To all was Mr. Tuke presented—generally as a neighbour of a romantic cast; and it needed much of his acquired urbanity and deftness in society to carry off the situation without a show of self-consciousness.
“We call you the lord of Wastelands,” said Miss Royston, with a little smiling blush, as if she offered him the fruit of her invention. Certainly she looked a very dainty body, and she bore her daintiness as if it were a burden she loved. Her fair hair, combed over her forehead and falling in ringlets on her neck, was banded with a fillet of gold like a sunbeam. Her robe was of pure white satin, clasped at one shoulder with a diamond button; and in her hand she flirted a little sparkling fan no bigger than a pheasant’s wing, and much its colour.
Naturally, in the presence of this radiant bird of his feather, Mr. Tuke lost mental sight and consideration of homely Betty.
“Waste lands they may be,” said he gaily; “but consecrated to beauty since you visited them.”
“It was a laying on of lands, not hands,” she cried merrily in response. “I brought away a rare impression of their picturesqueness—but ’twas on my gown;” and then the fine creature must give the company the history of her introduction to the squire of romance, whom she looked at very tenderly as she eulogized him.
“A remarkable situation,” said Mrs. Tatty, scenting the neighbourhood of the pit with uplifted nostrils. “Mr. Richardson himself never imagined a more pronounced. Sure there is an affinity in circumstance—and therein lies the explanation.”
“It was like poor Julia’s experience,” said the little cousin from London. “Only that Julia was trop embarrassée de sa personne to extricate herself with grace.”
“Oh!” cried Angela. “I blush to hear you talk of grace.”
“’Twas after meat, my dear,” said Mrs. Tatty, with a splendid benevolence of humour; and immediately sat down, morally, on the brink.
Mr. Tuke laboriously strained at a camel of wit. “Before, before!” he cried—“for ’twas the grace that introduced food for reflection.”