“Aye, and by the same token I saw that august personage driving his curricle along the sea road on my way here,” said Mr. Stafford, relapsing into his usual rather insolent serenity. Your fine gentleman will not let himself be betrayed into emotion if he can help it.
“And I was less flattered than ever at your taking me for him yesterday, Kil.”
His sister-in-law looked at him curiously. “But my Lord Kilcroney is right!” she cried maliciously. “Since you’ve grown so prodigious fat, brother-in-law.”
Then, having planted the pin-prick which she never allowed to escape her, she returned to the real subject of interest.
“Not to be present at your own wife’s entertainment? Oh come, my Lord, this is an Irish way of evading the question. You must think us monstrous simple to credit——”
It was a morning of interruptions, for here Miss Pounce and the bandboxes marched unexpectedly in upon them. She was breathing quickly and speaking with volubility.
My Lady Verney’s own woman had informed her of Mrs. Lafone’s address in the town, and she had ventured to present herself with the very latest, positively the very latest, to show to her most esteemed customers. Miss Pounce was quite sure that Mistress Lafone and Mistress Stafford—“Is your lady here, sir?” she curtsied to the Beau, who was ogling her jocosely. “Not till next week? Oh, dear, what a pity! I’d have been honoured, sir, to supply a hat or a head for the beautiful Mrs. Stafford. But as I was saying, I am quite sure that you, Madam, and your sister, being such kind patrons of the establishment, Madame Mirabel would have taken it very bad of me, very bad of me indeed, had I failed to seek you out.”
Denis Kilcroney was sitting erect upon the sofa, with his arms folded, and a stern glance upon the glib Pamela. This young person avoided meeting the glance in question. She felt that her swift appearance at Mrs. Lafone’s lodgings on the heels of my Lord’s stormy exit was, for all her clever patter, a little too obvious a coincidence.
“I’ve a head here,” went on Miss Pounce, beginning to set down her bandboxes, and making the most theatrical effects with the undoing of strings and rustling of tissue paper. “Well, really, the Duchess of Hampshire wanted, right or wrong, to have it for her ball last week when she entertained the Prince, as you may have seen by the news-sheet, Madam. But I says to her, ‘No, your Grace,’ I says, ‘’tis too elfin for your Grace. Your Grace wants, so to speak, the Goddess effect.’ And as I says it, if you’ll believe me, I thought of you, ma’am.”
Mrs. Lafone did not believe her, but she stood, hesitating a little, over the bandboxes, torn between a pettish desire to dismiss with obloquy the wretch who had come to turn the dagger in the wound, and the budding hope that Mr. Stafford, who had plenty of money, might be moved to do the generous for once, and present his injured sister-in-law with a token of his esteem.