CHAPTER III.

MORE FESTIVITY AT MRS. BARSAC'S.

"REUBEN," said Winning, the next morning, a ball is thrown away on you; you can't expect Mrs. Barsac ever to invite you again."

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Why so?" said Reuben.

Why, you neither danced nor eat supper; Mrs. Barsac keeps a list of the men who don't dance, and Mr. Barsac takes a note of those who despise his suppers."

"I shall dance more," said Reuben, "when I am familiar with the figures; I think I shall soon understand the principle at all events."

Winning laughed at the principle of a quadrille; and Reuben said he thought there was a principle in everything, to which Winning assented, though he laughed again.

"But you surely had no difficulty in catching the principle of supper. What have you to say for yourself on that head?” Reuben then related what took place the preceding evening between himself and Mr. Brough; how he had been lectured and reprimanded for gourmandise, when in fact he had taken next to nothing.

Winning was distressed at this story, and undertook to set bis friend right in Mr. Brough's opinion. This he took an opportunity of doing that very day, and Mr. Brough sent for Reuben and very handsomely expressed his regret at having hastily misjudged him, adding some profound common-place remarks on the hazards of circumstantial evidence, by which the safety of innocence had often been compromised, even under the direction of the ablest men that ever adorned the bench. Reuben went his way with a high opinion of his preceptor's magnanimity and enlightenment. Mrs. Barsac's ball gave him a great many new ideas; he had only heard of balls before as young Norval had heard of battles; in a long letter to his mother he gave her as minute an account of the fête as if it had been the first thing of the kind ever known in England; and amused her exceedingly by his innocent remarks on the ladies' dresses, his mistakes in dancing, and the absurd names of the three Miss BarOf Blanche he said wonderfully little, only observing that in his opinion she seemed to justify all that his grandfather had

sacs.

said about her. There was good reason to think that he had originally intended to say much more, for there was an extensive erasure in this part of his letter, as if he had not found words suitable to express certain ideas in his mind. In fact, the entire letter was written altogether to gratify his mother, because she had expressly requested him to give her a full account of his first introduction to the Barsacs; no doubt he had tried to convey the feelings uppermost in his mind in connection with the ball, and had either failed to do so, or clothed them in language only too forcible.

The Barsacs had another gay party shortly after, but it was not especially juvenile, and the only boys formally invited of Mr. Brough's school were Winning, Vigors, and De Tabley. Reuben was seriously afraid his name had been inserted in those awful lists of which Winning had told him he received an invitation, however, at the eleventh hour, for which he was accidentally indebted to the interest he took in Gothic architecture, and a smattering he had of drawing. On the evening of the party, to console himself for Mrs. Barsac's omision to include him in her select list, he determined to execute a design he had formed some time before, to make a sketch of the cathedral for his mother; so taking his portfolio and pencil, he posted off to that venerable pile, and having chosen what he considered the best point of view, he was so busily engaged at his work that he took very little notice of the circle of urchins, which the oddity of his employment in so public a place gathered about him in a few moments. However, before his sketch was quite finished, another class of spectators were amongst the observers of his artistic enthusiasm, for hearing some female voices close by him, and one or two pleasant tittering laughs, he looked up and found the whole family of the Barsacs (at least the female portion of them) standing within a yard of his elbow. Fortunately his sketch was nearly complete, for to have put another touch to it that evening would have been utterly impossible. He put up his pencils in a hurry, not without some blushing, and answered confusedly the numerous little questions with which the ladies overwhelmed him, without indeed giving him much time to reply, had he been ever so self-possessed. Mrs. Barsac was gracious and encouraging; her daughter, the brunette, was good-natured too, but it was her laugh which had originally attracted Reuben's attention, and she had scarcely done laughing yet. The eldest girl said very little, but what she did say was supercilious and unpleasant.

Blanche alone of the sisters regarded the young artist and his work with interest; she commended his drawing highly, said it was executed with spirit and cleverness; and induced her mother and her good-humoured sister to concur in the same opinion. Reuben soon revived in the warmth of this agreeable approbation, and he was completely set up again when Mrs. Barsac invited him to join her party, politely apologizing for not having asked him before. He walked palpitating by the side of Blanche discovering new fascinations in her every moment, and did not recollect in the first happy flutter of his spirits that she was an artist as well as himself; but this community of tastes soon became a fertile topic of conversation, and Reuben was soon so deep in the subject of the fine arts as to ask if Miss Barsac had read Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses. She smiled very sweetly, as she frankly owned she had never even heard of the work, upon which Reuben with empressement, offered to lend them to her,an offer she graciously accepted just as they reached the house.

