第50章

THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE.

As Stella answered Lady Loring, she was smartly tapped on the shoulder by an eager guest with a fan.

The guest was a very little woman, with twinkling eyes and a perpetual smile.Nature, corrected by powder and paint, was liber ally displayed in her arms, her bosom, and the upper part of her back.Such clothes as she wore, defective perhaps in quantity, were in quality absolutely perfect.More adorable color, shape, and workmanship never appeared, even in a milliner's picture-book.Her light hair was dressed with a fringe and ringlets, on the pattern which the portraits of the time of Charles the Second have made familiar to us.There was nothing exactly young or exactly old about her except her voice, which betrayed a faint hoarseness, attributable possibly to exhaustion produced by untold years of incessant talking.It might be added that she was as active as a squirrel and as playful as a kitten.

But the lady must be treated with a certain forbearance of tone, for this good reason--she was Stella's mother.

Stella turned quickly at the tap of the fan."Mamma!" she exclaimed, "how you startle me!""My dear child," said Mrs.Eyrecourt, "you are constitutionally indolent, and you want startling.Go into the next room directly.

Mr.Romayne is looking for you."

Stella drew back a step, and eyed her mother in blank surprise.

"Is it possible that you know him?" she asked.

"Mr.Romayne doesn't go into Society, or we should have met long since," Mrs.Eyrecourt replied."He is a striking person--and Inoticed him when he shook hands with you.That was quite enough for me.I have just introduced myself to him as your mother.He was a little stately and stiff, but most charming when he knew who I was.I volunteered to find you.He was quite astonished.Ithink he took me for your elder sister.Not the least like each other--are we, Lady Loring? She takes after her poor dear father.

_He_ was constitutionally indolent.My sweet child, rouse yourself.You have drawn a prize in the great lottery at last.If ever a man was in love, Mr.Romayne is that man.I am a physiognomist, Lady Loring, and I see the passions in the face.

Oh, Stella, what a property! Vange Abbey.I once drove that way when I was visiting in the neighborhood.Superb! And another fortune (twelve thousand a year and a villa at Highgate) since the death of his aunt.And my daughter may be mistress of this if she only plays her cards properly.What a compensation after all that we suffered through that monster, Winterfield!""Mamma! Pray don't-- !"

"Stella, I will _not_ be interrupted, when I am speaking to you for your own good.I don't know a more provoking person, Lady Loring, than my daughter--on certain occasions.And yet I love her.I would go through fire and water for my beautiful child.

Only last week I was at a wedding, and I thought of Stella.The church was crammed to the doors! A hundred at the wedding breakfast! The bride's lace--there; no language can describe it.

Ten bridesmaids, in blue and silver.Reminded me of the ten virgins.Only the proportion of foolish ones, this time, was certainly more than five.However, they looked well.The Archbishop proposed the health of the bride and bridegroom; so sweetly pathetic.Some of us cried.I thought of my daughter.Oh, if I could live to see Stella the central attraction, so to speak, of such a wedding as that.Only I would have twelve bridesmaids at least, and beat the blue and silver with green and gold.Trying to the complexion, you will say.But there are artificial improvements.At least, I am told so.What a house this would be--a broad hint, isn't it, dear Lady Loring?--what a house for a wedding, with the drawing-room to assemble in and the picture gallery for the breakfast.I know the Archbishop.My darling, he shall marry you.Why _don't_ you go into the next room? Ah, that constitutional indolence.If you only had my energy, as I used to say to your poor father._Will_ you go? Yes, dear Lady Loring, I should like a glass of champagne, and another of those delicious chicken sandwiches.If you don't go, Stella, Ishall forget every consideration of propriety, and, big as you are, I shall push you out."Stella yielded to necessity."Keep her quiet, if you can," she whispered to Lady Loring, in the moment of silence that followed.

Even Mrs.Eyrecourt was not able to talk while she was drinking champagne.

In the next room Stella found Romayne.He looked careworn and irritable, but brightened directly when she approached him.

"My mother has been speaking to you," she said."I am afraid--"He stopped her there."She _is_ your mother," he interposed, kindly."Don't think that I am ungrateful enough to forget that."She took his arm, and looked at him with all her heart in her eyes."Come into a quieter room," she whispered.

Romayne led her away.Neither of them noticed Penrose as they left the room.

He had not moved since Stella had spoken to him.There he remained in his corner, absorbed in thought--and not in happy thought, as his face would have plainly betrayed to any one who had cared to look at him.His eyes sadly followed the retiring figures of Stella and Romayne.The color rose on his haggard cheeks.Like most men who are accustomed to live alone, he had the habit, when he was strongly excited, of speaking to himself.

"No," he said, as the unacknowledged lovers disappeared through the door, "it is an insult to ask me to do it!" He turned the other way, escaped Lady Loring's notice in the reception-room, and left the house.

Romayne and Stella passed through the card-room and the chess-room, turned into a corridor, and entered the conservatory.

For the first time the place was a solitude.The air of a newly-invented dance, faintly audible through the open windows of the ballroom above, had proved an irresistible temptation.Those who knew the dance were eager to exhibit themselves.Those who had only heard of it were equally anxious to look on and learn.