Belles and Ringers | Page 6

You are a dear amiable chaperon, and have been awfully good about staying a little late at times. I don't want to drag you over to Commonstone, when your wish is to be left peacefully at home. We won't do the Easter ball, though it is sad to think what a capital room they have for it. But come along, there goes the bell, and I am sure now I look most bewitching."
It was not Lady's Mary's custom to take her daughters into her confidence, in the first instance, with regard to the matrimonial designs she had formed for their benefit. All the preliminary manoeuvres she conducted herself. The idea of young people gravitating together naturally was a theory she would have received with profound derision. She looked upon it that all what she would have termed successful marriages were as much owing to the clever diplomacy of mothers or chaperons as the victory of a horse in a big race is due to the skilful handling of his jockey. During the afternoon she had been meditating over the plan of her Easter campaign, and resolved to adhere to her original determination. Most decidedly she would have nothing to do with Commonstone and its gaieties, nor would she afford greater favour to any revelries at the Rockcliffe camp; and most devoutly did she wish that it was in her power to keep the rector's daughters altogether at arm's length, now that she had seen this new cousinly importation. At arm's length as much as possible the Misses Chipchase should be held, she determined.
"That Miss Sylla," she muttered, "is just the sort of girl men always lose their heads about; clever, too, if I mistake not. Well, I don't mean to see more of her at the Grange than I am positively obliged to; but keep her out altogether I can't. The Chipchase girls have grown up with my own, and been always accustomed to come and go pretty much as they liked. However," thought her ladyship, "the first thing to settle undoubtedly is this ball;" and, as she and her daughter descended to dinner, Lady Mary did fancy that, at all events, she had settled that.
"Ah, here you are at last," said the Squire, as they entered the drawing-room; "dinner is already announced, my lady. Come along, Mrs. Evesham, it's no use letting the soup get cold."
"How do you do, Mr. Beauchamp?" said Lady Mary, as a dark, good-looking young fellow came forward to shake hands with her. "It seems I am dreadfully late, and have only time now to say I am delighted that you have found your way to Todborough. Perhaps you will take care of Blanche." And then the hostess turned away to pair off her other guests.
"I congratulate you, Lady Mary, on so favourable an augury," said Pansey Cottrell, as he leisurely consumed his fish.
"Favourable augury! What can you mean?"
"Do you not see," returned Cottrell, in mock-tragical tones, "that we are thirteen to dinner? Do you not know that Lionel Beauchamp is the thirteenth? and do you not know what Fate has invariably in store for the thirteenth at a dinner party?"
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Lady Mary; "why, they say it's hanging, do they not?"
"Well, of late years they have rather qualified the sentence. Popular opinion, I think, now inclines to the belief that the thirteenth, when a man, will be either hung--or married."
"I suppose we are advancing in the science of augury as in all other sciences," replied her ladyship, laughing, "and find that the omens, like the readings of the barometer, are capable of two interpretations."
"You must not speak lightly of the science of augury, Lady Mary. Allow me to give you the complete interpretation of the omen. The Fates have not only decreed that Lionel Beauchamp shall either be hung or married within the twelvemonth, but reserved the latter lot for him; and they indicate further who his future wife shall be. When there is no lady next him, it's a hanging matter, saith the oracle; where there is, that lady will be his wife before the year is out. Now, it can hardly point to Mrs. Evesham, who is on the right, and therefore I conclude it must indicate Miss Blanche, who is on his left."
"Very ingenious, indeed, Mr. Cottrell; but, dear me! they have begun to talk about that horrid ball again at the bottom of the table, have they not?"
"I say, mother," exclaimed Jim Bloxam, "of course we are all going to this Commonstone ball on Monday?"
"Nonsense! I am surprised at your thinking of such a thing. The idea of our going to a Commonstone ball on Easter Monday! Just fancy, my dear Jim, what it would be,--townspeople and excursionists from round about. No; I don't go in for being exclusive,