“Here I am, then, Aunt Kilcroney, agreeable to your command!”
“And, indeed, ’tis no less than your duty, I should think. ’Tis a vast of time, sir, since you have done me the honour to call upon me. Yet I think each quarter day brings you the wherewithal to remember me by, to say the least of it.”
He looked at her with an expression in which relief and disappointment struggled. Was it only to keep him to heel, like a well-trained dog, that she had sent for him? Was there nothing but huffiness at his lack of assiduity to account for her air of disapproval, or had she heard of that little bill to which my Lord Kilcroney had so good-naturedly set his name? Or of that ruffling night at the Cocoa Tree when he had lost four hundred pounds to my Lord Sanquhar, and thereafter raised the money to settle it with Mr. Aaron, on my lady’s own banker’s order to himself? A transaction which might have been ruin indeed if the most generous girl in all the world had not got him out of the sponging house in time. Here his cogitations came to an abrupt end, and the very person in his thoughts stood in the doorway.
He got up, all amazement, as my lady too, majestically rose. What in the name of Heaven brought Pamela Pounce hither, and why, by all that was crazy, was she carrying a little dark child in her arms?
The young man flushed, bit his lip, and trembled with a sudden fury. By Heaven, if Pamela had gone behind his back to tattle to my Lady, he would—yes, dash it, he would pay her back and never speak to the chit again!
“Is this the child?” said Kitty, with a bell-like tone of melancholy.
Pamela curtsied with great deliberation for all reply, and, at a wave of Kitty’s hand, gracefully sat down, settling her pretty burthen in her lap.
It was a little girl, beautiful in a dark way, with devouring brown eyes. She was exquisitely dressed in a lawn frock, with insertion and mignonette trimming. The Princess Amelia could not have been finer clad, thought Kitty, and as Pamela took off the straw hat with the ostrich feathers and revealed an ordered tangle of copper curls, which would one day be night-black, threaded through with a faint blue ribbon, my lady could hardly restrain a cry of admiration.
Kitty stood and looked at Mr. Bellairs. He was in the throes of undeniable agitation. She looked at Pamela, serene and, as she gazed down at the child, Kitty thought, lovely, with a maternal softening of her bright, handsome face.
“Ah, Jocelyn Bellairs!” cried Lady Kilcroney, dramatically, “you may well turn away. You may well feel that sight were more than you can endure. But raise your eyes, sir. Behold, behold, and let your heart speak. Can you call yourself a man and refuse that trusting creature her rights, refuse that exquisite cherub a father’s name?”