Lady Marabout and Lady Hautton were foes, but they were dear Helena and dear Anne, all the same; dined at each other's tables, and smiled in each other's faces. They might be private foes, but they were public friends; and Lady Marabout beat a discreet retreat to the Hautton's salons--"so many engagements" is so useful a plea!--and from the Hautton she passed on to a ball at the Duke of Doncaster's; and, as at both, if Lady Cecil Ormsby did not move "a goddess from above," she moved a brilliant, sparkling, nonchalante, dangerous beauty, with some of her sex's faults, all her sex's witcheries, and more than her sex's mischief, holding her own royally, saucily, and proudly, and Chandos Cheveley was encountered no more, but happily detained at petit souper in a certain Section of the French Embassy, Lady Marabout drove homewards, in the gray of the morning, relieved, complacent, and gratified, dozing deliciously, till she was woke up with a start.
"Lady Marabout, what a splendid waltzer your Ogre, Chandos Cheveley, is!"
Lady Marabout opened her eyes with a jerk that set her feathers trembling, her diamonds scintillating, and her bracelets ringing an astonished little carillon.
Cecil Ormsby laughed--a gay, joyous laugh, innocent of having disturbed a doze, a lapse into human weakness of which her chaperone never permitted herself to plead guilty.
"Frightened you, did I? Why, your _bête noire_ is as terrible to you as Coeur de Lion to the Saracen children, or Black Douglas to the Lowland! And, really, I can't see anything terrible in him; he is excessively brilliant and agreeable, has something worth hearing to say to you, and his waltzing is----!"
Lady Cecil Ormsby had not a word in her repertory--though it was an enthusiastic and comprehensive one, and embraced five languages--sufficiently commendatory to finish her sentence.
"I dare say, dear! I never denied, or heard denied, his having every accomplishment under the sun. The only pity is, he has nothing more substantial!" returned Lady Marabout, a little bit tartly for _her_ lips, only used to the softest (and most genuine) milk of roses.
Lord Rosediamond's daughter laughed a little mournfully, and played with her fan.
"Poor man! Brilliant and beggared, fashionable and friendless, courted and cashiered--a sad destiny! Do you know, Lady Marabout, I have half a mind to champion your Ogre!"