Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/721

 18, 1864.]

was a crash of carriages at one of the houses in Portland Place; and as the doors were flung open ever and again to the visitors, the glare of many lights, the strains of music, the sweet perfume from the array of hot-house flowers on the staircase, struck dazzlingly to the charmed senses of the beautiful forms, gay as butterflies, fluttering in. The Earl of Oakburn and Lady Jane Chesney were holding an evening reception.

Their first that season, and their last. And yet, scarcely to be called “that season;” for the season was well-nigh over. In an ordinary year it would have been quite over, for August had come in, and numbers were already on the wing to cooler places, panting from the heat and dust of the close metropolis; but Parliament had sat late, and many lingered still.

Jane had urged on the earl the necessity (she had put it so) of their giving one of these receptions. She had accepted invitations to a few; the earl to a very few, and she thought they should make a return. But such a thing was very much out of Lord Oakburn’s line—for the matter of that, it was not in Jane’s—and he had held out against it. Quite at the last moment, when three parts of the world had quitted London, the earl surprised Jane one morning by telling her she might “send out and invite the folks,” and then it would be done with.

They were somewhat more at ease with regard to Clarice. Somewhat. Every possible inquiry that the earl could think of had been set on foot to find her, and the aid of the police called in. Day after day, hour after hour, had the old Countess of Oakburn come down to Portland Place, asking if she was found, and worrying the earl well-nigh out of his senses. She threw all the blame upon him; she told him any father but he would have confined her as a lunatic, rather that have suffered her to be out without knowing where; and Jane was grievously reproached for her share, in assuming that Clarice was in the situation in the vicinity of Hyde Park, when it turned out that she had been some twelve months gone away from it.

But still they were more at ease—or tried to feel so. In the course of their researches, which had extended to every likely quarter, they learnt the fact that one of the governess-agencies had procured a situation some ten months previously for a Miss Beauchamp. She had gone out to be governess in an English family of the name of Vaughan, who had settled in Lower Canada. The lady was described as young, nice-looking, and of pleasing manners; and she had told the agent that she had no relatives in England to consult, as to her movements: altogether there did seem a probability of its being really Clarice. The Earl of Oakburn, in his impetuous fashion, assumed it to be so without further doubt, and Jane hoped it.

Then there was a lull in the storm of suspense. Miss Beauchamp—the supposed Clarice—was written to; not only by Jane, but by those who were making official inquiries on Lord Oakburn’s part; they were tolerably at their case until answers should arrive, and were at liberty to think of other things. It was during this lull of ease that Lord Oakburn told Jane she might hold her reception.

And this was the night: and the rooms, considering how late was the mouth, August, were well filled, and Jane was doing her best, in her ever quiet way, to entertain her guests, wishing heartily at the same time that the thing was over.

In a pretty dress of white crape, a wreath of white flowers confining her flowing curls, sufficient mourning for a child, stood Lucy Chesney, her eyes beaming, her damask cheeks glowing with excitement. Perhaps Jane was not wise in suffering Lucy to appear: some of the people now around would have reproached her that it was not “the thing,” had they dared; but Jane, who knew little of fashionable customs, had never once thought of excluding her. One of the rooms had been appropriated to dancing, and Lucy, a remarkably graceful and pretty girl, had found partners hitherto, in spite of her youth. Not a single dance had she missed; and now, after a waltz that had whirled her giddy, she leaned against the wall to regain breath.

“Just look at that child! How can they let her dance like that?”

The words reached Jane’s ears, and she turned round to see what child could be meant. Lucy! But she might have divined it, for there was no other child present. Jane went up to her.

“You are dancing too much, Lucy. I wonder Miss Lethwait is not looking after you. Where is she?”