“There’s virtue in that boy, he has wit enough for a prime minister or a clown at Astley’s. I picked him up by a mere chance; he is one of my models.”
What her ladyship meant by models I could not imagine, but I soon found out; the return of the lad with breakfast put an end to her talking for the time being. When we had finished, the page was again summoned.
“Now then, Lionel, do your spiriting gently.”
“I know,” said the boy, “I’m not to smash the cups and saucers as I did yesterday.”
The lad collected the breakfast things on a tray with great rapidity, and disappeared with such a sudden turn round, that I fully anticipated he would add to yesterday’s damage before he was down the stairs.
As soon as he was gone, Lady R— coming up to me, said, “And now let me have a good look at you, and then I shall be content for some time. Yes, I was not mistaken, you are a perfect model, and must be my future heroine. Yours is just the beauty that I required. There, that will do, now sit down and let us converse. I often have wanted a companion. As for an amanuensis that is only a nominal task, I write as fast as most people, and I cannot follow my ideas, let me scribble for life, as I may say; and as for my writing being illegible, that’s the compositor’s concern not mine. It’s his business to make it out, and therefore I never have mine copied. But I wanted a beautiful companion and friend—I wouldn’t have an ugly one for the world, she would do me as much harm as you will do me service.”
“I am sure I hardly know how I am to do you service, Lady R—, if I do not write for you.”
“I daresay not, but when I tell you that I am more than repaid by looking at you when I feel inclined, you will acknowledge that you do me service; but we will not enter into metaphysics or psychological questions just now, it shall all be explained by-and-bye. And now the first service I ask of you is at once to leap over the dull fortnight of gradual approaching, which at last ends in intimacy. I have ever held it to be a proof of the suspiciousness of our natures and unworthy. You must allow me to call you Valerie at once, and I must entreat of you to call me Sempronia. Your name is delightful, fit for a first-class heroine. My real baptismal name is one that I have abjured, and if my godfathers and godmothers did give it to me, I throw it back to them with contempt. What do you think it was?—Barbara. Barbara, indeed. ‘My mother had a maid called Barbara,’ Shakespeare says, and such a name should be associated with brooms and yellow soap. Call me Sempronia from this time forward, and you confer a favour on me. And now I must write a little, so take a book and a seat on the sofa, for, at the opening of this chapter my heroine is exactly in that position, ‘in maiden meditation, fancy free.’”