BETTY KINGSWARD lived in what was to her a whirl of pleasure at Portman Square, where everybody was fond of her, and all manner of entertainments were devised for her pleasure. And her correspondence was not usually of an exciting character. Her morning letters, when she had any, were placed by her plate on the breakfast-table. If any came by other posts, she got them when she had a spare moment to look for them, and she had scarcely a spare moment at this very lively and very happy moment of her young career. Besides, that particular evening when Bee’s note arrived was a very important one to Betty. It was the evening on which Miss Lance was to dine with the Lyons. And it was not a mere quiet family dinner, but a party—a thing which in her newness and inexperience still excited the little girl, who was not to say properly “out,” in consequence of her mourning; still wearing black ribbons with her white frocks, and only allowed to accept invitations which were “quiet.” A dinner of twenty people is not exactly an entertainment for a girl of her years, but Betty’s excitement in the debût of Miss Lance was so great that no ball could have occupied her more. There was an unusual interest about it in the whole house, even Mrs. Lyon’s maid, the most staid of confidential persons, had begged Betty to point out to her over the baluster “the lady, Miss Betty, that is coming with your papa.”
“Oh, she’s not coming with papa,” Betty had cried, with a laugh at Hobbs’ mistake, “she is only a great, great friend, Hobbs. You will easily know her, for there is nobody else so handsome.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” said the woman, and she patted Betty on the shoulder under pretence of arranging her ribbon.
Betty had not the least idea why Hobbs looked at her with such compassionate eyes.
Miss Lance, however, did come into the room, to Betty’s surprise, closely followed by Colonel Kingsward, as if they had arrived together. She was like a picture, in her black satin and lace, dressed not too young but rather too old for her age, as Mrs. Lyon pointed out, who was as much excited about her new guest as Betty herself; and the unknown lady had the greatest possible success in a party which consisted chiefly, as Betty did not remark, of old friends of Colonel Kingsward, with whom she had been acquainted all her life. Betty did not remark it, but Gerald Lyon did, who was more than ever her comrade and companion in this elderly company.
“Why all these old fogies?” he had asked irreverently, as the gentlemen with stars on their coats and the ladies in diamonds came in.
Betty perceived that it was an unusually solemn party, but thought no more of it. It was the evening of the first levee, and that, perhaps, was the reason why the old gentlemen wore their orders. Old gentlemen! They were the flower of the British army. Generals This and That, heads of departments; impossible to imagine more grand people—in the flower of their age, like Colonel Kingsward. But eighteen has its own ideas very clearly marked on that subject. Betty and Gerald stood by, lighting up one corner with a blaze of undeniable youth, to see them come in. The young pair were like flowers in comparison with the substantial size and well worn complexions of their seniors, and they were the only little nobodies, the sole representatives of undistinguished and ordinary humanity round the table. They were not by any means daunted by that. On the contrary, they felt themselves, as it were, soaring over the heads of all those limited persons who had attained, spurning the level heights of realisation. They did not in the least know what was to become of them in life, but naturally they made light of the others who did know, who had done all they were likely to do, and had no more to look to. The dignity of accomplished success filled the young ones with impulses of laughter; their inferiority gave them an elevation over all the grizzled heads; they felt themselves, nobodies, to be almost ludicrously, dizzily above the heads of the rest. Only one of the company seemed to see this, however; to cast them an occasional look, even to make them the confidants of an occasional smile, a raising of the eyebrows, a sort of unspoken comment on the fine company, which made Betty still more lively in her criticisms. But this made almost a quarrel between the two.
“Oh, I wish we were nearer to Miss Lance, to hear what she thinks of it all,” Betty said.
“I can’t think what you see in that woman,” cried Gerald. “I, for one, have no desire to know her opinion.”
Betty turned her little shoulder upon him with a glance of flame, that almost set the young man on fire.
“You prejudiced, cynical, uncharitable, malicious, odious boy!” And they did not say another word to each other for five minutes by the clock.
Miss Lance, however, there was no doubt, had a distinguished success. She captivated the gentlemen who were next to her at table, and, what was perhaps more difficult, she made a favourable impression upon the ladies in the drawing-room. Her aspect there, indeed, was of the most attractive kind. She drew Betty’s arm within her own, and said with a laugh, “You and I are the girls, little Betty, among all these grand married ladies;” and then she added, “Isn’t it a little absurd that we shouldn’t have some title to ourselves, we old maids?—for Miss means eighteen, and it’s hard that it should mean forty-two. Fancy the disappointment of hearing this juvenile title and then finding that it means a middle-aged woman.”
She laughed so freely that some of the other ladies laughed too. The attention of all was directed towards the new comer, which Betty thought very natural, she was so much the handsomest of them all.
“You mean the disappointment of a gentleman?” said one of the guests.
“Oh, no, of ladies too. Don’t you think women are just as fond of youth as men are, and as much disgusted with an elderly face veiling itself in false pretences? Oh, more! We think more of beauty than the men do,” said Miss Lance, raising her fine head as if to expose its features to the fire of all the glances bent upon her.
There was a little chorus of cries, “Oh, no, no,” and arguments against so novel a view.
But Miss Lance did not quail; her own beauty was done full justice to. She was so placed that more than one mirror in the old-fashioned room reflected her graceful and not unstudied pose.
“I know it isn’t a usual view,” she said, “but if you’ll think of it a little you’ll find it’s true. The common thing is to talk about women being jealous of each other. If we are it is because we are always the first to find out a beautiful face—and usually we much exaggerate its power.”
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Lyon in her quavering voice, “I almost think Miss Lance is right? Mr. Lyon instantly says ‘Humph!’ when I point out a pretty person to him. And Gerald tells me, ‘You think every girl pretty, aunt.’ ”
“That is because there is one little girl that he thinks the most pretty of all,” said Miss Lance, with a sort of soft maternal coo in Betty’s ear.
