“Th- the Miss Tallant?” stammered his lordship, all at sea.
“The rich Miss Tallant!” said Arabella.
His lordship rolled an anguished and an enquiring eye at his host, but Mr. Beaumaris was not looking at him. Mr. Beaumaris, his attention arrested, was regarding the rich Miss Tallant with a distinct gleam of curiosity, not unmixed with amusement, in his face.
“I had hoped that here at least I might be unknown!” said Arabella, seating herself in a chair a little withdrawn from the fire. “Ah, you must let me make you known to Miss Blackburn, my—my dame de compagnie! ”
Lord Fleetwood sketched a bow; Miss Blackburn, her countenance wooden, dropped him a slight curtsy, and sat down on the nearest chair.
“Miss Tallant,” repeated Lord Fleetwood, searching his memory in vain for enlightenment “Ah, yes! Of course! Er—I don’t think I have ever had the honour of meeting you in town, have I, ma’am?”
Arabella directed an innocent look from him to Mr. Beaumaris, and back again, and clapped her hands together with an assumption of mingled delight and dismay. “Oh, you did not know!” she exclaimed. “I need never have told you! But when you looked so, I made sure you were as bad as all the rest! Was anything ever so vexatious? I most particularly desire to be quite unknown in London!”
“My dear ma’am, you may rely on me!” promptly replied his lordship, who, hike most rattles, thought himself the model of discretion. “And Mr. Beaumaris, you know, is in the same case as yourself, and able to sympathize with you!”
Arabella glanced at her host, and found that he had raised his quizzing-glass, which hung round his neck on a long black riband, and was surveying her through it. She put up her chin a little, for she was by no means sure that she cared for this scrutiny. “Indeed?” she said.
It was not the practice of young ladies to put up their chins in just that style if Mr. Beaumaris levelled his glass at them: they were more in the habit of simpering, or of trying to appear unconscious of his regard. But Mr. Beaumaris saw that there was a decidedly militant sparkle in this lady’s eye, and his interest, at first tickled, was now fairly caught. He let his glass fall, and said gravely: “Indeed! And you?”