“Felicity, I don’t care what you have done—what you are to that bad old man. I will forgive everything. Come to me and be my wife!”
“Now, Bonnets, open the door. Miss Pounce, pray put a hand upon my Lord’s elbow and help him to rise. That is the way out, my Lord Ambrose. (I cannot help it. I remember best the name under which you once insulted me.) You forgive me? Had I the time I could laugh. Heavens! But three minutes to get into the paduasoy!”
She did laugh as the young nobleman, a look on his face which struck a kind of terror into Pamela’s womanly heart, flung his hands out with a menace and dashed from the room.
“Thank Heaven, the creature’s gone! Bolt the door, Mrs. Bonnets. I’ll have no more visitors till the play’s over!”
Pamela Pounce was not bidden remain this time; but she could not bring herself to leave the dressing-room until Miss Falcon’s last appearance there. Talk of plays! What a tremendous play she had seen that night. ’Twould be like walking out before the last curtain dropped to go home now.
When the actress returned she was accompanied only by Lord Harborough. As he led her in he looked at her hand.
“I see,” he said, “you have not honoured my poor gift.”
“My Lord,” she said, “I have honoured you sixty-five times with these pearls. Is it not enough? As for rings, there is a slave weight about them. I hate them. But is this really mine? Mine to do as I will with?”
He smiled at each question, and Pamela thought that, for all his fond admiration, there was a sort of contemptuous indulgence lurking in his glance—that he had the air of one who says to himself, “These pretty tricks are known; these charming moods are part of the little game. I have not the enthusiasm of youth, but I have experience, I have toleration, and I have patience!”
“It is an elegant and artistic ring,” said Miss Falcon, lifting it to the light of the wax candles which branched from her mirror. “A sapphire, I see, and all chased.”