Everybody seemed to like dancing, and no more congenial home for the graces Terpsichorean than Rockley Lodge could possibly be found. The host, who was not a dancing man, smoked tranquilly in the verandah, much as if the entertainment were in a manner got up for his benefit, and had to be gone through with, while he from time to time debated the question of State endowments with Sternworth, or that of non-resident grants from the Crown with John Hampden, who was characteristically inflexible but nonaggressive.
What with their neighbours Argyll and Hamilton, Ardmillan, Forbes, and Neil Barrington, the ever-faithful Fred Churbett, and divers newly-formed acquaintances who had arrived during the evening, the Miss Effinghams found so many partners that they scarcely sat down at all. Mr. St. Maur, too, perhaps the handsomest man of the party, singled out Beatrice and devoted himself to her for the greater part of the evening. During the lulls, music was suggested by Mrs. Rockley, who was ever at hand to prevent the slightest _contretemps_ during the evening. Rosamond and Beatrice were invited to play, and finally Annabel and Beatrice to sing.
Beatrice was one of the most finished performers upon the pianoforte that one could fall across, outside professional circles; many of them even might have envied her light, free, instinctively true touch, her perfect time, her astonishing execution. Her voice was a well-trained contralto. When she sang a world-famed duet with Annabel, and the liquid notes—clear, fresh, delicately pure as those of the mounting skylark—rose in Annabel’s wondrous soprano, every one was taken by storm, and a perfect chorus of admiration assured the singers that no such performance had been heard in the neighbourhood since a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
It must not be supposed that Wilfred Effingham permitted much time to elapse before he took measures which resulted in an improvement of his recent acquaintance with Miss Christabel Rockley. He had seen many girls of high claim to beauty in many differing regions of the old world. He had walked down Sackville Street, and sauntered through the great Plaza of Madrid, bought gloves in Limerick, and lace in the Strada Reale; but it instantly occurred to him that in all his varied experiences he had never set eyes upon so wondrously lovely a creature as Christabel Rockley. Her complexion, not merely delicate, was wild-rose tinted upon ivory; her large, deep-fringed eyes, dark, melting, wondering as they opened slowly, with the half-conscious surprise of a startled child, reminded him of nothing so much as of the captured gazelle of the desert; her delicate, oval face, perfect as a cameo; her wondrous sylph-like figure, which swayed and glided in the dance like a forest nymph in classic Arcady; her rosebud mouth, pearly teeth, her childish pout smiling o’er gems—pearls, if not diamonds; how should these angel-growth perfections have ripened in this obscure outpost of Britain’s possessions? He was startled as by a vision, amazed. He would have been hopelessly subjugated there and then had he not been at that time such a philosophical young person.