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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 385
there with all the honours ; and there, fluttering away from Miss
Blacklock, our butterfly lighted on Miss Baynes. Now Miss
Baynes would have danced with a mop-stick, she was so fond of
dancing : and Hely, who had practised in a thousand Chaumières,
Mabilles (or whatever was the public dance-room then in vogue),
was a most amiable, agile, and excellent partner. And she told
Philip next day what a nice little partner she had found—poor
Philip, who was not asked to that paradise of a party. And Philip
said that he knew the little man ; that he believed he was rich ;
that he wrote pretty little verses :—in a word, Philip, in his leonine
way, regarded little Hely as a lion regards a lapdog.
Now this little Slyboots had a thousand artful little ways. He
had a very keen sensibility and a fine taste, which was most readily
touched by innocence and beauty. He had tears, I won't say at
command ; for they were under no command, and gushed from his
fine eyes in spite of himself. Charlotte's innocence and freshness
smote him with a keen pleasure. Bon Dieu ! What was that
great tall Miss Blacklock who had tramped through a thousand
ball-rooms, compared to this artless happy creature ? He danced
away from Miss Blacklock and after Charlotte the moment he saw
our young friend ; and the Blacklocks, who knew all about him,
and his money, and his mother, and his expectations—who had his
verses in their poor album, by whose carriage he had capered day
after day in the Bois de Boulogne—stood scowling and deserted, as
this young fellow danced off with that Miss Baynes, who lived in
a boarding-house, and came to parties in a cab with her horrid old
mother ! The Blacklocks were as though they were not henceforth
for Mr. Hely. They asked him to dinner. Bless my soul, he
utterly forgot all about it ! He never came to their box on their
night at the opera. Not one twinge of remorse had he. Not one
pang of remembrance. If he did remember them, it was when
they bored him, like those tall tragic women in black who are
always coming in their great long trains to sing sermons to Don
Juan. Ladies, your name is down in his Lordship's catalogue ;
his servant has it ; and you, Miss Anna, are number one thousand
and three.
But as for Miss Charlotte, that is a different affair. What innocence
! What a fraicheur ! What a merry good-humour ! Don
Slyboots is touched, he is tenderly interested: her artless voice
thrills through his frame; he trembles as he waltzes with her;
as his fine eyes look at her, psha! what is that film coming over
them ? O Slyboots, Slyboots ! And as she has nothing to conceal,
she has told him all he wants to know before long. This is her
first winter in Paris : her first season of coming out. She has only
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