“Rather,” answered Gatty, with a sad smile on her white face.
But she did not tell Phoebe what had tired her. It was not the journey, nor the ceremony, but her mother’s greeting.
“Why, Betty, you are quite blooming!” Lady Delawarr had said. “It hath done you good, child. And Molly, too, as sprightly as ever! Child, did you get touched?”
“I did, Madam,” answered Molly, with an extravagant courtesy.
“Ah!” said her mother, in a tone of great satisfaction. “Then we need apprehend no further trouble from the evil. I am extreme glad. O Gatty! you poor, scarred, wretched creature! Really, had it not been that the absence of one of my daughters would be remarked on, I vow I wish you had not gone! ’Tis such a sight to show, that dreadful face of yours. You will never give me any more comfort—that is certain.”
“Pos.!” echoed Molly, exactly in the same tone.
“I would not mind, Gatty!” was Betty’s kindly remark.
“Thank you,” said Gatty, meekly. “I wish I did not!”
Gatty did not repeat this to Phoebe. But Phoebe saw there was something wrong.
Rhoda came rustling in before much more could be said. She was full of details of the journey. What the Queen looked like,—a tall, stout woman, with such blooming cheeks that Rhoda felt absolutely certain she wore rouge,—how she was dressed,—all in black, with a black calash, or high, loose hood, and adorned with diamonds—how she had been received,—with ringing cheers from the Tory part of the population, but ominous silence, or very faint applause, from such as were known to be Whigs: how Sophia Rich had told Rhoda that all the Whig ladies of mark had made up their minds to attend no drawing-rooms the next season: how it was beginning to be dimly suspected that Lord Mar was coquetting with the exiled members of the royal family, and more than suspected that the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were no longer all powerful with Queen Anne, as they had once been: how the Queen always dined at three p.m., never drank French wine, held drawing-rooms on Sundays after service, would not allow any gentleman to enter her presence without a full-bottomed periwig: all these bits of information Rhoda dilated on, passing from one to another with little regard to method, and wound up with an account of the presentation of the bouquet, and how the Queen had received it from Lady Diana with a smile, and, “I thank you all, young gentlewomen,” in that silver voice which was Anne’s pre-eminent charm.