The moment approached for the appearance of the Royal guest. The most pompous of the company had taken its departure closely upon the heels of Royalty, and now there was left none but that select circle to which Mistress Lafone had referred with so much acrimony, and a sprinkling of young naval officers, quite negligible beings.
Nevertheless, one of these was now to suit Mistress Molly’s purpose very well. Most unaccountably, she, who was generally surrounded by the male sex, found herself neglected to-night by the gentlemen of Kitty’s coterie. Perhaps her mermaid charms seemed more dangerous than alluring after the trap into which my Lord Kilcroney had fallen. Anyway, she was glad to hang upon the arm of a blushing youth in blue, and the celebrated band striking up “God save the Prince of Wales” with a great stroke of bows, planted herself with her cavalier near the entrance to watch, her heart beating high with ecstasy and fear—for the appearance of brother-in-law Tom as the Prince of Wales.
A stout gentleman, in the very pink of the fashion, with all his double chins majestically sunk in swathes of fine cambric, with ruffles, blue ribbon and a star, with calves that must have made Kitty’s footmen green with envy, and shoulders that would have been remarkable in a guardsman, advanced, stepping with the inimitable carriage of the great.
Again an hysterical burst of laughter rose in Molly’s throat. The next moment she pinched the arm of the young naval gentleman so fiercely that he turned in alarm.
“What is the matter?”
“I am swooning!” said Molly with a gasp, and swoon she did, and no mistake about it!
However cunningly Mr. Stafford might make himself up, however paint and pad and be-wig himself, strut and look majestic, he could not have given to his handsome brown eyes the dull protruding stare, nor to his features that thickness which a plethoric habit was inducing in the heir to the throne; and Mr. Stafford would not have been escorted by the gentlemen of the Prince’s own suite; and, most certain of all, he would not have had my Lord Kilcroney by his side.
The dreadful discovery flashed upon the unfortunate Molly with the still more appalling realisation that the next few minutes must inevitably see the bogus Prince present himself on the heels of the genuine one; and that all would be discovered, to the everlasting undoing of those concerned.
“Oh, if I have but the time to warn him!” she thought; when Nemesis overtook her in the shape of that real swoon.