Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/139

 behind the folding-doors that swallowed up these radiant visions in succession so greedily. That interior was flooded in a warm yellow light. A hundred glittering lustres shone and twinkled at narrow intervals, to stud the curves of white and gold and crimson that belted the ample circle of the building, while high in the centre of its dome an enormous chandelier flashed and gleamed and dazzled, like some gigantic diamond shivered into a thousand prismatic fragments. From roof to flooring fresh bright colours bloomed in the boxes, as bloom the posies on a flower-stall; while pit, stage, and orchestra, boarded to a level, had become a shifting sea of brilliant hues, whirling, coiling, undulating, ebbing, flowing, surging into a foam of light and snowy plumes, bearing in turn each colour of the rainbow to its surface—flashing and glistening through all its waters with a blaze of gems and gold.

Captain George was wading about in it, more preoccupied and less inclined to take advantage of its gaieties than a musketeer usually found himself in such a scene of revelry. His distinguished air and manly bearing drew on him, indeed, gibes and taunts, half-raillery, half-compliment, from many a rosy mouth smiling under its black mask; but to these he answered not a word.

He was unlike himself to-night—dull, abstracted, and out of spirits. Even Bras-de-Fer, he felt, would have composed and propounded his heaviest retorts in less time than it took his captain to understand any one of the jests levelled at a taciturnity so out of place. He was in no mood for banter, nor intrigue, nor amusement—not even for supper. He wanted to see Cerise; he confessed it to himself without reserve, yet he neither expected nor wished to find her in such a scene as this.

An attachment between two young persons, if of a nature to arrive at maturity, seems to gain growth and vigour in an inverse proportion to the amount of care bestowed on its cultivation. The plant is by no means an exotic, scarce even a garden-flower. Nay, I think a chance seedling of this tribe comes to fuller perfection than either graft or cutting. It is good for it also to be crushed, mangled, mown over, or trodden down. Storms and snows and bitter frosts bring it rapidly into flower, and it is astonishing, though a