Wretched Haviland!--Where is mercy and what is left for me in the
world?--I will rebel about this.--I will give up trying to seek the
best, and turn away from Alexandra.
At dinner that night, my grandmother said "You must go to Picault's
ball, my dear;" and my grave, oracular father added: "Yes, you shall go
among our people now. I am about to send you to France."
The prospect of that journey, to which it had been my joy at other times
to look forward, affected me little in my disturbed condition.
CHAPTER X.
THE ENTHUSIASM OF SOCIAL PLEASURE.
Grace Carter came over on the way to the ball, and when I descended I
found her entertaining my grandmother, while a young man named Chinic,
teaming with good nature and compliments, sat near her and rising with
the rest grasped me by the hand as I entered. Grace too, smiling, held
out her hand. As we went to the door my grandmother delivered me over to
her, saying playfully: "Chamilly will be in your charge this evening. He
is melancholy. C'est a toi de le guerir."
"I will be his sister of Charity!" she cried merrily and pressed my arm.
I laughed. It was not so undelightful to be taken into the companionship
of a graceful girl.
As we whirled along in the carriage, the half-moon in the dark blue sky,
making heavy shadows on the trees and mansions, lit her cheek and
Greek-knotted hair on the side next me with a glamour so that her head
and shoulders shone softly in it like a bust of Venus.
Picault's was an extensive family mansion of sandstone, built thirty
years before for one of the wealthiest merchants of Montreal. It was on
a corner.
One end rose into a rococo tower, lit then with the curious kind of
clearness produced by a half-moon's light. In the centre, before the
hospital door, projected a pillared portico, under which our carriage
drove, and at the other end lurked the shades of a massive gate-way with
cobbled road leading through. The carriage-road past the front was
bordered by lilacs in bloom--on the one side, as we went through, all
shadows, on the other faintly colored, mingling their fragrance with
that of huge rose-bushes.
The doors were thrown open, and we saw a great staircase in a wide hall
hung with colored lights, and entering passed into one of the most
lavish of interiors. As I looked around the dressing-room to which
Chinic and myself were shown and saw the windows stacked with tropical
plants, the colored candles set about the
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