"Well? Now I have come?" Agatha repeated her words. "How can you be so stupid!" said she.
"Stupid! Stupid! I like that. Well I have news for you. Who do you think is—"
"Our dance, I believe," said some one to Elfrida at that moment. It was Elfrida's shadow during the past two months—Lord Ambert. He bowed to Agatha over Miss Firs-Robinson's head.
"Is it? Yes, of course," said Elfrida, glancing at her card. "But I have just one word to say to Miss Nesbitt." She smiled again at Ambert, very prettily.
"Do you know who has come to-night to stay with us for a month? Dicky—Dicky Browne. He met auntie and me last season in town. And auntie asked him to run down to us for a bit. He's a nuisance, certainly," shrugging her shoulders. "We all know that, in spite of everything; but I do love Dicky more than any one else, I think."
"I wish I could believe that," said Agatha, in a low tone. Lord Ambert was standing near, waiting for Elfrida. "Better love him than—"
"Pouf! What a suggestion! Why should I love any one?" Elfrida's piquant face was now alight with mischief. "Do you think I am such a one as thyself? I tell you, Agatha, that I, for one, have no heart! I can't afford one."
"I should think you could afford anything," said Agatha. "You could, at all events, afford to marry the man who loved you."
"And where does he live?" asked Elfrida, laughing.
"You know," said Agatha slowly, earnestly.
"You're lovely; you're a perfect delight!" said Miss Firs-Robinson, her amusement now growing more apparent; "but really I don't. I know only that I—want to be—"
"Happy?" said Agatha, answering.
"No; a countess," said the pretty little fairy, with a gay grimace. She looked over Agatha's shoulder and beckoned to Lord Ambert, who was still "in waiting," to come to her.
He came. A middle-sized, well-set-up man of about forty, with a rather supercilious mouth and small eyes. He looked quite a gentleman, however; which a great many earls do not, and, of course, there he scored. He was a poor man for his rank in life, and was desirous of impounding the numerous thousands in which Miss Firs-Robinson lay, as it were, enwrapped. He never forgot his dignity, however, when with her. He gave her quite to understand that she was by birth many degrees below zero, and that he was a star in her firmament.
In the meantime Elfrida, who had a very acute mind of her own, saw straight through him. In a sense he amused her, and, after all, she knew very well who would be mistress and master after her marriage with him. Not Ambert, anyway. Her money should be securely settled on herself; she was quite decided about that. She was quite decided also about her marriage with him. She had lived some little time in America, as has been said, and had learned the value of our English lords; so she had arranged with herself very early in life never to die until she could have a title carved upon her tombstone. Ambert had come in quite handy. He was the only unmarried earl within a radius of a tremendous number of miles, so, of course, he would have to do. It was a pity he was so old—that he was a little bald—that his expression was so unpleasant. But he was an earl. She would be Lady Ambert; and if he thought he would have it all his own way afterwards—why, she would show him. She hadn't the least doubt about his proposing to her. She gave herself no trouble on that head; and, indeed, she used to know great mirth sometimes, when he had been specially laborious over his efforts to prove to her that he had twenty or forty heiresses in his eye, who would all be ready at a moment's notice to accept his title, his debts, and his bald head.
For all that, she was determined to marry him. This, however, did not prevent her indulging in small flirtations here and there. There were several young officers in the barracks in the next town who were literally at her feet, and there was the curate, Tom Blount, who every one knew was a very slave to her every caprice.
"Ah, Mr. Blount," said she, as she passed him now on her way to the conservatory. "Here? And you haven't asked me for a single dance."
"I don't dance," said Tom Blount. "The bishop doesn't like it, you know, and to ask you to sit out a dance with me would be more than I dare venture."
He smiled at her out of two honest blue eyes. And she smiled back at him out of two very dishonest ones, though all four were much of the same colour.
"'If thy heart fail thee,'" quoted she daringly.
"Well, I shan't let it fail me," said the curate suddenly. His smile was somewhat forced, however. "Will you sit out one with me?"
"You don't deserve it," said she. "But—"
Here Lord Ambert bent and whispered something into her ear. He was evidently urging her to refuse the insolent request of this nobody, this curate of a small country parish. But his words took no effect. Elfrida listened to them, nodded and smiled as if acquiescing, and then—
"The fourteenth is a quadrille, for the sake of appeasing old Lady Saunders, I believe," said she, looking at the curate. "Will you have that dance—to sit it out with me?"
"Won't I!" said the curate enthusiastically, who had not long left Oxford, and who was wonderfully young in many ways.
"You promised that quadrille to me," said Ambert, frowning.
"Yes, I know. But as I never dance quadrilles—" She paused and looked up at Ambert. "You see?"
"No, I don't," said he.
"Well I am sure Mr. Blount does," said Elfrida audaciously. "Now, remember, Mr. Blount, the fourteenth is ours."
Lord Ambert looked at him.
Really the audacity of this contemptible curate passed comprehension. To speak so to her, his—Ambert's—future wife. He frowned and bit his lip. That was the worst of marrying into the middle classes; they never know how to keep those beneath them in order.
Lord Ambert, holding her hand during her descent from the steps to the garden beneath, ventured a cold remonstrance.
"Is it wise of you—you will pardon, I hope, my interference—but is it wise of you to be so kind to a person of that sort?"
"A person? Is he a person?" asked Miss Firs-Robinson with much airy astonishment. "I quite understood he was a man of good family. Whereas a 'person' must be of no family whatever."
"If without money," put in Lord Ambert quickly, "quite so. There are, of course, grades."
"Grades?"
"Yes. A man of no birth with money is not the same as a man of no birth without it. For money educates, refines, elevates." This he pointed with little emphases, as a small hint to her.
"And a man of birth without money?"
"Sinks." Here Lord Ambert's voice took even a lower tone. "Sinks until he meets the extreme—that is, the lowest of all classes—with which he unites. I am afraid that young man you have just been talking to will come to that end. His people, I believe, were in a decent set at one time; but there is no money there now, and probably he will marry his landlady's daughter, or the young woman who manages the school in the village, and—repent it soon after."
"Repentance is good for the soul," said Elfrida; she laughed.
"But as you show it, money is everything. Even the 'person' can be raised by it."
"It is sad of course, but I am afraid that is really the case. In these days money is of great importance—of nearly as great importance as birth or position. It lifts the 'person,' as you call it—"
"Has it, then, lifted me?"
"Dear Miss Firs-Robinson! What a question! Surely you do not consider yourself part of this discussion?"
He, however, had considered her so, and had taken pleasure in the argument that had laid her low. This was part of what he called his "training" of her!
"You—who