“I know nothing of that, but she has certainly mistaken her man.”
She moved restlessly in her chair. “I wish I might see the woman!”
His lips curled. “So you may, if you care to accompany us to Vauxhall tomorrow. Adrian is to take her there, to the ridotto.”
“Flaunting him in the eyes of the world!” she cried indignantly.
“Precisely. Or in my eyes: I cannot be certain which.”
She got up with an air of resolution. “Well, I will go with you. I dare say Olivia will be glad to let me take her place. Perhaps my deluded boy may be brought to a sense of his folly if he sees his mother when he has that creature on his arm!”
“I hope he may,” responded Ravenscar. “I would not myself be willing to hazard a penny on it, however.”
Chapter 7
Lady Bellingham’s emotions when she beheld her niece on the following evening threatened for a moment or two to overcome her. She could only stare at her with horrified eyes, and open and shut her mouth in an ineffective way.
Miss Grantham had come into her dressing-room to borrow her rouge-pot, and some patches. The vive bergere dress had always been arresting, for its green stripes were quite an inch broad, but until its owner had embellished it with knots of coquelicot ribbons it had been quite unexceptionable. It was amazing, thought poor Lady Bellingham, what a difference a few yards of ribbon could make! But even those shocking ribbons faded into insignificance beside the atrocity which Deborah had chosen to pin on to her elaborate coiffure. Fascinated, Lady Bellingham blinked at those three upstanding plumes, springing from a bed of gauze, and ribbon, and lace.