He looked at her, uncertain to which of the lamented bipeds she referred.
"Selina," cried Lady Maria, in the strident tones of the deaf woman persuaded of her own consequence (the voice of your shy deaf one loses all sound in her terror of being loud)—"Selina, how often must I tell you that you must clip in my glass yourself! Who's that over there? Where are my eyeglasses? Who's that, did you say? Mistress Bellairs? Humph! And who's she got with her in tow now? Who did you say? Louder, child, louder. What makes you mumble so? Who? Verney—Lord Verney? Why, that's my nevvy. Tell him to come to me this minute. Do you hear, Selina, this minute! I won't have him fall into the net of widow Bellairs!"
The cockatoo top-knot nodded vehemently. Poor Miss Selina, agitated between consciousness that the whole Pump Room was echoing to Lady Maria's sentiments and terror of her patroness, took two steps upon her errand, and halted, fluttering. Lord Verney had flushed darkly purple. Mistress Kitty hung with yet more affectionate weight upon his arm and smiled with sweet unconsciousness. For the moment she was as deaf as Lady Maria.
The latter's claw-like hand had now disengaged a long-stemmed eyeglass from her laces.
"'Tis indeed," she pronounced in her commanding bass, "my nevvy Verney with that vile Bellairs!—-Nevvy! Here, I say!—Selina, fool, have you gone to sleep?"
An echo, as of titters, began to circle round the Pump Room. The painted face of Lady Flyte was wreathed into a smile of peculiar significance, as she whispered over her glass to her particular friend of the moment, Captain Spicer. This gentleman's pallid visage was illumined with a radiance of gratified spite. His lips were pursed as though upon a plum of superdelicious gossip. He began to whisper and mouthe. Young Squire Greene approached the couple with an eager ear and an innocent noddy face that strove to look vastly wise.
"I assure you," mouthed the Captain. "Was I not there?"
"In his bedroom?" cried Lady Flyte, with a shrill laugh.
Lady Maria's cockatoo crest rose more fiercely. It seemed to Kitty Bellairs as if she heard the old lady's jaws rattle. It was certain that in her wrath she squawked louder than even the late lamented Toto. Then Mistress Kitty, who, to say the truth, began to find the scene a little beyond enjoyment, felt the young arm upon which she leaned stiffen, the young figure beside her rear itself with a new manliness.
"Pray, Mistress Bellairs," said my Lord Verney, he spoke loudly and, to her surprise, with perfect facility, even dignity, "will you allow me to introduce you to my aunt, Lady Maria Prideaux?—Aunt Maria," said he, and his voice rang out finely, imposing a general silence, "let me present Mistress Bellairs. This lady has graciously condescended to accept me as her future husband. I am the happiest and the most honoured of men."