Lady Miller's health was failing, though she tried to hide it; and even now a cough, which was persistent, though not loud, prevented her from reading the effusions which were taken haphazard from the vase, dressed with its pink ribbons, and with crowns of myrtle hanging from it. Six judges were generally chosen to decide on the best poems, and the authors were only too proud to come forward and kneel to receive the wreath from the hand of this patroness of les belles lettres.
How old-world this all seems to us now! and how we think we can afford to sneer at such folly and such deplorably bad taste as the poems then thought worthy display! "Siren charms" and "bright-eyed enchantress," "soft zephyrs" and "gentle poesies," might be the stock expressions always ready to lend themselves to rhymes, with a hundred others of the like nature. But these reunions had their better side; for reading verses was better than talking scandal, and apostrophes to bright eyes and ladies' auburn locks better than the discussion of the last duel or elopement, which, in the absence of "society papers," were too apt to form the favourite topic of the beau monde.
Lady Miller may have won her myrtle crown for attempting to set the minds and brains of her friends at work, even if only to produce doubtful bouts rimés where sense was sacrificed to rhyme, and sound triumphed over subject.
We have our Lady Millers of to-day, although there are no pink-ribboned vases in which contributors drop their poetical efforts.
CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE TRACK.
Griselda had been much surprised at the applause which followed the reading of her verses. They were called for a second time, and elicited great praise.
"They are vastly pretty, and full of feeling!" exclaimed Lady Betty the next morning. "I declare, Griselda, you are without an atom of sentiment; you sat listening to them with a face like a marble statue. It is well for you that you are not a victim to sentiment as I am. I vow I could weep at the notion of the sorrowful soul who wrote those impassioned couplets which were read before the five stanzas, so much admired. Ah!" Lady Betty continued, with a yawn—for it was her yawning-time between her first and second visit to the Pump Room—"ah! it is well for some folks that they are callous. I am all impatience to get a copy of those rhymes for Lord Basingstoke; and—entre nous, ma chère, entre nous—when do you propose to accept Sir Maxwell Danby's suit? He formally asked my permission to address you. It would be a good match, and——"
"I have not the slightest intention, Aunt Betty, of listening to Sir Maxwell Danby's proposal."