“Well, I’d myself venture to insure him against drowning for a very moderate premium,” rejoined his master, laughing; “but now I really must beg you to bear in mind that you are utterly ignorant of the English language.”
“Inshallah! I’d forgotten my illustrious descent most completely,” answered Frere, “but I’ll be careful; so, for the next three hours, ‘my native’ tongue, ‘good-night.’”
While this conversation had been carried on in an undertone, the party had been ushered upstairs amidst the wondering gaze of servants innumerable, of all sorts and sizes, from the little foot-page staggering under a galaxy of buttons to the mighty butler barely able to walk beneath the weight of his own dignity.
“What name shall I say, gentlemen?” asked the last-named official in his most insinuating tone; for a Persian prince was a rarity sufficient to impress even his imperturbable spirit with a sense of respect.
“His Highness Prince Mustapha Ali Khan and suite,” returned Bracy authoritatively.
Immediately the door of a well-lighted saloon was flung back on its hinges, and in a stentorian voice the major domo announced, “His Highness Prince Mystify-all-I-can and see-it.”
“By Jove! he’s hit it,” whispered Bracy to Lewis, as, following Frere, they entered the room. “He won’t beat that if he tries till he’s black in the face.”
As he finished speaking, the guests, who had crowded as near the door as good breeding would allow to witness the Prince’s entrée, drew back as a rustling of silks and satins announced the approach of their hostess.
Lady Lombard, who, to judge by appearances, would never again celebrate her forty-fifth birthday, had been a handsome, and still was a fine-looking woman. She was tall and portly; in fact portly is rather a mild term to use in speaking of her ladyship, but we don’t like to stigmatise her as stout, and beyond that we could not go in speaking of a lady. She had a very bright colour and a very fair skin, in the display of which she was by no means niggardly, her gown having short sleeves (so short, indeed, as scarcely to be worth mentioning), and being——well, we know a French word which would express our meaning, but we prefer our own language, and must therefore say, being rather too much off where it would have been better a little more on. She wore a profusion of light ringlets, which we feel justified in stating, upon our personal responsibility, to have been her own, for Lady Lombard was an honourable woman, and paid her bills most punctually. These flaxen locks rejoiced in one peculiarity—they were not divided in the centre, after the usual method, but the in medio tutissimns ibis principle had been abandoned in favour of a new and striking coiffure, which, until we were introduced to her ladyship, we had believed to be restricted to the blue-and-silver epicene pages who worship the prima donna and poke fun at the soubrettes on the opera stage. The page-like parting, then, was on one side of her head, and across her ample forehead lay a festoon of hair, arranged so as to suggest, to a speculative mind, a fanciful resemblance to the drapery at the top of a window curtain. Her features were by no means without expression; on the contrary, meek pomposity and innocent self-satisfaction were written in legible characters on her good-natured countenance.
The most carefully written descriptions usually prove inadequate to convey to the reader’s mind a just idea of the object they would fain depict; but as we are especially anxious that others should see Lady Lombard with our eyes, we must beg their attention to the following simple process, by which we trust to enable them to realise her.