Rose Thornton was not clever.  She was no longer in her first youth, and had never been pretty or very attractive.  Her figure was neat, and her face had a sort of nervous deprecating expression, that made you look at it a second time.  Nevertheless, she was always deeply engaged, and generally to the best goers in the room.  She was a good performer herself, but this would not account for it; ninety-nine girls out of every hundred are that, after two seasons’ practice.  Those who were in the secret did not wonder at her luck.  She was the ame damnee of Flora Bellasys.

Whenever the latter ventured on any unusually daring escapade, she was always really accompanied by Miss Thornton, or supposed to be so.  How the influence was originally acquired I know not; at the time I speak of she had no more volition left than a Russian Grenadier.  She had some principles of action once, I suppose, and considered herself as an accountable being; but all such vanities her “dashing white sergeant” had drilled out of her long ago.  Poor thing!  It was no wonder that the frightened look had become habitual to her face, and that she always spoke with reserve and constraint, as if to guard against the chance-betrayal of some terrible secret.  It was no sinecure, her office—­alternately scapegoat and confidante.  My own idea is, that having still a little feeble remnant of a conscience remaining, she suffered agonies of remorse at times in the latter capacity.  Dancing was her great—­almost her only pleasure, and Flora certainly provided her regularly with partners.  Indeed, some one had irreverently designated Miss Thornton as The Turnpike, inasmuch as, before securing a waltz with the beauty, it was necessary to pay toll in the shape of a duty-dance with her protegee.  Rose’s gratitude was boundless.  She never wearied in rendering small services to her patroness.  She would write her notes for her, as La Raffe did for Richelieu, and fetch and carry like the best of retrievers; venturing every now and then on a timid caress, which was permitted rather than accepted with an imperial nonchalance.  The only subject on which she ever expanded into eloquence was the fascinations of her friend.  She spent all her weak breath in blowing that laudatory trumpet, as if she expected the defenses of the best guarded heart to fall prostrate before it, like the walls of Jericho.  And yet, if all the truth were known, I think she had as much reason to complain as the dwarf in the story who swore fellowship in arms with the giant.

I was sorry to see Livingstone linger at her side, yet more sorry when, by an easy transition, he passed on to Flora’s, and the circle around her, from old habit, made room for him to pass.  He did not stay there long, though—­only long enough to make future arrangements, I suppose—­and then, for some time, I lost sight of him.

I had been driving heavily through a quadrille in the society of a very foolish virgin, whose ideas of past, present, and future seemed bounded by the last Opera, which she had and I had not seen.  A horror of great dullness had fallen upon me, and I went out to restore the tone of my depressed spirits by a libation, wherein I devoted, solemnly, my late partner to the infernal gods.  When I returned they were playing “The Olga,” and Flora was whirling round on Guy Livingstone’s arm.