“There, don’t cry, you poor thing! Why, now, you said you’d tell me about it, Miss, and I’m sure, I think it uncommon pleasant of you, Miss, and I’d never take advantage—no! ’Twill be as sacred—as sacred—no not if I was to be drawn and quartered! But there, Miss, why, how do you know ’tisn’t all going to end lovely? How do you know the gentleman isn’t like me and wouldn’t rather have you than the beauty, fifty thousand times?”
Here came such a lifting of swimming eyes, such a timid smile that Pamela thought she, for one, never wanted to see anything sweeter than the face of the plain Miss Vibart.
And after that the confidences came, broken, halting, but explicit enough for such quick wits as those of Madame Mirabel’s head woman. How Sarah had followed her mother, with a higher heart than she had ever carried in her bosom to any entertainment, into the great, splendid ball-room of Hampshire House, safe under her mask: and they had scarce been there a five minutes when up comes the Duchess of Queensbury in a great fuss, followed by a tall young gentleman, and she says to Mamma, for the Duchess is Mamma’s cousin by marriage, and has remembered the relationship since Jane came out, for Jane, she says, is the most beautiful creature in the world and “so she is,” cried the loyal sister, breaking off her narrative with a trembling lip.
“’Tis the young gentleman’s looks I want to hear about,” Miss Pounce interpolated skilfully. “Mr. W—— I suppose? Him your lady Mamma was alluding to.”
“Mr. W. it was, Mr. Walsingham. And oh, he’s a person of great consequence, for he’s the nephew and heir of the old Marquis of Harborough, him that succeeded his brother, you know, and none of them ever married. And oh, dear, my dear friend—your name’s Pounce, isn’t it? I’d rather call you by your Christian name if you don’t mind. Pamela? Oh, I like that. Dear Pamela, I thought when the Duchess introduced him and he bowed and smiled I’d never seen anything so agreeable, nor so well looking. With such straight and honest eyes and so kind a smile. And the Duchess was in such a fuss, as I told you, she wouldn’t listen to Mamma who wanted to explain about Jane, and I think she’s a little deaf, too. ‘Here, Edward,’ she cries, ‘here’s Miss Vibart, what I’ve told you of and you’d better engage her at once, for once it gets about what face is behind that mask, there’ll be twenty clamouring for her. Oh, you’re a lucky dog,’ says she—that’s the way she speaks, and I think it’s rather gross, but Mamma won’t have it, because she’s a duchess—‘Oh, you’re a lucky dog,’ she cries, ‘and there won’t be a buck in the room that won’t want your blood when midnight comes and that face is revealed.’”
“Dear, to be sure,” said Pamela, with a sucking breath. “And do you think Mr. W.—I can’t help it, Miss, I shall always call him that: ’tis so mysterious like—didn’t hear what your Mamma tried to tell the Duchess? Did he take you for your sister straight off?”
An overwhelming blush spread over the plain Miss Vibart’s face.
“Oh, Pamela Pounce,” she cried, “’twas very silly and cowardly of me, but I didn’t want him to find out. I thought for once I’d know, even on false pretences, what it means to be admired and courted. And oh, my dear creature, yes, I’ll be truthful. I liked him so much from the very first that I couldn’t, I couldn’t make up my mind to his going away and leaving me.”
In the pause which ensued, the milliner discreetly waited while last night’s heroine once again fell into a retrospective muse. Suddenly the girl broke out:
“’Twas the strangest thing! Our tastes met at every point. ‘Never think, sir,’ cries I to him, ‘to find me entertaining company, for I’m the veriest country mouse——’ ‘Country!’ cries he. ‘Madam, there’s no life for anyone but in the country to my mind. This town existence, what is it? How can anyone but an idiot substitute the fresh air and the green fields and the fine views and the wholesome activities, the pleasant neighbourly intercourse, for this inane round of dissipations in the atmosphere of smoke, the hideous confinement of brick and mortar and the feverish intercourse with strangers between people who can have naught in common, and as like as not can never meet again?’”