They sat late, and when the General reached his own door in a tall old house far up town, Elizabeth was just descending from Mrs. Luttrell’s carriage, escorted by Richard Baskerville.
“Oh, papa,” she said, running up the steps, her white muslin skirts floating behind her, “I have had the most glorious evening.” She was quite unaware that the hour of fate had struck for her, and that she had entered the portals of destiny—a new and strange destiny.
Pelham and Darrell had reckoned upon spending three weeks in Washington, but it became a full month. They were practically adopted by Mrs. Luttrell, and found her large, handsome, old–fashioned house a centre of the best society, where they saw all that was worth seeing in Washington. At their own Embassy they soon became favorites, and it was after a ball there that a revelation came to Pelham. He had seen Elizabeth Brandon every day of their stay in Washington, and every day she had absorbed a little more of his strong, reserved, and silently controlled nature and had gained an inch or two in his reserved, tender, but devoted heart. He discovered that Elizabeth had both goodness and intelligence as well as charm and beauty. She was very young to him,—that is, in his own thirty years he had seen and known, realized and suffered, ten times more than Elizabeth during her twenty years of life. He recognized in her a naturally fine mind and taste for reading, a delightful and subtle power of accommodating herself to the mode and manner of any man she wished to please. How attractive this would make her to the man she loved and married! The thought almost dazzled Pelham’s strong and sober brain. He saw that she was a little intoxicated with the new wine of life, her beauty, her grace and popularity; she was quite unburdened with the cares and anxieties of richer girls who wore finer gowns and sighed for the partners who crowded around Elizabeth.
Pelham was not in the least disturbed by the fact that Darrell had fallen violently in love with Elizabeth and proclaimed it to him a dozen times a day. It was Darrell’s normal condition to be violently in love with some pretty girl; but frankly admitting that his pay and allowance were not enough for one, much less for two, there was small danger of his actually committing himself, so Pelham thought. Nor did he observe any difference in Elizabeth’s acceptance of Darrell’s attentions from those of any other man whom she liked—her manner was uniformly flattering and complaisant; in truth, he had very little conception of Elizabeth’s feminine power of concealment.