She and Mrs. Scattergood attended the Chapel Royal for the morning service. Mrs. Scattergood frankly occupied herself with looking about her at the newest fashions, and was not above whispering to her charge when she saw a particularly striking hat, but Miss Taverner, more strictly brought up, tried to keep her mind on what was going forward. This, when all her thoughts were taken up with the impertinence of her guardian having announced that he should not give his consent to her marriage, was not very easy. Her mind wandered during the reading of the first lesson, but was recalled with a jerk.
“ And Zacchaeus said: ‘Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor,’”read the clergyman.
A voice which came from someone seated quite near to Miss Taverner suddenly interrupted, saying in a loud hurried way: “Too much, too much! Don’t mind tithes, but can’t stand that!”
There were one or two stifled giggles, and many heads were turned. Mrs. Scattergood, who had craned her neck to see who it was who had lifted up his voice in such an unseemly fashion, nipped Judith’s arm, and whispered urgently: “It’s the Duke of Cambridge. He talks to himself, you know. And I think it is his brother Clarence who is with him, but I cannot quite see. And if it is, my love, I believe it to be a fact that he is parted from Mrs. Jordan, and is looking about him for a rich wife! Only fancy if he should think of you!”
Miss Taverner did not choose to fancy anything so absurd, and quelled her chaperon with a frown.
Mrs. Scattergood was right in her conjecture; it was the Duke of Clarence. He came out of church after the service with Lord and Lady Sefton, a burly, red-faced gentleman with very staring blue eyes and a pear-shaped head. Mrs. Scattergood, who had lingered strategically on the pretext of exchanging greetings with an acquaintance, contrived to be in the way. Lady Sefton bowed and smiled, but the Duke, with his rather protuberant eyes fixed on Miss Taverner, very palpably twitched her sleeve.
The party stopped, Lady Sefton begged leave to present Mrs. Scattergood and Miss Taverner, and Judith found herself making her first curtsy to Royalty.
The Duke, who had the same thick utterance that belonged to all the King’s sons, said in his blunt, disconnected way: “What’s that? What’s that? Is it Miss Taverner? Well, this is famous indeed! I have been wishing to meet Miss Taverner these three weeks. How do you do? So you drive a phaeton and pair, as I hear, ma’am? Well, that is the right tack for Worth’s ward!”
Miss Taverner said simply: “Yes, sir, I do drive a phaeton and pair.”
“Ay, ay, they tell me you shake the wind out of all their sails. I shall keep a weather eye lifted for you in the Park, ma’am. I am acquainted with Worth, you know: he is a particular friend of my brother York. You need not fear to haul to and take me aboard your phaeton.”