The proof of the
general dulness of polite circles is the great sensation that is always
produced by a new face. The season always commences briskly, because
there are so many. Ball, and dinner, and concert collect then plentiful
votaries; but as we move on the dulness will develop itself, and
then come the morning breakfast, and the water party, and the _fete
champetre_, all desperate attempts to produce variety with old
materials, and to occasion a second effect by a cause which is already
exhausted.
These philosophical remarks precede another introduction to the public
ball-room at Doncaster. Mrs. Dallington Vere and Miss Dacre are walking
arm in arm at the upper end of the room.
'You are disappointed, love, about Arundel?' said Mrs. Dallington.
'Bitterly; I never counted on any event more certainly than on his
return this summer.'
'And why tarrieth the wanderer? unwillingly of course?'
'Lord Darrell, who was to have gone over as _Charge d'affaires_, has
announced to his father the impossibility of his becoming a diplomatist,
so our poor _attache_ suffers, and is obliged to bear the _portefeuille
ad interim_.
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