“Oh, if Honor Gordon was but her niece! How thankfully would she exchange relations with Mrs. Brande. Here was a simple, well-bred girl, who could shine anywhere, and was quite thrown away in her present hands. It was true that Sir Gloster seemed much struck; everyone saw that, except the girl herself, and her old bat of an aunt. He had never taken his eyes off her, as she stood before the footlights, and she had made an undeniably charming picture, slim and graceful, with an old-fashioned air of maidenly dignity, and how she played!”
She glanced at her own special young lady, now coming forward to sing yet another ditty, amidst the uproarious encouragement of the back benches.
Lalla was pretty, her fair soft hair was wisped up anyhow (a studied art), her eyes were bright, her style piquante, but her expression was everything, and oh, what a little demon she was!
And then she sang—certainly she was the most successful cantatrice who ever sang without a voice.
“What a charming inmate your niece must be, Mrs. Langrishe,” observed a lady next her. “So amusing and bright, quite a sunbeam in the house.”
To which the poor martyr rejoined with a somewhat rigid smile, “Oh yes, indeed, quite delightful.”
She envied Mrs. Brande her treasure still more, when, as they were leaving the club, she noticed Honor affectionately wrapping up her aunt—for it had turned out a wet night—and making some playful joke as she tied a hood under her ample chin. Her niece had helped herself to the only mackintosh, and had rolled away in her rickshaw, among the first flight, with a young man riding beside her.
“She went off with Toby Joy! I really am astonished that Mrs. Langrishe allows her to be so independent,” said a voice (a woman’s) in the dark, close beside that ill-used lady, and happily unaware of her vicinity.
Miserable Mrs. Langrishe, if they only knew all, the most stony-hearted would surely commiserate her.
She returned home alone, firmly resolved to give Lalla a talking to, but when she arrived—her anger had ebbed. She discovered the culprit reclining in an easy-chair, smoking a friendly cigarette with Granby, and entertaining him with inimitable mimicry of some of her fellow performers.