"Yes, he was here on--when was it?--quite lately--O, the day before yesterday."
"Poor old Clem! Going to marry Lady Violet Dumanoir, they say. Pity Lady Vi don't leave off putting that stuff on her face and shoulders, isn't it?"
"How ridiculous you are!"
"No, but really! she does!"
"How can you be so silly!"
Grand and final pause of ten minutes, broken by the visitor's saying quietly, "Well, good-bye," and lounging off to repeat the invigorating conversation elsewhere.
Who? Youth of all kinds. The junior portion of the Household Brigade, horse and foot, solemn plungers and dapper little guardsmen; youth from the Whitehall offices, specially diplomatic and erudite, and disposed to chaff the military as ignorant of most things, and specially of spelling; idlers purs et simples, who had been last year in Norway, and would be the next in Canada, and who suffered socially from their perpetual motion, never being able to retain the good graces which they had gained or to recover those they had lost; foreign attachés; junior representatives of the plutocracy, who went into society into which their fathers might never have dreamed of penetrating, but who found the "almighty dollar," or its equivalent, when judiciously used, have all the open-sesame power; an occasional Scotch connection on a passing visit to London, and--Mrs. M'Diarmid.
Who was Mrs. M'Diarmid? That was the first question everyone asked on their introduction to her; the second, on their revisiting the house where the introduction had taken place, being, "Where is Mrs. M'Diarmid?" Mrs. M'Diarmid was originally Miss Whiffin, daughter of Mrs. Whiffin of Salisbury-street in the Strand, who let lodgings, and in whose parlours George M'Diarmid, second cousin to the present Kilsyth, lived when he first came to London, and enrolled himself as a student in the Inner Temple. A pleasant fellow George M'Diarmid, with a taste for pleasure, and very little money, and an impossibility to keep out of debt. A good-looking fellow, with a bright blue eye, and big red whiskers (beards were not in fashion then, or George would have grown a very Birnam-Wood of hair), and broad shoulders, and a genial jovial manner with "the sex." Deep into Mrs. Whiffin's books went George, and simultaneously deep into her daughter's heart; and finally, when Kilsyth had done his best for his scapegrace kinsman, and could do no more, and nobody else would do anything, George wiped off his score by marrying Miss Whiffin, and, as she expressed it to her select circle of friends, "making a lady of her." It was out of his power to do that. Nothing on earth would have made Hannah Whiffin a lady, any more than anything on earth could have destroyed her kindness of heart, her devotion to her husband, her hard-working, honest striving to do her duty as his wife. Kilsyth would not have been the large-souled glorious fellow that he was if he had failed to see this, or seeing, had failed to appreciate and recognise it. George M'Diarmid hemmed and hawed when told to bring his wife to Brook-street, and blushed and stuttered when he brought her; but Kilsyth and Lady Muriel set the poor shy little woman at her ease in an instant, and seeing all her good qualities, remained her kind and true friends. After two years or so George M'Diarmid died in his wife's arms, blessing and thanking her; and after his death, to the astonishment of all who knew anything about it, his widow was as constant a visitor to Brook-street as ever. Why? No one could exactly tell, save that she was a shrewd, clever woman, with an extraordinary amount of real affection for every member of the family. There was no mistake about that. She had been tried in times of sickness and of trouble, and had always come out splendidly. A vulgar old lady, with curious blunt manners and odd phrases of speech, which had at first been dreadfully trying; but by degrees the regular visitors to the house began to comprehend her, to make allowance for her gaucheries and her quaint sayings--in fact to take the greatest delight in them. So Mrs. M'Diarmid was constantly in Brook-street; and the frequenters of the five-o'clock tea-table professed to be personally hurt if she absented herself.
A shrewd little woman too, with a special care for Madeleine; with a queer old-world notion that she, being herself childless, should look after the motherless girl. For Lady Muriel Mrs. M'Diarmid had the highest respect; but Lady Muriel had children of her own, and, naturally enough, was concerned about, or as Mrs. M'Diarmid expressed it, "wropped up" in them, and Madeleine had no one to protect and guide her--poor soul! So this worthy little old woman devoted herself to the motherless girl, and watched over her with duenna-like care and almost maternal fidelity.
Five o'clock in the evening, two days after Wilmot had received Madeleine's little note; the shutters were shut in Lady Muriel's boudoir, the curtains were drawn, a bright fire burned on the hearth, and the tea-equipage was ready set on the little round table close by the hostess. Not many people there. Not Kilsyth, of course, who was reading the evening papers and chatting at Brookes's,--not Ronald, who scarcely ever showed at that time. Madeleine, looking very lovely in a tight-fitting high violet-velvet dress, a thought pale still, but with her blue eyes bright, and her golden hair taken off her face, and gathered into a great knot at the back of her pretty little head. Near her, on an ottoman, Clement Penruddock, half-entranced at the appearance of his own red stockings, half in wondering why he does not go off to see Lady Violet Dumanoir, his fiancée. Clem is always wondering about this, and never seems to arrive at a satisfactory result. Next to him, and vainly endeavouring to think of something to say, the Hon. Robert Brettles, familiarly known as "Bristles," from the eccentric state of his hair, who is supposed to be madly in love with Madeleine Kilsyth, and who has never yet made greater approaches in conversation with her than meteorological observations in regard to the weather, and blushing demands for her hand in the dance. By Lady Muriel, Lord Roderick Douglas, who still finds his nose too large for the rest of his face, and strokes it thoughtfully in the palm of his hand, as though he could thereby quietly reduce its dimensions. Frank Only, Sir Coke's eldest son, but recently gazetted to the Body Guards, an ingenuous youth, dressed more like a tailor's dummy than anything else, especially about his feet, which are very small and very shiny; and Tommy Toshington, who has dropped in on the chance of hearing something which, cleverly manipulated and well told at the club, may gain him a dinner. In the immediate background sits Mrs. M'Diarmid, knitting.