“Let me have the honor of being your partner in this great enterprise,” said Lothair; “you are the inspiration of Muriel.”
“Oh! I am very glad I can do any thing, however slight, to please you and your friends. I like them all; but particularly Lady Corisande.”
A new dance in a country-house is a festival of frolic grace. The incomplete knowledge, and the imperfect execution, are themselves causes of merry excitement, in their contrast with the unimpassioned routine and almost unconscious practice of traditionary performances. And gay and frequent were the bursts of laughter from the bright and airy band who were proud to be the scholars of Theodora. The least successful among them was perhaps Lord Carisbrooke.
“Princess Metternich must have taught you wrong, Carisbrooke,” said Hugo Bohun.
They ended with a waltz, Lothair dancing with Miss Arundel. She accepted his offer to take some tea on its conclusion. While they were standing at the table, a little withdrawn from the others, and he holding a sugar-basin, she said in a low voice, looking on her cup and not at him, “the cardinal is vexed about the early celebration; he says it should have been at midnight.”
“He was going to speak to you himself,” continued Miss Arundel; “but he felt a delicacy about it. He had thought that your common feelings respecting the Church might have induced you if not to consult, at least to converse, with him on the subject; I mean as your guardian.”
“It might have been perhaps as well,” said Lothair; “but I also feel a delicacy on these matters.”
“There ought to be none on such matters,” continued Miss Arundel, “when every thing is at stake.”
“I do not see that I could have taken any other course than I have done,” said.Lothair. “It can hardly be wrong. The bishop’s church views are sound.”
“Sound!” said Miss Arundel; “moonshine instead of sunshine.”
“Moonshine would rather suit a midnight than a morning celebration,” said Lothair; “would it not?”
“A fair repartee, but we are dealing with a question that cannot be settled by jests. See,” she said with great seriousness, putting down her cup and taking again his offered arm, “you think you are only complying with a form befitting your position and the occasion. You deceive yourself. You are hampering your future freedom by this step, and they know it. That is why it was planned. It was not necessary; nothing can be necessary so pregnant with evil. You might have made, you might yet make, a thousand excuses. It is a rite which hardly suits the levity of the hour, even with their feelings; but, with your view of its real character, it is sacrilege. What is occurring tonight might furnish you with scruples?” And she looked up in his face.