CHAPTER VII.
LORD MAYOR'S DAY.
It was Lord Mayor's Day. Haggard and his wife sat in the little drawing-room of their bijou house in May Fair. The room was prettily furnished, and Georgie had often accused herself of extravagance. The regulation chairs and tables of the furnished house had been banished from Mrs. Haggard's drawing-room. It had been a pleasure to choose the various tasteful specimens of the upholsterer's art. The nesting faculty is perhaps even more strongly developed in young married ladies than in birds; young Mrs. Haggard was no exception to this rule. Many had been the happy pilgrimages made by Georgie and her lover, for Haggard was her lover still, to the great firm in Pall Mall and to the world-famed house in Bond Street.
"Pick up what you like, my dear, and make our drawing-room, your drawing room, as pretty as you please; nothing can be good enough in the little kingdom in which my Georgie deigns to reign."
But sugared compliments and furniture-buying cannot go on for ever. A pile of invitations attested the Haggards' popularity. Dance-giving mammas were anxious to secure the success of their entertainments by obtaining the presence of "lovely Mrs. Haggard."
A well-known professional beauty in the heyday of her charms was "sitting-out" at a great ball, the observed of all observers, in a dos-à-dos causeuse with a Royal Highness.
"And is your Royal Highness also a worshipper at the shrine of budding bucolic beauty? I mean pretty Mrs. Haggard," said the spoilt darling of society, as with a little moue she had indicated Georgie, who entered the room on her husband's arm. The good-natured prince glanced carelessly in the direction indicated; his lazy eyes sparkled as he quickly replied in a tone of reproof:
"Pretty is not the word, Mrs. Charmington; if that is the lady you allude to, she is lovely, absolutely lovely, and must count amongst her admirers every member of the human race who has had the happy privilege of beholding her." His Royal Highness rose.
Mrs. Charmington hastened to spread the report that his Royal Highness was seriously smitten.