"Poor young thing, poor young thing," she said, patting Lady Standish's hand; "your mother's oldest friend, quite so—quite right and proper to come to me. And so Sir Jasper's left you; so Sir Jasper's gone; and with whom, my dear?"
Lady Maria fondly believed that she spoke these last words in a gentle aside; but never had her sepulchral bass resounded more sonorously. Lady Standish's faint cry of shocked disclaimer was, however, completely drowned in the fresh rumour, lacerated by shrill feminine shrieks, which now arose in the vestibule of the Assembly Rooms and rapidly advanced.
"My Lord Verney! My mistress! Where is my Lord Verney?" wailed the distraught Lydia, who thoroughly enjoyed her rôle.
A hundred voices took up the cry; the astounding news passed from group to group: "The pretty widow has been carried off!" "Mistress Bellairs has been abducted!" And then, in counter clamour and antiphone: "and my Lady Standish is looking for Sir Jasper!"
Meanwhile, before Lord Verney, dumb and suffocating under a variety of emotions, Lydia wringing her hands and with the most thrilling notes of tragic woe (as nearly copied from Mistress Susanna Cibber as she could remember), narrated her tristful tale.
"He flung my unhappy mistress, swooning and shrieking, into the chaise. And 'Drive like the devil,' cries he in a voice of thunder to the coachman. 'I'll flay you with your own whip and hang you to your own shaft,' says he, 'if you're not in Devizes before midnight!'"
"Devizes!" cried Lady Standish with a scream. Hanging on Lydia's utterance, every word of which confirmed the awful suspicion that had entered her heart, she now could no longer doubt the real extent of her misfortune.
"Oh, Lord Verney, save my mistress!" Lydia's pipe dominated the universal chorus with piercing iteration.
And now Lady Maria's bass struck in again.
"What did I say?" cried she triumphantly. "Nevvy, you'd better go to bed! you're well out of her. Julia, my dear, don't faint, we can catch them at Devizes yet. Someone tell that wench to stop that screeching! Julia, come! You've got the chay, I understand. Fortunately, my house is near; we shall just call for Burrell and make him ride behind with his blunderbuss. Child, if you faint I wash my hands of the whole affair. We'll nip them, I tell you, if you'll only brisk up."