Nevertheless, he mastered his weakness, following his own name resolutely upstairs, in a white heat, no doubt, yet supported by the calmness of despair. Fortunately, he found his hostess at her drawing-room door. The favourable greeting she accorded him would have reassured the most diffident of men.
"You're a good boy," she whispered, with a squeeze of his hand. "I was almost afraid you wouldn't come. Stay near the door, while I do the civil to the arch-duchess. I'll be back directly. I've got something very particular to ask you."
So, while Mrs. Lushington did homage (in French) to the arch-duchess, who was old, fat, good-humoured, and very sleepy, Bill took up a position from which he could pass the inmates of the apartment in review. Observing his welcome by their hostess, and knowing _who he was_, two or three magnificent ladies thought it not derogatory to afford him a gracious bow; and as they forbore to engage him in discourse, a visitation of which Bill had fearful misgivings, he soon felt sufficiently at ease to inspect unconcernedly, and in detail, the several individuals who constituted the crush.
It was a regular London gathering, in the full-tide of the season, consisting of the best-dressed, best-looking, and idlest people in town. There seemed an excess of ladies, as usual; but who would complain of a summer market that it was over stocked with flowers? While of the uglier sex, the specimens were either very young or very mature. There was scarcely a man to be seen between thirty and forty, but a glut of young gentlemen, some too much and some too little at their ease, with a liberal sprinkling of ancient dandies, irreproachable in manners, and worthier members of society, we may be permitted to hope, than society believed. A few notabilities were thrown in, of course: the arch-duchess aforesaid; a missionary, who had been tortured by the Chinese, dark, sallow, and of a physiognomy that went far to extenuate the cruelty of the Celestials; a lady who had spent two years at Thebes, and, perhaps for that reason, dressed almost as low as the Egyptian Sphinx; a statesman out of office; a celebrated preacher at issue with his bishop; a foreign minister; a London banker; and a man everybody knew, who wrote books nobody read. Besides these, there was the usual complement of ladies who gave, and ladies who went to, balls; married women addicted to flirting; single ladies not averse to it; stout mammas in gorgeous apparel; tall girls with baby faces promising future beauty; a powdered footman winding, like an eel, through the throng; Frank Lushington himself, looking at his watch to see how soon it would be over; and Pretty Bessie Gordon, fresh and smiling, superintending the tea.