Prior to this startling event, the reels, usually a great figure in such balls at Edinburgh, had been attracting the attention of Mary, who did not join in them; and the long line of more than a hundred dancers facing each other, presented a gay spectacle, from the number of uniforms, clan tartans, and occasionally the green uniform and great gold epaulettes of the Scottish body-guard, worn by some of the male performers.
The 'Cameronian Rant' was struck up by the orchestra in the Assembly-room, and old Mrs. Garth, who deemed herself quite as much a part of the Cameronians as the adjutant or the big-drum, and who had been vibrating, bubbling, and brimming over with pleasure all night, now felt her satisfaction culminate when the aged Sir Piers, with the courtly gallantry of the old school, led her forth as his partner, and looked round in vain for Hew and Mary, as a vis-à-vis, whose place was speedily supplied by Dick Freeport and a young lady whose interest he was exciting on the subject of his ring with the blue stone.
The reel over, the general had retreated breathlessly to his place, where he proceeded to button-hole the commander-in-chief—another old fogie like himself; and they were deep in reminiscences of the land of palms and punkahs, tigers and precious stones, when Cecil, discovering Mary with Annabelle and Fotheringhame in one of those flirtation nooks which are to be found in the corners of the Music-hall at such times, approached, and whispering that Hew had disappeared, and the general was busy, suggested that they might have one waltz together, as the double rooms always make a total confusion in the mutual engagements.
She murmured something, mechanically, about the heat of the room, the crowd, and so forth; his arm went round her; thrillingly her little hand returned the pressure of his own, having to the full as much effect upon him as any words she might have uttered; and in a moment they were lost amid the whirling crowd of hundreds of waltzers. Her great self-control nearly gave way in the delight of dancing with Cecil, 'under the temptation' which, as Wilkie Collins has it, 'no woman can resist—the temptation of touching the man she loves.'
Thus the soft pressure of the hand, which silently said so much, was mutually returned again and again, as Cecil guided her unerringly amid the mazy circles, till she paused, palpitating, blushing, and half-reclining, breathlessly on his shoulder.
'I have not had such a waltz to-night, Cecil,' she whispered; 'so delightful, I mean.'
'Nor I, darling—one turn more!' And away they went again, but at a slower pace, which enabled them to converse at intervals.
They were not unseen, however, now, for Hew, who had been fraternising with one of the pretty waitresses who superintended the luxurious supper-tables in the wings of the hall, was watching them with a heart full of growing hatred of Falconer; he longed to do him a mischief of some kind—vaguely, savagely, and Mary too, for violating thus the express orders of her guardian. And how radiantly (disgustingly, he thought) happy they looked!
'I'll mar his wooing, and more!' muttered Hew, who possessed in an eminent degree that quality which is to be largely found in the least intellectual natures—low cunning.
As if she had some intuition of the mal occhio under which they were, she whispered:
'Hew has some deep scheme of mischief in petto against us—I am assured by quiet smiles I have read in his face to-night.'
'He is gone, I think.'
'I hope so; he is so cruel, coarse, and unscrupulous—one, in short, to beware of.'
'Don't bother about Hew, darling; I fear more Sir Piers—and his never consenting.'
'I don't care for what Sir Piers says,' whispered the dear voice; 'I can never, never care for anyone but you, Cecil; I'll wait for you till I'm a hundred.'
At this cheerful prospect he pressed her little gloved hand again.
'I'm sure you'll wait as long as I—but oh, Cecil, I'm so wretched at times!'
But the bright mignonne face that smiled back to his didn't look wretched a bit, and in the glittering crowd at times, through which they were sweeping to the intoxicating crashes of the regimental band, while with each other thus, they felt as much alone as if the world contained no other couple than themselves.
'Is not love a thing worth living for, Mary, even for its own sake?'
'It is indeed, Cecil!' whispered Mary, with her brightest smile.
'A dream that comes, I am sure, truly and purely, but once in a lifetime.'
'And love, it is said, works miracles.'
'I wish it would work one with that dear old fogie, the general! When last he spoke to me it was somewhat like the stern parent in Allan-a-Dale, for he literally
'"Lifted the latch, and bade me begone."
His arm was still encircling her; his left hand pressed her right; her cheek half sunk on his shoulder, their breath mingling as they swept on, intoxicated alike by the measure of the dance and the music of Strauss; in their souls unmindful of all ways and means—of marriage and the general; of houses; of equipages; of society and the world—unmindful of all, save that they loved each other, and were together alone—alone even in that brilliant throng, till Mary could spin no more; and he led her well-nigh breathless to the most sequestered seat he could find, between two great vases of flowers near the curtained gallery, under which some of the supper-tables were, and his own servant, Tommy Atkins, who was in attendance there, promptly brought them some iced champagne.
