Esmeralda, utterly regardless of the spectators, who, with a delicacy worthy of Pall Mall, turned aside, took him in her large embrace, and, with her head thrown back, gazed at his pale face through a fog of tears. She was speechless, and his voice sounded lower even than usual as he tried to comfort her.
“Good-bye, Ralda!” he said. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t cry, or I—I shall cry myself, and what will the boys say?”
“Remember,” she panted, “I am coming back! I’m coming back!”
The coachman, who had carefully kept his face turned away, and had been busy with his gloves, which seemed peculiarly difficult to get on, gave a warning cough. Esmeralda, blinded by her tears, was lifted on to the seat of honor beside the driver, and the horses, which had been fretting and fuming for the last ten minutes, dashed on their way, and Esmeralda was borne out of Varley Howard’s sight.
A few weeks later a cab drove up to Lady Wyndover’s house in Grosvenor Square. Mr. Pinchook and Esmeralda alighted, that estimable gentleman looking considerably done up with his long journey, and inquired of a giant in plush for Lady Wyndover, and were conducted up the broad stairs to her ladyship’s boudoir. The footman opened the door, and a lady rose languidly from a satin couch. She was a slight, fair-haired woman of more than middle age, but in the light which came through the rose-colored curtains Esmeralda at first took her for a girl. For Lady Wyndover’s hair was of flaxen hue, and dressed in girlish style; her complexion, as great a marvel from an artistic point of view as her wonderfully corseted figure, was a delicate mixture of milk and roses. She wore a satin tea-gown of the faintest blue, from beneath the skirt of which peeped the tiniest of white kid, high-heeled shoes. Her hands were thick with rings, which made the slim fingers seem preposterously small.
As a work of art, Lady Wyndover was simply perfect from the crown of her dyed hair to the tip of her dainty shoe; and Esmeralda regarded her with wide-open eyes, in which astonishment was the predominant expression.
“Oh, Mr. Pinchook!” said her ladyship in her thin, low voice. “So you have come at last!”
“Yes, Lady Wyndover,” said Mr. Pinchook, with a suspicion of a sigh of relief. “We have arrived at last!”
“And this,” said Lady Wyndover, “is Esmeralda?”
She looked at “this” as if Esmeralda were some curiosity which Mr. Pinchook had been commissioned to procure from some savage land; then she held out her hand and bestowed a kiss—a careful kiss, because carmine comes off the lips—on Esmeralda’s forehead.