"Won't you come and speak to me?" she says, sweetly, "Mrs. Carrington will not find time to present you to every one, and I cannot wait for a formal introduction. Come here, and let me tell you I like Etonians better than anything else in the world." Sir Mark's moustache moves slightly, just sufficient to allow his lips to form themselves into a faint sneer; while Billy, thus summoned, crosses over and falls into the seat beside her ladyship. "Do you, really?" he says. "But I'm awfully afraid I shall destroy your good opinion of us. You see, the fact is"--he goes on, candidly--"I have so little to say for myself, I fear in a very few minutes you will vote me a bore. However, you are quite welcome to anything I have to say; and when you are tired of me please say so." "Oh, that your elders had half your wit!" exclaims her ladyship, with an effective but bewitching shake of her beautiful head. "If they would but come to the point as you do, Mr. Vernon, what a great deal of time might be saved!" "Oh, I say, don't call me that," says my brother, with an irresistible laugh; "every one calls me 'Billy.' I shouldn't know myself by any other name. If you insist upon calling me Mr. Vernon I shall fancy you have found reason to dislike me." "And would that be an overwhelming calamity?" "I should certainly regard it in that light. I like being friends with--beautiful people," returns Billy, with a faint hesitation, but all a boy's flattering warmth; and so on. Here Sir James Handcock, wakening from one of his usual fits of somnolence, actually takes the trouble to cross the room and put a question to his wife in an audible whisper. "Who is that handsome lad?" he asks, staring kindly at Billy. (He was absent when my brother first entered the room.) "Mrs. Carrington's brother," returns his wife, with a sympathetic smile. "A really charming face," says Sir James, criticisingly; "scarcely a fault. Quite a face for an artist's pencil." And I feel my heart warm towards Sir James Handcock. When dinner is announced, Lady Blanche declares her intention of going down with no one but her new friend, and Billy, proud and enchanted, conducts her to the dining-room; while Bebe casts a "what did I tell you?" sort of look at me behind their backs. Indeed, so thorough are the fascinations she exercises upon him that before the evening is concluded he is hopelessly and entirely her slave. CHAPTER XXII. It has come at last--the night of my first ball; and surely no girlish _debutante_ in her first season ever felt a greater thrill of delight at this mere fact than I, spite of my being "wooed an' married an' a'." Behold me in my room arrayed for conquest. Having once made up my mind to the black velvet--though mother and Harriet and Bebe all declare me a great deal too young and too slight for it--I persist in my determination, and the dress is ordered and sent down.