"It is very odd," thought Lady Marabout; "she seems to have taken a much greater fancy to that odious man than to Philip, or Goodwood, or Fitz, or any one of the men who admire her so much. I suppose I always _am_ to be worried in this sort of way! However, there can be no real danger; Chandos Cheveley is the merest butterfly flirt, and with all his faults none ever accused him of fortune-hunting. Still, they say he is wonderfully fascinating, and certainly he has the most beautiful voice I ever heard; and if Cecil should ever like him at all, I could never forgive myself, and what _should_ I say to General Ormsby?"
The General, Cecil's uncle and guardian, is one of the best-humored, best-tempered, and most _laissez-faire_ men in the Service, but was, for all that, a perpetual dead weight on Lady Marabout's mind just then, for was not he the person to whom, at the end of the season, she would have to render up account of the successes and the shortcomings of her chaperone's career?
"Do you think of proposing Chandos Cheveley as a suitable alliance for Cecil Ormsby, my dear Helena?" asked Lady Hautton, with that smile which was felt to be considerably worse than strychnine by her foes and victims, at a house in Grosvenor Place, that night.
"God forbid!" prayed Lady Marabout, mentally, as she joined in the Hautton laugh, and shivered under the stab of the Hautton sneer, which was an excessively sharp one. Lady Hautton being one of a rather numerous class of eminent Christians, so panoplied in the armor of righteousness that they can tread, without feeling it, on the tender feet of others.
The evening was spoiled to Lady Marabout; she felt morally and guiltily responsible for an unpardonable indiscretion:--with that man waltzing with Cecil Ormsby, her "graceful, graceless, gracious Grace" of Amandine visibly irritated with jealousy at the sight, and Anne Hautton whispering behind her fan with acidulated significance. Lady Marabout had never been more miserable in her life! She heard on all sides admiration of Rosediamond's daughter; she was gratified by seeing Goodwood, Fitzbreguet, Fulke Nugent, every eligible man in the room, suing for a place on her tablets; she had the delight of beholding Carruthers positively join the negligent beauty's train; and yet the night was a night of purgatory to Lady Marabout, for Chandos Cheveley had his first waltz, and several after it, and the Amandine set were there to gossip, and the Hautton clique to be shocked, at it.