The two Miss Pounces quite forgot their uncomfortable companion in the thrilling interest of the scene. Lively were the whispers they exchanged across the stem of a stout tree fern.
“La, aunt, if that isn’t Mr. Stafford down there, as cool as a cucumber! Well, to be sure; ain’t the world a strange place?”
“Cool he always was, as nobody knows better than me. The way he on and off with that poor piece, Madame Eglantine, when she kept a milliner’s shop at Bath, and proposing to my Lady all the while, and she the rich widow Bellairs. Well—cucumbers was not in it.”
Pamela Pounce was craning eagerly forward. Certainly to see Mr. Stafford in propria persona sitting genially in the company of the Prince, the guest of my Lady Kilcroney, after conspiring to humiliate and confound her, was the last development she had expected of the night’s drama.
That my Lord Kilcroney should be playing host to the wife who had with contumely dismissed him was another matter, Miss Pamela Pounce was by no means so amazed to see him sitting at the supper table as Mrs. Lafone had been to see him walk in.
“The little cat,” thought Pam, “’twas a real fit, sure enough, and serve her right. She ain’t succeeded this time—though she came near enough to it—in separating the elegantest couple in all society. What a good thing it is, Pam my girl,” (she was fond of apostrophising herself thus) “that you ain’t too squeamish to do a bit of spying in season and listen outside doors.”
“His Royal Highness is taking a glass of wine with Mr. Stafford,” whispered Lydia sibilantly, in a prodigious state of excitement.
Pamela felt an abrupt movement beside her, and glancing round, beheld Mrs. Lafone darting from the gallery like a snake disturbed. The girl drew a long breath. The air was easier to her lungs now that this miasma of malice was removed from it.
His Royal Highness was most agreeably and flatteringly inebriated at the end of Kitty’s supper party. He declared thickly that it had been a most delightful evening. If he did not salute her cheek with his royal lips as he had saluted the Duchess of Hampshire, he mumbled her hand with repeated kisses. But Kitty’s triumph was not yet complete. Its culminating point was only reached when she found herself with my Lord back in the withdrawing-room of her lodgings, accompanied on her express invitation, by Mr. Stafford.
She flung off her wraps and, standing in the middle of the room, with rather a tearful smile, held out a hand to each.