"Wholesome!" cried Mistress Kitty, sipping again, and again curling her nose upwards and the corners of her lips downwards, in an irresistibly fascinating grimace. "Wholesome, my lord! Heaven defend us! And what is that but the last drop to complete their odiousness! Wholesome, sir? I would have you know 'tis not for wholesomeness I drink." She put down her glass, undiminished save by the value of a bird's draught. "Do I look like a woman who needs to drink waters for 'wholesomeness?'"
"Indeed, no," floundered he in his bewildered way.
"There are social obligations," said she, sententiously. "A widow, sir, alone and unprotected, must conform to common usage. And then I have another reason, one of pure sentiment."
She cocked her head and fixed her mocking eye upon him.
"My poor Bellairs," said she, "how oft has it not been my pleasure and my duty to fill such a glass as this and convey it to his lips? In his last years, poor angel, he had quite lost the use of his limbs!"
Lord Verney had no answer appropriate to these tender reminiscences; and Mistress Kitty, having, it seemed, sufficiently conformed to the usage of Bath, as well as sacrificed to the manes of the departed, turned briskly round, and, leaning against a pilaster, began to survey the room.
"La! how empty!" quoth she. "'Tis your fault if I am so late, my lord. Nobody, I swear, but that Flyte woman, your odious Spicer, sir—ha, and old General Tilney. Verily, I believe these dreadful springs have the power of keeping such mummies in life long after their proper limit. 'Tis hardly fair on the rest of the world. Why, the poor thing has scarce a sense or a wit left, and yet it walks! Heaven preserve us! why, it runs!" she cried suddenly with a little chirp, as the unfortunate veteran of Dettingen, escaping from the guiding hands of his chairman, started for the door with the uncontrolled trot of semi-paralytic senility.
"And that reminds me," said Mistress Kitty, "that Sir George is most particular that I should walk five minutes between every glass. Here comes your estimable aunt, Lady Maria, and her ear-trumpet, and the unfortunate Miss Selina. I protest, with that yellow feather she is more like my dear dead Toto than ever.
"Was that your pet name for your husband?" murmured Lord Verney, in a strangled whisper.
"Fie, sir!" cried the widow. "My cockatoo—I referred to my cockatoo." She sighed profoundly. "I loved him," she said.