The chief source of anxiety was removed, and Lady Bell was free to resume her intention of being present at the ball, and was not reduced to eclipse its splendour by being absent, as a throng of the givers of the feast were ready to profess. Miss Sundon might have accompanied Lady Bell, but the former preferred, on the whole, after the late shock to her nerves, to remain a martyr to her new responsibility, and to relapse into luxuriating tenderly over the last grievance. Lady Bell, in her widowed dignity, could dispense with a companion. She knew, moreover, with an idle, exultant throb, that in addition to her many admirers, more or less fervent, and more or less men of many ties, with their hearts split into segments, and distributed pretty equally over a select circle of fashionable belles, there was one man who would only see her in the motley company, who was in it for her sake, who, crusty, cantankerous sailor as she had judged him at first, needed but a wave of her hand, and a glance of her eye, to be at her side, at her feet. Lady Bell, whether she confessed it to herself or not, went on to draw conclusions from the significant circumstance that Captain Fane, of his own free will, departed from his rule and put himself about to be one in a scene so unpalatable to his tastes as this masquerade. Lady Bell did more. She looked within, and she recognised with a breathless flutter of mingled wonder, trepidation, and bliss, an astounding fact. The chief glory of the masquerade to her would be the presence of this quondam growling and grave young officer. Lady Bell was perfectly aware that Harry Fane, though well-born, was poor, and that—while she believed he was an excellent officer, and while she had heard him speak like a natural philosopher to a man of genius—he was a fellow of no mark in her fashionable world. His very profession was against him in some respects.