loud
and volubly as usual, swaggered into the supper-room,
with Dorcas Brandon on his arm.
THE SUPPER-ROOM.
It was rather trying, in this state of things, to
receive from the triumphant baronet, with only a parenthetical
’Dear Lake, I beg your pardon,’ a rough
knock on the elbow of the hand that held his glass,
and to be then summarily hustled out of his place.
It was no mitigation of the rudeness, in Lake’s
estimate, that Sir Harry was so engrossed and elated
as to seem hardly conscious of any existence but Miss
Brandon’s and his own.
Lake was subject to transient paroxysms of exasperation;
but even in these be knew how to command himself pretty
well before witnesses. His smile grew a little
stranger, and his face a degree whiter, as he set
down his glass, quietly glided a little away, and brushed
off with his handkerchief the aspersion which his
coat had suffered.
In a few minutes more Miss Brandon had left the supper-room
leaning upon Lord Chelford’s arm; and Sir Harry
remained, with a glass of pink champagne, such as
young fellows drink with a faith and comfort so wonderful,
at balls and fetes champetres.
Sir Harry Bracton was already ‘chaffing a bit,’
as he expressed it, with the young lady who assisted
in dispensing the good things across the supper-table,
and was just calling up her blushes by a pretty parallel
between her eyes and the sparkling quality of his glass,
and telling her her mamma must have been sweetly pretty.
Now, Sir Harry’s rudeness to Lake had not been,
I am afraid, altogether accidental. The baronet
was sudden and vehement in his affairs of the heart;
but curable on short absences, and easily transferable.
He had been vehemently enamoured of the heiress of
Brandon a year ago and more; but during an absence
Mark Wylder’s suit grew up and prospered, and
Sir Harry Bracton acquiesced; and, to say truth, the
matter troubled his manly breast but little.
He had hardly expected to see her here in this rollicking,
rustic gathering. She was, he thought, even more
lovely than he remembered her. Beauty sometimes
seen again does excel our recollections of it.
Wylder had gone off the scene, as Mr. Carlyle says,
into infinite space. Who could tell exactly the
cause of his dismissal, and why the young lady had
asserted her capricious resolve to be free?
There were pleasant theories adaptable to the circumstances;
and Sir Harry cherished an agreeable opinion of himself;
and so, all things favouring; the old flame blazed
up wildly, and the young gentleman was more in love
then, and for some weeks after the ball, than perhaps
he had ever been before.
