Griselda felt her cheek burn with shame and indignation also, for had she not heard Lady Betty say that young Lord Basingstoke was one of her most devoted admirers? and yet she was clearly only a subject of merriment, and the cause of that loud unmusical laughter which followed the words. But Griselda had passed out of hearing before Lord Basingstoke's friend inquired:
"Who is the other? She looks like a 'Millerite' and an authoress. He would be a brave man to indulge in loose talk with her. Upon my word, she walks like a tragedy queen!"
"There'll be the story of Wilson and Macaulay told over again. We shall have her statue put up to worship!"
"I don't know what you are talking about," said the young lord, with a yawn.
"My dear fellow, have you never heard of Madam Macaulay, the writer of nine huge volumes of history, who deserted the reverend Dr. Wilson and married a young spark named Graham? She is Mrs. Graham now; has retired from the gay scenes of Bath with her young Scot, who feeds on oat-cakes and such-like abominations."
"Lady Betty will be following suit—not the white lady," said the young lord. "I think I'll try and get an introduction," he said, "and lead her through the 'contre danse.'"
"You won't get the introduction from Lady Betty. I'll lay a wager she will be too wary to give it; but I must look after my partner, so ta-ta!"
Truly the world is a stage, across which the generations of men come and go! Assemblies of to-day at Bath and Clifton, and other places of fashionable resort, may wear a different aspect in all outward things, but the salient points are the same. Idle men and foolish women vie with each other in the parts they play. Age wears the guise of youth, and vanity hopes that the semblance passes for the reality.
Literary women may not write as Mrs. Macaulay did nine volumes of ill-digested and shallow history, and become thereby famous, and it would be hard to match the profane folly of a clergyman like Dr. Wilson, who in his infatuation erected a statue to this woman in his own church of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, adorned as the Goddess of Liberty—an infatuation which we must charitably suppose was madness. Nor would such a woman be the rage now at Bath or anywhere else.
Lady Miller was of a higher order of womanhood. She created a literary circle in a beautiful villa at Batheaston, inviting her friends to contribute poems and deposit them in a vase from Frascati.