Sir Everard certainly was very sorry for that hoidenish Miss Hunsden. He thought of her while dressing for dinner, and he talked of her all through that meal "more in sorrow than in anger."
Sybilla Silver, quite like one of the family already, listened with greedy ears and eager black eyes.
"You ought to call, mother," the baronet said, "you and Mildred. Common politeness requires it, Captain Hunsden was my father's most intimate friend, and this wild girl stands sadly in need of some matronly adviser."
"I remember Captain Hunsden," Lady Kingsland said, thoughtfully, "and I remember this girl, too, when she was a child of three or four years. He was a very handsome man, I recollect, and he married away in Canada or the United States. There was some mystery about that marriage--something vague and unpleasant--no one knew what. She ought to be pretty, this daughter."
"Pretty!" Sir Everard exclaimed; "she is beautiful as an angel! I never saw such eyes or such a smile in the whole course of my life."
"Indeed!" his mother said, coldly--"indeed! Not even excepting Lady Louise's?"
"Oh, Lady Louise is altogether different! I didn't mean any comparison. But you will see her to-night at Lady Carteret's ball, and can judge for yourself. She is a mere child--sixteen or seventeen, I believe."
"And Lady Louise is five-and-twenty," said Mildred, with awful accuracy.
"She does not look twenty!" exclaimed my lady, sharply. "There are few young ladies nowadays half so elegant and graceful as Lady Louise."
Miss Silver's large black eyes glided from one to the other with a sinister smile in their shining depths. Her soft voice broke in at this jarring juncture and sweetly turned the disturbed current of conversation, and Sir Everard understood, and gave her a grateful glance.
The young baronet had gone to many balls in his lifetime, but never had he been so painfully particular before. He drove Edward, his valet, to the verge of madness with his whims, and left off at last in sheer desperation and altogether dissatisfied with the result.
"I look like a guy, I know," he muttered, angrily, "and that pert little Hunsden is just the sort of girl to make satirical comments on a man if his neck-tie is awry or his hair unbecoming. Not that I care what she says; but one hates to feel he is a laughing-stock."
The ball-room was brilliant with lights, and music, and flowers, and diamonds, and beautiful faces, and magnificent toilets when the Kingsland party entered.
Lady Carteret, in velvet robes, stood receiving her guests. Lady Louise, with white azaleas in her hair and dress, stood stately and graceful, looking from tip to toe what she was the descendant of a race of "highly-wed, highly-fed, highly-bred" aristocrats.