“If you please, my Lady,” she said, advancing as if she had been indeed what she represented herself, “you have forgotten your glove.”
“Good heavens!” cried Mr. Bellairs. “Pamela!”
He wheeled in his walk to turn upon the newcomer a countenance marked with the oddest mixture of discomfiture, amusement and wrath.
Lady Selina merely cast a glance from the glove which Pamela laid before her to the girl’s face, and lifted her eyebrows. She had passed from anger to insolence. Pamela itched to box her ears.
“I assure you, my dear,” protested Mr. Bellairs in an ill-assured voice, “that I have forgotten nothing.”
Pamela understood well enough the intention of the speech; she smiled scornfully. And when Lady Selina, just rolling her eyes in his direction, dropped the words: “Except your manners, sir,” she felt certain the rebuke had been well deserved.
Indeed, now that she came to look at him more closely, she saw a red patch on the olive of his cheek, and guessed the offence which had called for such a buffet. Oh! she knew the ways of men; and, to her philosophy, the gentleman who, thrust into such a position as Mr. Bellairs, should have failed to take advantage of it, would have been little less than a milksop. Nevertheless, there had been defection. It was her, Pamela, whom he had come to meet—Pamela his affianced, to whom, because of the very difference in their stations, he owed more delicacy of attention than if she had been his equal. And he had let himself be whisked away by the first wanton who lifted a beckoning finger! Serve her right if he had kissed, and serve him right if she had slapped! Oh, she knew the ways of men! But—the ways of the Mad Brat was still enigma to her. What was this piece of mischief about? As if to answer the perplexed thought, Lady Selina suddenly spoke:
“’Tis positive sickening to think that there is not a gentleman of the lot who would give a lady his protection as far as Town, without thrusting his odious attentions on her!”
“But my dear, good creature——”
“I’m not your dear, good creature, sir!” Lady Selina sprang to her feet and burst into a sudden passion of tears. “Was ever anyone,” she cried, “so plagued, so persecuted, so distracted, so unhappy, so—so abandoned?”