An Old Meerschaum by David Christie Murray

What should bring fashion, and wealth, and beauty in one charming person up to London from the country at the latter end of August? The town house long since dismantled for the grand tour now finished -- the charms of the season abandoned for peaceful Suffolk -- why should Lilian care to return thus at the fag end of London's feast of folly? Has the bronzed and bearded Barndale anything to do with it? Lady Dives Luxor gives a ball; and Lady Dives, being Lilian's especial patroness and guardian angel and divinity, insists on Lilian being present thereat. This ball is designed as the crowning festivity of a brilliant year; and to Lilian, blest with youth and beauty and high spirits, and such a splendid lover, shall it not be a night to remember until the grey curtain fall on the close of the last season, and nothing is any more remembered? But a cloud of sadness settles on Lilian's charming face when she misses the bronzed and bearded.

Lady Dives knows all about the engagement, and is enthusiastic over it; and, when Lilian has a second's time to snatch an enquiry concerning the absent one, she answers, 'He has never been near me once. I wrote him a special note, and told him you were coming. He will be here. ' So Lady Dives strives to chase the cloud. Barndale does not come, having never, in point of fact, received that special note which Lady Dives had despatched to him. So the ball is a weariness, and Lilian goes back with mamma to the hotel with quite drooping spirits. She makes excuses for the absent Barndale, but fancies all manner of things in her feminine fashion, preferring to believe in fevers and boat accidents and other horrors rather than think that a valet has been lazy or a postman inaccurate.