There was all the world at Amy's, and not half room enough for them. Some were in the passage and some in the parlour, and in the drawing-room one could scarcely breathe. At the top of it, Amy sat coquetting with her tall Russians. The poor Count Palmella stood gazing on her at an humble distance.
The little delicate, weak, gentlemanlike Portuguese was no match for the three Cossacks. I do not believe he got in a single word the whole evening; but once, when Amy remarked that she should go the next evening to see the tragedy of Omeo.
"What tragedy is that, pray?" drawled out the Honourable John William Ward, starting from a fit of the dismals, just as if some one had gone behind him and, with a flapper, reminded him that he was at a party, and ought to faire l'aimable aux dames.
"You may laugh at me as much as you please," answered Amy, "and I must have patience and bear it, ight or ong; for I cannot pronounce the letter r."
"How very odd!" I remarked. "Why, you could pronounce it well enough at home!" I really did not mean this to tease her; for I thought, perhaps, lisping might grow upon us as we got older; but I soon guessed it was all sham, by the gathering storm on Amy's countenance. The struggle between the wish to show off effeminate softness to her lovers, and her ardent desire to knock me down, I could see by an arch glance at me, from Fanny's laughing eye and a shrug of her shoulder, was understood by that sister as well as by myself. Fanny's glance was the slyest thing in nature, and was given in perfect fear and trembling.
"Harriette's correctness may be, I am sorry to say,"—and she paused to endeavour to twist her upper lip, trembling with fury, into the shape and form of what might be most pure and innocent in virtuous indignation!
Count Beckendorff eyed me with a look of pity and noble contempt, and then fixed his eyes with rapture on his angel's face!
Joking apart he was a monstrous fool, that same Count Beckendorff, in the shape of a very handsome young Cossack.
"Where's the treaty of peace?" said Nugent, dreading a rupture, which should deaden half the spirit of the little pleasant suppers he wished to give us at his own rooms in the Albany. "No infringement, we beg, ladies. We have the treaty, under your pretty hands and seals."
"Peace be to France, if France, in peace, permit it!" said I, holding out my hand to Amy in burlesque majesty.