“It was all the crack!” exclaimed Meg, sitting upright on the sofa in her indignation. “Only you are so gothic and stuffy! You would not let her purchase it, just because you had never seen one of the new jockey-bonnets before! So I did, and it has been very much admired, let me tell you!”
“What?” ejaculated Freddy, roused to real dismay. “Good God, Meg, you ain’t such a sapskull as to put a lilac coal-scuttle on that yaller head of yours?”
“A great many persons of exquisite taste,” his sister informed him in trembling accents, “have told me that I look excessively becomingly in it!”
“A great many gapeseeds!” said Freddy witheringly. “It’s time m’mother left the young ‘uns to Nurse to look after, and stopped you making a figure of yourself! No, really, Meg! Might consider me, you know! Might consider Mama, too! Do us credit!”
“Like Kitty! Permitting you to tell her what she may wear, and what she may not! I wonder she will listen to you!”
“Sensible little thing, Kit,” said Freddy. “Does do me credit! M’father was saying so only the other day.”
“Well, she does look remarkably well, I own,” said Meg, “but in one way, Freddy—and I don’t say it out of spite, for I love her dearly!—she doesn’t do you any credit at all. And Mama has heard of it, for she is not still looking after the children, and she asked me if it were true, and what could be the meaning of it? Of course I turned it off, and indeed I don’t believe a word of it, but—why does she let Dolph attach himself to her so particularly?”
But here Freddy felt himself to be upon acutely assailable ground, and he beat a retreat. A visit to Mount Street the following day did nothing to heal the wound to his amour propre, for although Lord Legerwood made no reference whatsoever to the intrusions of Dolphinton, Lady Legerwood was not similarly reticent. In deep concern, she informed him that the few particular friends to whom she had confided the news of his engagement were quite in a puzzle to know what to think of Miss Charing’s predilection for Lord Dolphinton’s society. It was not, therefore, surprising that when, a few days later, Mr. Standen, bowling along Piccadilly in his tilbury, reached the bottom of Old Bond Street in time to see Miss Charing, accompanied by Lord Dolphinton, enter the portals of the Egyptian Hall, upon the south side of the street, he should have been moved to pull up abruptly, to consign his carriage to the care of his groom, and to cross Piccadilly in a purposeful manner.
The Egyptian Hall, which had been erected four years previously, was otherwise known as Bullock’s Museum, and contained curiosities from the South Seas, from North and South America; a collection of armoury, and works of art; find had lately received, as an additional attraction, the Emperor Napoleon’s travelling-carriage. Its cognomen was derived from the style of its architecture, which included inclined pilasters ornamented with hieroglyphics. It was an imposing edifice, but it had not previously tempted Mr. Standen to inspect its many marvels. Nor, when he had penetrated beyond the vestibule, did he waste time in studying the exhibits tastefully arranged around the walls. The only object in which he was interested was found seated primly upon a chair, a catalogue in her gloved hands, and her gaze fixed thoughtfully upon the model of a Red Indian chief in full panoply of war. Of Lord Dolphinton there was no sign, a circumstance which caused Mr. Standen to exclaim, quite contrary to his intention: “Well, if this don’t beat the Dutch! First the fellow brings you to a devilish place like this, and then he dashed well leaves you here!”
“Freddy!” cried Miss Charing, jumping almost out of her skin.