| Note: | Project Gutenberg has the other two volumes of this work. Volume I: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54067/54067-h/54067-h.htm Volume III: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54366/54366-h/54366-h.htm |
A COLONIAL REFORMER
A
COLONIAL REFORMER
BY
ROLF BOLDREWOOD
AUTHOR OF ‘ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,’ ‘THE SQUATTER’S DREAM,’
‘THE MINER’S RIGHT,’ ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1890
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XV
Mr. Neuchamp was disposed to be wroth with himself when he discovered that hewas looking forward with considerable interest to a much-talked-of ball, bywhich the Count von Schätterheims had resolved to mark his appreciation of thekindness which he had received at the hands of the Sydney ‘upper ten.’ Whyshould he feel gratified, Ernest asked himself, at the prospect of joining inan entertainment at best but a réchauffé of numberless affairs of theclass which he had assisted at and despised in England? A ball―a mere ball―astale repetition of the meaningless crust―the saltatory, amatory, and gustatorysimulacra of pleasure, which he had long since renounced and abandoned. Anentertainment chiefly composed of people he didn’t know, and given by a manwhom he did not like.
He finally disposed of the affair in his own mind by the summary, if illogical,decision, that he must regard himself, in respect of his late banishment fromthe world, in the light of a sailor after a protracted cruise, gifted withabnormal powers of assimilation and digestion, mental and physical.
Even in moments of sternest self-analysis men are not infrequently insincereand evasive. Perchance not consciously. Were the moral processes incapable ofsuch inflections, Ernest Neuchamp could never have concealed the fact fromhimself that he chiefly wished to attend this much-abused festivity, to whichhe had received a formal and ornate card, inclusive of the arms and crest ofthe noble family of Von Schätterheims, because it would be graced by thepresence of Antonia Frankston.
Ernest did not find the very excellent dinner of which he partook at the clubon the evening of the ball in any degree less palatable because of this mentalconflict. He arrayed himself in the wampum and warpaint proper for suchengagements as manufactured by Mr. Poole, of Saville Row, whic