“Charley Melton, gov’nor. He’s a regular flat.”
Chapter Twenty One.
Sad Proceedings.
All the servants remarked that “the poor dear” from the very first bore up like a suffering martyr, and then discoursed upon the vanity of human hopes; and Mrs Downes, who was of a pious turn of mind, and went miles “per ’bus” on Sundays to be present at religious services in theatres, said that it was a “vale of tears,” and wiped one tear out of her eye, looked at it, wrapped it up very carefully in her handkerchief, and put it in her pocket, as if fully aware of the fact that it was a sympathetic pearl.
“They might well call it the last day,” sighed the same lady, for to her mind it was as if heaven and earth had come together.
“She is bête, this woman,” said Mademoiselle Justine, who had descended for hot water; and she stood and purred softly to herself, and looked so like a cat that she only needed to have squatted down upon a chair, and begun licking her trim dress, to have completed the likeness.
It was the last day of Maude’s girlhood; the next was to see her what the fashionable gossips would call a happy wife. The previous fortnight had been spent in a whirl of busy doings. Dressmakers had been to and fro, milliners consulted, Justine and Dolly had been kept up late at night to see to packing, and so anxious was her ladyship that her child should look her best that she insisted upon Maude visiting her dentist, and seeing Dr Todd again and again. Maude tried to expostulate, but her ladyship was inexorable, and spared herself no pains. The consumption of spirits of red lavender was startling, but she bore up wonderfully; went with that dear Sir Grantley to the coachmaker’s in Long Acre, and herself selected the new brougham that was one of the baronet’s wedding presents, and declared the horses which she twice over went into the stable to see were “loves.”
Then, too, she aided in the re-decorating of her daughter’s new home; in fact, spared herself in no way to bring about the happy event, while “that wretched Lord Barmouth prowled about the house doing nothing but thinking of gluttony.” In fact, she found him one day sitting behind the curtains in the drawing-room spreading potted tongue upon an Abernethy biscuit, with a pearl paper-knife, when he ought to have been helping her, for in these days his lordship’s wolf, which constantly bade him feed, was unusually active.