"Why, my dear Sir Tiger, I shall be sure to know within two minutes after Tomkins gives his passing thump to announce that he is carrying in the coffee; then why should I disturb this fairest of the Pentandria class?—my charming high-dried mirabilis?"
"The devil take you, and all your classes, orders, and tribes, to his own hothouse!—I'll be hanged if I don't lock you into your den while I breakfast with her;—you shan't see her at all!"
"Mother! mother!" exclaimed the colonel hastily, to anticipate the execution of the threat—"it is Helen Mowbray!"
"Helen Mowbray!" cried the old lady, thrusting her hot smoothing-iron on one side, and her blossom blotting-paper on the other, while the precious mirabilis fell to the ground; "Helen Mowbray!" and pushing aside the baronet by no very gentle movement of her tall and substantial person, she rushed forward, and Helen was speedily folded in a very close embrace.
"There, there, there! don't stifle the girl, old lady!—And supposing you were to bestow one little monosyllable of civility upon this pretty creature, Miss Torrington, who stands smiling at us all like an angel, though every soul amongst us is as rude as a bear to her.—I don't believe you ever found yourself so entirely neglected before, my dear?"
"I have never witnessed attention more gratifying to me than that which I have seen displayed this morning," replied Rosalind.
"You are a good girl, a very good girl, my dear, and I shall always love you for coming over with this poor dear disinherited child."
"Miss Torrington, I am delighted to see you, now and ever, my dear young lady," said Lady Harrington, who, when she chose it, could be as dignified, and as courteous too, as any lady in the land.
"You have walked over, I am sure, by the bright freshness of your looks. Now, then, sit down one on each side of me, that I may be able to see you without hoisting a lunette d'approche across this prodigious table."
"And so, because your ladyship is near-sighted," said Sir Gilbert, "William and I are to sit at this awful distance from these beautiful damsels? You are a tiresome old soul as ever lived!"