This morning, after a maid had cleaned out the room, Dame Ursulina brought breakfast.
'Graciousnessosity!' cried she, 'here is the whole castle in such a fluster; hammering and clamouring, and paddling at all manner of possets, to make much of the fine company that is coming down to the baron to-day.'
'Heavens!' exclaimed I, 'when will my troubles cease? Doubtless they are a most dissolute set. An amorous Verezzi, an insinuating Cavigni, and an abandoned Orsino; besides some lovely voluptuary, some fascinating desperado, who plays the harp, and poisons by the hour.'
'La, not at all,' said the dame. 'We shall have none but old Sir Charles Grandison, and his lady, Miss Harriet Byron, that was;—old Mr. Mortimer Delville, and his lady, Miss Cecilia, that was;—and old Lord Mortimer, and his lady, Miss Amanda, that was.'
'Can it be possible?' cried I. 'Why these are all heroes and heroines!'
'Pon my conversation, and by my fig, and as I am a true maiden, so they are,' said she; 'for my lord scorns any other sort of varment. And we shall have such tickling and pinching; and fircumdandying, and cherrybrandying, and the genteel poison of bad wine; and the warder blowing his horn, and the baron in his scowered armour, and I in a coif plaited high with ribbons all about it, and in the most rustling silk I have. And Philip, the butler, meets me in the dark. "Oddsboddikins," says he (for that is his pet oath), "mayhap I should know the voice of that silk?" "Oddspittikins," says I, "peradventure thou should'st;" and then he catches me round the neck, and——'
'There, there!' cried I, 'you distract me.'
'Marry come up!' muttered she. 'Some people think some people—Marry come up, quotha!' And she flounced out of the room.
I sat down to breakfast, astonished at what I had just heard. Harriet Byron, Cecilia, Amanda, and their respective consorts, all alive and well! Oh, could I get but one glimpse of them, speak ten words with them, I should die content. I pictured them to myself, adorned with all the venerable loveliness of a virtuous old age,—even in greyness engaging, even in wrinkles interesting. Hand in hand they walk down the gentle slope of life, and often pause to look back upon the scenes that they have passed—the happy vale of their childhood, the turretted castle, the cloistered monastery.
This reverie was interrupted by the return of Dame Ursulina.