Signed with our hands and seals....
"Now," said Fanny one day to Julia, soon after our first opera season had begun, "Harriette and I propose cutting you Mrs. Julia altogether, if you do not, this very evening, give us a full and true account of yourself, from the day you were born and the date thereof up to this hour."
"No dates! no dates! I pray!" said Julia.
"Well, waive dates," added I, "and begin."
Julia then related, in her shy, quiet way, what I will communicate as briefly as possible.
Julia's real name was Storer. She was the daughter of the Honourable Mrs. Storer, who was one of the maids of honour to our present king's royal mother, and the sister of Lord Carysfort.
Julia received part of her education in France, and finished it at the palace of Hampton Court, where her mother sent her on a visit to the wife of Colonel Cotton, who was an officer in the 10th Dragoons.
Mrs. Cotton had a family of nine children, and very little fortune to support them. Julia had been, from her earliest youth, encouraging the most romantic passions which ever fired a youthful breast. With all this her heart, unlike mine, was as cold as her imagination was warm. What were parents, what were friends to her? What was anything on earth to love?
The first night Colonel Cotton danced with her she was mad! In four months more she was pregnant. In nine months more, having concealed her situation, she was seized with the pangs of labour, while in the act of paying her respects to Her Majesty in court! And all was consternation in the beau château de Hampton!