“Nay, Harriet, I demur to that,” said her father drolly. “I flatter myself I was a more personable youth than to be likened to Watford with his swollen nose. What like was your cavalier, Aura?”
“Indeed, sir, I cannot describe him. I was so much terrified lest he should speak to me that I had much ado to mind my steps. I know he had white gloves and diamond shoe-buckles, and that his feet moved by no means like those of Sir Ambrose.”
“Aura is a modest child, and does credit to her breeding,” said Betty. “Thus much I saw, that the young gentleman was tall and personable enough to bear comparison even to you, sir, not more than nineteen or twenty years of age, in a laced scarlet uniform, as I think, of the Dragoon Guards, and with a little powder, but not enough to disguise that his hair was entire gold.”
“That all points to his being indeed young Belamour,” said her father; “age, military appearance, and all—I wonder what this portends!”
“What a disaster!” exclaimed Harriet, “that my sister and I should have been out of the way, and only a chit like Aura be there to be presented to him.”
“If young ladies will defy Cupid,” began her father;—but at that moment Corporal Palmer knocked at the door, bringing a basin of soup for his master, and announcing “Supper is served, young ladies.”
Each of the three bent her knee to receive her father’s blessing and kiss, then curtseying at the door, departed, Betty lingering behind her two juniors to see her father taste his soup and to make sure that he relished it.
CHAPTER II. THE HOUSE OF DELAVIE.
All his Paphian mother fear;
Empress! all thy sway revere!
EURIPEDES (Anstice).