She had that moment, she informed him, sent the parcel containing Sir Jasper’s presents, including the betrothal ring, by a trusted hand to his house; she vowed she considered matters vastly well as they stood; both would yet repent a return to the old terms.
Sir Jasper did not kneel to Selina. He behaved, Kitty thought, with a better dignity than she could have expected and also more intelligence. He promised perfect confidence in the future and a rope of pearls; the most tender forbearance in all difficulties and emerald earrings; the unswerving devotion of a manly heart and six Catalonian horses to the finest coach woman ever drove in. He furthermore volunteered to double his wife’s pin-money, and altogether, as Lady Kilcroney informed her Denis afterwards, made a more graceful leg out of the business than could have been imagined from the gross fashion in which he had cantered in.
Lady Selina at length allowed an inert hand to lie in his clasp, and even permitted him to touch an averted cheek in token of her pardon; and it was an extremely chastened buck that wended his way out of St. James’s Palace in the direction of Bond Street, and it was a tremendous sigh of relief that my Lady Kilcroney heaved.
“Now child,” quoth she, “as Mr. Shakespeare hath it, ‘All’s well that ends well.’ But do not make the mistake of keeping up your frigid airs too long. The real way to treat the wretches is to grant a little from time to time, and demand a great deal.”
“I’m much obliged to you, I’m sure, ma’am, for your kind interest,” said Lady Selina, and dropped her white eyelids over her audacious cold eyes.
“There has been another elopement,” wrote Miss Burney, the Queen’s reader, to her sister, “and you would never believe, my dearest Susan, who and in what circumstances. Lady Selina Vereker was, you know, to wed Sir Joseph Standish, that handsome widower (scarce indeed a year widowed of his poor Julia; men are strange things! I met her once, she was a very elegant woman). Lady Selina was, as I say, dear Susan, to wed Sir Jasper this actual next Monday, and my Lady Kilcroney who, as you know, hath the kind of good nature that is for ever interfering in other people’s affairs, was to give the breakfast at her own mansion in Hertford Street. ’Twas said she made the match. ’Tis quite certain she recommended the young lady at Court. She must be vastly sorry on both these accounts now. Princess Augusta was to go to the wedding (the bride being her own Maid-of-Honour); and altogether it is an odd, unpleasant business, as you will hear. Last night, then, Lady Selina attended the Royals to the Opera House. ’Twas to be her last duty of the kind, and she was ablaze, my dear, they tell me, with Sir Jasper’s jewels. The poor man was infatuated. I cannot but pity him. She stood behind the Princess Augusta in the box as usual, and no one knows the exact moment of her disappearance. ’Tis positive she was present at the beginning of the third act. Then all attention was turned to the stage, and at the end of it she was nowhere to be found! Conceive it, my dearest Susan, to choose such a manner and such company, for such a proceeding! To me it is beyond imagination; but, from the letter she left behind her, there can be, alas! no mistake. The young gentleman for whom she has shown her preference in so singular a fashion, is, it seems, a person of no note at all; a mere officer of the Marines, by name Simpson, with scarce any fortune beside his pay. The whole affair leaves one in a state of amaze, and I verily believe the world is going mad.”
On the morning following the fatal evening just described, my Lady Kilcroney was awakened from very agreeable slumbers by the urgency of Miss Lydia Pounce, who, placing a letter on the bed, begged in a tone so important that her ladyship should wake up and read it at once, that Kitty, omitting to scold, forthwith proceeded to obey.
“Lady Selina’s woman also brought a large case, my Lady. I’ve left it in the ante-chamber.”
Kitty was in Hertford Street, making ready in sweet security for the wedding festivities; yet not so secure but that her heart misgave her from the first moment of the matutinal summons; it hardly needed the mention of Lady Selina’s name to confirm her instant suspicions. Yet she was ill-prepared, as she herself averred to all and sundry later, for such a revelation of mixed baseness, ingratitude and idiocy.
“You have taken so kind an interest in my affairs, my dear Lady Kilcroney,” wrote the Maid-of-Honour, “that I wish you to be the first to hear that by the time this reaches you I shall have become the wife of Lieutenant Simpson of the Royal Marines. ’Tis no sort of match for me, I am well aware, but I prefer him so infinitely to Sir Jasper Standish that, seeing no other way out of it, I have yielded to his solicitations. You may perhaps remember that when we were with Their Majesties at Brighton last month, there was a young man who used to stand on the Parade and stare as we went by. That was Mr. Simpson. From the moment I had accepted Sir Jasper—and indeed, it was scarce fair to put such pressure on me, and me so young—I knew I had made a great mistake. And oh, Heaven knows, how I tried to induce him to break it off! When I had succeeded at last—for ’twas I who wrote the anonymous letter about the roses, and ’twas I placed the billet-doux inside the rose (I still think ’twas a very ingenious trick), if it had not been for you all would have gone well. No one would have blamed me, as you told Sir Jasper yourself, but you would interfere, my Lady, and you brought it on again. And now, if you please, will you explain matters to Sir Jasper? I am sending the jewels to you that you may give them back. And oh, I am so glad to be free of him, and of them, and of Court I can’t tell you! Oh, pray do not try your hand at match-making again, my Lady, for indeed you have no talent for it.