The subject was taken up and tossed about from one to another, while she who had originated it drew back a little, listening with an air of much attention, turning her head to each speaker, an attitude which was most effective. It will probably be thought the greatest waste of effort for a woman thus to exhibit what the newspapers call her personal advantages to a group of her own sex; but Miss Lance was a very clever woman, and she knew what she was about. After a time, when the first fervour of the argument was over, she returned to her first theme as to the appropriate title that ought to be invented for old maids.
“I have thought of it a great deal,” she said. “I should have called myself Mrs. Laura Lance, to discriminate—but for the American custom of calling all married ladies so, which is absurd.”
“I have a friend in New York who writes to me as Mrs. Mary Lyon,” said the mistress of the house.
“Yes, which is ridiculous, you know; for you are not Mrs. Mary Lyon, dear lady. You are Mrs. Francis Lyon, if it is necessary to have a Christian name, for Lyon is your husband’s name, not yours. You are Mrs. Mary Howard by rights—if in such a matter there are any rights.”
“What!” cried old Mr. Lyon, coming in after the long array of gentlemen, “are you going to divorce my wife from me, or give her another name, or what are you going to do? We thought it was we only who could change the ladies’ names, Kingsward, eh?”
Colonel Kingsward had placed himself immediately in front of Miss Lance, and Betty, looking on all unsuspicious, saw a glance pass between them—or rather, she saw Miss Lance look up into her father’s face. Betty did not know in the least what that look meant, but it gave her a little shock as if she had touched an electric battery. It meant something more than to Betty’s consciousness had ever been put into words. She turned her eyes away for a moment to escape the curious thrill that ran through her, and in that moment met Gerald Lyon’s eyes, full of something malicious, mocking, disagreeable, which made Betty very angry. But she could not explain to herself what all these looks meant.
This curious sensation somehow spoiled the rest of the evening for Betty. Everybody it seemed to her after this meant something—something more than they said. They looked at her father, they looked at Miss Lance, they looked even at Betty’s little self, embracing all three, sometimes in one comprehensive glance. And all kinds of significant little speeches were made as the company went away. “I am so glad to have seen her,” one lady said in an undertone to Mrs. Lyon. “One regrets, of course, but one is thankful it is no worse.” “I think,” said another, “it will do very well—I think it will do very well; thank you for the opportunity.” And “Charming, my dear Mrs. Lyon, charming,” said another. They all spoke low and in the most confidential tone. What was it they were all so interested about?
The last of the party to go were Miss Lance and Colonel Kingsward. They seemed to go away together as they had seemed to come together.
“Your father is so kind as to see me home,” Miss Lance said, by way of explanation. “I am not a grand lady with a carriage. I am old enough to walk home by myself, and I always do it, but as Colonel Kingsward is so kind, of course I like company best.”
She too had a private word with Mrs. Lyon, at the head of the stairs. Betty did not want to listen, but she heard by instinct the repeated “Thank you, thank you! How can I ever express how much I thank you?” Betty was so bewildered that she could not think. She paid no attention to her father, who put his hands on her shoulders when he said “Good-night,” and said, “Betty, I’ll see you to-morrow.” Oh, of course, she should see him to-morrow—or not, as circumstances might ordain. What did it matter? She was not anxious to see her father to-morrow, it could not be of the least importance whether they met or not; but what Betty would really have liked would have been to find out what all these little whisperings could mean.
Mrs. Lyon came up to her when the last, to wit, Colonel Kingsward following Miss Lance, had disappeared, and put her arms round the little girl. “You are looking a little tired,” she said, “just this last hour. I did not think they would stay so late. It is all Miss Lance, I believe, setting us on to argue with her metaphysics. Well, everybody likes her very much, which will please you, my dear, as you are so fond of her. And now, Betty, you must run off to bed. There’s hardly time for your beauty sleep.”
“Mrs. Lyon,” said Betty, very curious, “was it to meet Miss Lance that all those grand people came?”
“I don’t know what you call grand people. They are all great friends of ours and also of your father’s, and I think you know them every one. And they all know each other.”
“Except Miss Lance,” said Gerald, who was always disagreeable—always, when anyone mentioned Miss Lance’s name.
“I know her, certainly, and better than any of them! And there is nobody so delightful,” Betty cried, with fervour, partly because she believed what she said, and partly to be disagreeable in her turn to him.
“And so they all seemed to think,” said old Mr. Lyon, “though I’m not so fond of new people as the rest of you. Lay hands suddenly on no man is what I say.”
“And I say the same as my uncle,” said Gerald, “and it’s still more true of a woman than a man.”
“You are such an experienced person,” said the old lady; “they know so much better than we do, Betty. But never you mind, for your friend has made an excellent impression upon all these people—the most tremendously respectable people,” Mrs. Lyon said, “none of your artists and light-minded persons! Make yourself comfortable with that thought, and good night, my little Betty. You must not stay up so late another night.”
What nonsense that was of staying up late, when it was not yet twelve o’clock! But Betty went off to her room with a little confusion and bewilderment of mind, happy on the whole, but feeling as if she had something to think about when she should be alone. What was it she had to think about? She could not think what it was when she sat down alone to study her problem. There was no problem, and what the departing guests had said to Mrs. Lyon was quite simple, and referred to something that was their own business, that had nothing to do with Betty. How could it have anything to do with Betty?
Around the corner of the Park, Bee, too, was sitting alone and thinking at the same time, and the two sets of thoughts, neither very clear, revolved round the same circle. But neither of the sisters knew, concerning this problem, whereabouts the other was.