On the third finger of her left hand, Mary had a ring that Cecil had placed there—a diamond cluster, and which she was fond of drawing off her glove to contemplate, with a self-conscious aspect and tender smile—a ring unnoticed by all save Annabelle, who now wore a nearly precisely similar emblem.
She had drawn off her glove now, and as she sat fanning herself, while Cecil bent over her chair whispering little nothings, dear only to themselves, Hew Montgomerie, unseen by both, came near.
We have told in our first volume that Hew was a 'good hater'—one precisely after the heart of the great Lexicographer—and how he had made a vow to revenge himself on Falconer—a vow all the deeper for being an unuttered one; and the time to redeem that vow had now come!
Hew's hand passed for a moment lingeringly over Cecil's goblet of champagne. A close observer might have remarked that Hew's hand suddenly opened and shut, and that as he did so the wine frothed up anew and curiously; but no close observer was there, and Hew withdrew some paces, and laughed his noiseless, joyless laugh, as he watched Cecil, while replying smilingly and fondly to some laughing remark of Mary, put his hand to the goblet, lift it from the table, and finish its contents at a draught, like a heated and thirsty young dancer as he was.
Hew then withdrew from their vicinity; but all that followed, followed fast indeed!
Cecil became deadly pale, and an expression of agony came into his face. The lights in the domed roof above, and the figures of the whirling dancers below, seemed to multiply ad infinitum; the music sounded as if receding to a vast distance; the four corners of the hall seemed to be in swift pursuit of each other, as if it revolved on an axis: he read a strange expression of utter dismay in the face and dilated eyes of Mary, who had started from her seat; he made a wild, but futile clutch at the table to support himself, while a half-stifled cry escaped him, and he fell with a crash on the waxed floor, when a crowd instantly gathered round him, and voices in alarm rose on every side.
'Make way there—poor fellow taken ill—the heat—the ventilation here is horrible!' cried one.
'Stand back—stand back, please—air!' said an officer of Lancers, authoritatively.
'Lift him up,' cried another; 'he has fainted.'
'Screwed as an owl, you mean,' said a voice there was no mistaking.
'Silence, sir!' exclaimed Captain Acharn, sternly.
But Hew, with his cruel cold smile, and an ill-suppressed gleam in his parti-coloured eyes, thought,
'If there is any nonsense still in her head about this fellow, surely it must end for ever now!'
So Cecil, in a state of utter insensibility, was borne away by the hands of kind comrades, placed in a carriage, and conveyed home to his quarters by Acharn and Dick Freeport, who were in an intense state of concern and bewilderment; yet 'all went merry as a marriage bell' at the regimental ball, and the dancing continued till the morning sun began to redden the castle towers and Arthur's rocky cone; for hundreds in the rooms knew nothing of the matter; a few red-coats were suddenly missed—some engagements broken—and that was all.
Mary danced no more that night, of course—or for the remainder of the morning, rather—and all that passed seemed a horrible dream, in which, however, Hew, singular to say, bore no part as yet in her mind, notwithstanding the significance of her words of warning during the dance. No suspicion so utterly monstrous as the reality was likely to occur to a mind like hers.
The general and his party retired. He was horribly perplexed and shocked by an event so utterly out of his ken and experience, and he could recall no parallel case in all the long course of his military career—an officer taken thus in a ball-room; for of course, such is human nature, that the worst construction was instantly put upon it.
'Hah!' muttered Hew, as the carriage bowled through the empty but magnificent streets to the westward; 'this comes of taking too much cognac with his soda-water. He'll be drummed out of society, and the regiment too, I suppose, for this,' he added with a grin to Mrs. Garth, who sat back in a corner of the carriage and sobbed sorrowfully.
Finding that no answer was made to his ill-natured remarks, Hew said again:
'This Falconer, used to laugh at the colonel's jokes and toady to his betters; but, by Jove, he won't have a chance of laughing at the colonel's jokes after this!'
'Silence, Hew,' said the general, grimly; 'but I am thinking more of the honour of the regiment than of him.'
'She will either marry me now quietly, or she will not,' thought Hew, triumphantly and pitilessly; 'if she does not, I suppose her tin will come to me anyhow, thanks to her father's will and this old fool, Sir Piers—shame to call the old fellow a fool, though, for being so deuced friendly to me!' he added mentally, with a hiccough.
It has been said truly, that there are times, which come into the lives of some of us, in which the agonies of years are compressed into a few minutes—yea, it may be a second.
And thus it was with Mary!
Annabelle Erroll had her own cause for secret unhappiness—the strange episode of the closely-veiled woman in the vestibule—but at present all her sympathies were absorbed in the great catastrophe of the ball, and the unavailing sorrow of her friend Mary.