“It was found,” said Lord Harborough, “in a Roman tomb. There is not another like it in the world!”
“And what does it represent? Oh, I see snakes about that strange little face!”
“’Tis a Medusa head.”
“What?” she cried. “What an ill omen for an actress! How terrible if I were to turn my audience to stone. Fie, I would not keep such a thing about me for the world! Pray, Miss Pounce, will you accept this trifle in memory of our first acquaintance and of, oh, your beautiful hat! How kind of you, dear girl, to stay and see the last of me. Why, it just fits your finger! Nay, I will take no refusal. My cloak, Bonnets! La, I am mortal tired. Pray, my Lord, good night. Well, as far as the coach then, but no further. Remember our compact!”
“As far as the coach,” said the peer, with his disillusioned smile. “As far as the coach at least, lovely mystery, beautiful secret! Oh, the Medusa head would have been vastly appropriate, I assure you!”
They went forth, and Pamela Pounce stared at her ring. She had never felt, in all her varied energetic existence, thus puzzled and troubled.
“Heaven ha’ mercy,” she thought, “what a prodigious bit of insolence, to give it to me under his very nose! And, oh, lud, what’s a body to think? Will he marry her after all and my poor Miss Sarah and Mr. W. be cut out? She wears his pearls and drives in his coach, and yet withal he’s to lead her no further than its door!”
“’Tis the most dreadful tale, child, that’s current,” said my Lady Kilcroney to her friend, Nan Day, as they met in Madame Mirabel’s hat shop. “They say my young Lord Ashmore has put an end to himself. I met the Duke of Hampshire anon, and His Grace could scarce speak, so overwhelmed was he. Lord Ashmore’s father was his friend and neighbour.”
Pamela Pounce put down the dove-coloured capote she had been about to place upon Lady Anne Day’s pretty head. She was more affected than her customer, who looked up, knitting her brows vaguely, with small interest in her blue eyes.