I begged him to tell me this tale himself. He did so, with apparent reluctance; but the relation dazzled and enchanted me. I was bewildered with his beauty, his air, his charmed words. While thus happily engaged, he talking and I listening, the servants entered, and throwing open a large window, an exquisite _coup-d'oeil_ was presented. A marquee, lined with brilliant flags, and lighted with transparent lamps, stretched away into the spacious gardens. Tables were scattered about covered with refreshments, all arranged with exquisite taste; tropical fruits and flowers decorating the feast in elegant profusion and variety. He started up. "I am forgetting my duty," said he, "in lingering so pleasantly with you. Ah! here comes your father. See, he is following Sir Adrian and Lady Westerhaven, and is escorting the official lady who always falls to my lot. You have yet to learn, you sweet innocent lily of the desert, that the conventional forms of colonial society are even more absurd than those of England. Ah, thank heaven! your father has passed us by." But he was mistaken; the showy, shining woman leaning on my father, who had been darting keen and earnest glances into every corner of the room, suddenly exclaimed, with a touch of bitterness I could not then understand, "Now, Mr Daveney, who would have thought to have found your daughter here? Quite safe, you see; but shy, very shy, on this her first appearance in public--thank you; but I believe it will be etiquette to resign your arm. Captain Fairfax, it may not be your _pleasure_, but I believe it is your _duty_, to take me to the supper-room to-night." He looked at me, at this remark, and smiled; but evidently feared the scrutiny of the lady, for he assumed a demure look, which, in spite of my vexation, made me laugh, as he led the offended one to the marquee. I followed with my father, who expressed his uneasiness at my long absence from the ball-room. I dare say some fathers would have been angry; but he had been so long a stranger to the "conventionalities," as Clarence called the forms of society, that he did not see any impropriety in my lingering with my partner in an empty ante-room, and only feared I might have felt overcome with the heat and the crowd. How often men strive to argue women out of a due observation of "conventionalities" which militate against their schemes, and next contemn their victims for ignoring what they, the men, have taught them to despise! I think I see that bold, bad woman, Mrs Rashleigh, now. Her black eyes and hair contrasted strongly with her brilliant cheeks and lips. Beside me, she was tall, and as she looked down upon me, she seemed to sneer. Jewels glittered on her unveiled bosom, her handsome hands and arms were covered with ornaments, a tiara of diamonds crowned her brow, from which the hair was widely parted, giving her face an unwomanly look; her voice was loud and dauntless, her laugh rung unpleasantly upon the ear.