It was a remarkably pretty entertainment, and the host and his three daughters were worthy descendants of the ruffled and powdered Deanes who looked down on them from the walls.

They were a stately family. Mrs. Russelthorpe herself was a most dignified woman, and Kate and Margaret had inherited her grace of bearing.

Margaret in her gold and white dress, with pearls on her white neck, was a good deal admired, but her attention kept wandering from her partners to her father, who was talking and laughing merrily, but who coughed every now and then rather ominously. Consumption, that scourge of so many English families, was terribly familiar in this one.

Meg had been immensely excited about the ball before-hand, and had taken intense interest in all the preparations for it, including her own new dress; but, at the last, something had occurred to change the current of her thoughts, she might be arrayed in sackcloth now for all she cared.

"Margaret's character comes out even in small things," Mrs. Russelthorpe observed cuttingly. "She is unstable as water. One can never depend on her in the least. Where do you think I found her this afternoon? Just emerging from a vulgar crowd on Dover sands, where she had been staring at a singing minstrel or a play-actor or a buffoon of some kind! She came in with her head full of nothing else, and wanted to tease her father into going back with her to listen too."

"Ah! I heard that fellow on the beach; his buffoonery takes the form of preaching," said the lawyer to whom she had made the remark, and who was rather a favourite with Mrs. Russelthorpe. He glanced at Margaret, who was standing a little way off, but was quite unconscious of his observation.

"It is a curious question whether that sort of canter is most knave or fool," he said. "I incline to the former hypothesis; Deane, to the latter. Miss Deane sees him as a sort of inspired prophet, I suppose. A good deal depends on the colour of one's own glasses, you know. After all, hers are the prettiest!"

Mrs. Russelthorpe shrugged her shoulders with a short laugh as she turned away.

"I did not know you had such an innocent taste for bread and butter," she said.

Mr. Sauls looked after her with some amusement; it was not the first time that he had noticed that there was no love lost between Mr. Deane's favourite daughter and her aunt, and he had 

 Prev. P 16/315 next