The Nonesuch

Mind had suffered a severe set-back over the invitation to Lady Colebatch’s ball. The correct Miss Trent, who had long since outgrown her love of dancing, desperately wanted to go to the ball. Just this once! she pleaded. What harm can there he in it, when Mrs Underhill particularly wishes me to accept? I have too much sense to let it turn my head! Her well-regulated mind replied uncompromisingly: You have none at all. You want to go to this ball because Sir Waldo will be there, and if you had a grain of sense you would hint him away before he has ruined your peace.

Heart had won. She had gone to the ball, meaning to behave with the utmost circumspection; but no sooner had she dressed her hair in her former style than circumspection fled. She felt young again, as excited as a girl going to her first party, a little reckless.

The recklessness, encouraged by the lights and the laughter, and the music, had grown. She had retained enough prudence to demur when Sir Waldo had asked her to dance the first waltz with him, but none thereafter, she thought. She had felt the exquisite happiness of knowing herself to be sought after by the man of her choice; and when he had asked her to waltz with him a second time she had not hesitated. He had taken her in to supper, too; and when they had gone into the garden to watch the firework-display it had been he who had fetched her shawl, and put it round her shoulders. So heedless had she been, so lost in enchantment, that she had not spared a thought for what might be the opinions of the matrons who watched her so jealously, and was shocked when an acid comment from Mrs Banningham made her realize that she was considered by that lady, and some others too, to be setting her cap at the Nonesuch. She knew it to be spite, but she felt ready to sink; and when Lady Colebatch had said to her, laughingly: “All this dangerous flirting with Sir Waldo—! Fie on you, Miss Trent!” her enjoyment was at an end, and her fears and doubts again assailed her.

She knew herself to be inexperienced in love, and guessed that Sir Waldo was not. It was beyond question that he was strongly attracted to her, but whether he had anything but flirtation in mind she could not tell. When their eyes met, and he smiled, she thought that surely he could not look at her and smile just so if the feeling he had for her was not deeper and more enduring than a mere passing fancy. Then she remembered that she was not the only woman to be charmed by his smile; and wondered if she was flattering herself in believing that that particular smile was one which no one but she had seen. But it was rumoured that he had had many loves: she supposed that a squire of dames must necessarily possess the power of making one believe that he was very much in love with one.

Almost as painful as these doubts was the thought that by allowing the Nonesuch to single her out she, who had so often preached propriety to Tiffany, should herself have set the neighbourhood in a bustle. Her conduct must have been very bad, she thought, for even Courtenay had remarked on it, saying, with a grin: “Lord, ma’am, won’t Tiffany be as mad as fire to see the Nonesuch making up to you!”

But it had not entered Tiffany’s head that any man, far less a man of Sir Waldo’s consequence, could feel the smallest tendre for a governess. In talking over the ball she had spoken quite casually of Sir Waldo’s having danced two waltzes with Miss Trent, and disclosed, as a very good joke, that some of the old cats had taken snuff at it; because they fancied him to be dangling after her. “You and Sir Waldo, Ancilla—!” she gurgled, “I was very nearly in whoops, as you may imagine! Of all the absurdities!”

“I don’t think it would be at all absurd!” stated Charlotte belligerently. “Not nearly such an absurdity as for anyone to suppose that he was dangling after you! I suppose you’re jealous because he didn’t ask you to stand up with him first of all!”

“Oh, he couldn’t!” said Tiffany, with a saucy look. “Mr Calver was before him! He was obliged to wait for the second waltz with me! And poor Lindeth for the third!”