Reuben went back to Finchley to put himself in ball costume, and there he found a letter from home awaiting him, which, impatient as he was to be at Blanche's side again, he read conscientiously to the last syllable. The reading of his letters, and the making of his toilette, occupied a considerable time, and when both operations were performed, he had to hunt for Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, which detained him a good deal longer, for he was not in the habit of keeping his things very methodically. The result was that he found the festivities already commenced when he returned to Mrs. Barsac's: one dance had already taken place; another had just been arranged, and when Reuben entered he made a great sensation, greater indeed than he was ambitious of making, for with his books in his hands he had to traverse the whole circle (hemmed in by the dancers awaiting the signal to move), in order to find the fair lady for whom so unusual a ball-room offering was intended.

He probably did not observe the smiles of which he was the occasion, but he could hardly have failed to hear some of the little jocular remarks which accompanied them; however, his enthusiasm, and singleness of purpose, carried him through all, and he presented Blanche with the volumes, under a perfect conviction that no bouquet of the most rare and exquisite flowers would have been half so acceptable to her. While she was depositing the books in a corner, sedulously attended by Reuben, Mrs. Barsac happening to pass at the moment inquired what

books they were, and when Reuben told her they contained Reynolds's Discourses, she probably mistook Reynolds for a divine; for "I doubt very much," she observed, with a gracious smile on Reuben, "if they are to be compared with the discourses of your grandpapa."

Reuben would have enjoyed this second party much more than he did, if there had not been a whisper in the room that the Dean was expected in the course of the evening. None of his school-fellows were fond of meeting his grandfather at Mrs. Barsac's. The Dean in a drawing-room was always like an eagle in a dove-cot; he looked at a ball like a clerical magistrate about to disperse a mob; but it was not to the dancing he objected particularly, for he was rather in favour of all such innocent pastimes; the music was what he hated, because it prevented him from holding forth, or drowned his voice when he raised it. If there could have been dancing without music, he was willing to let the young people dance till morning, provided he was satisfied of the strength of the rafters, and not jostled by the waltzers, which made him furious. The Dean was rough with most people, sometimes even with women, but he was invariably rough with school-boys; he knocked them about without ceremony, examined and catechised them in all companies, and in the middle of dinner, or at a tea-table, would question them in the Horatian metres. When he saw any of the scholars of Finchley at Mrs. Barsac's, talking to one of her daughters, for instance, and particularly ambitious to shine and to play the man, he was sure to flout him; and above all if the poor boy happened to wear white gloves and was asking a lady to dance. Then the Dean would make the most unpleasant observations, sometimes turn upon Mrs. Barsac, abuse her roundly, and declare that she was destroying the discipline of Mr. Brough's school, and ruining the rising generation.

But the gaieties of the present occasion were not interrupted by his grandfather, further than the damp which the continual apprehension of his appearance threw over some of the company. Mrs. Barsac herself seemed nervous. Blanche declined to dance, but she permitted and even encouraged Reuben to sit beside her and talk about books, which she seemed to like to talk about; or rather to hear him expatiating on, for in truth her share in the conversation was little more than that of an attentive and flattering listener. Sometimes, however, she appeared to have little short fits of abstraction, and now and then glanced like her

mother anxiously at the door. Reuben easily guessed who the ogre was, whose expected arrival alarmed the fair Blanche as it did other people. He felt extremely vexed at his grandfather; yet sometimes he was almost half inclined to allay Blanche's apprehensions, by apprising her of the high opinion the rough old gentleman had of her. Wanting the courage to do this, he asked her in what part of the house the library was; he had not yet seen it.

Blanche smiled at the notion of a library, and said, “her papa had very few books indeed.”

Reuben did not conceal his surprise at this confession as well as it would have been polite to do.

"I feared it would shock you," continued his fair friend, "but we are not at all intellectual or reading people in this house :of course you have a nice library at home."

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Well, indeed," said Reuben, "I cannot exactly say we have any particular library, but we have a great many books in one place or another; there are some in the parlour, some in the hall, and a good many in my mother's room. But my grandfather has a superb library at Westbury ;" and then he asked Blanche had she ever been there.

She had been at Westbury, and expressed her surprise that Reuben had not.

said.

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My grandfather has been making extensive alterations," he

"So I am told," said Blanche absently.

Reuben desired to know the nature of the improvements the Dean was making.

"I understand very little about building," said Blanche, rising, "but here comes papa who will tell you all about it ;" and so saying she rather abruptly handed Reuben over to Mr. Barsac, who, with great pomposity, led him into a room called the musicroom, where there were lying on a table a set of maps and plans, not only of the Dean's improvements at Westbury, but also of the more extensive projects in which he was engaged jointly with the rich wine-merchant. Reuben surveyed these charts with the utmost astonishment and curiosity. He had heard vague statements of his grandfather's connection with Barsac in building speculations, but he had no notion of the extent of them. The Hereford plans included a terrace called Wyndham terrace after the Dean, and a square not yet named, which Mr. Barsac said he hoped would be called Wyndham likewise.