Caroline snorted with great energy.
Monsieur Duprez, crowing with delight, was absorbing Gainsborough’s masterpiece.
“I haf it,” said he, tapping the center of his forehead, “ze very ting.”
“May it prove so, my dear Duprez, for then we shall have a nine days’ wonder for the town.”
Thus it will be seen that in the beginning “Caroline Crewkerne’s Gainsborough,” as she was so soon to be christened by the privileged few who write the labels of history, owed much to Cheriton’s foresight, judgment, and undoubted talent for stage management.
She really made her début at Saint Sepulchre’s Church—in which sacred and fashionable edifice, I regret to say, her aunt Caroline was an infrequent worshiper—and afterwards in Hyde Park on the second Sunday morning in May.
At least a fortnight before the great occasion Cheriton had declared his intention to the powers that obtained in Hill Street of making Miss Perry known to London on the first really bright and warm Sunday morning that came along. Thanks to the behavior of providence, her church-going clothes arrived the evening before the weather; whilst only a few hours previously a deft-fingered jewel of a maid had arrived expressly from Paris, at the instance of the experts, who was learned in the set of the most marvelous frocks and hats, and who also was a rare artist in the human hair.
Therefore let none confess to surprise that Miss Perry was the innocent cause of some excitement when she burst upon an astonished world. Mr. Marchbanks was the first to behold Miss Perry, when on this historic second Sunday morning in May she quitted the privacy of her chamber fittingly clothed to render homage to her Maker. He beheld her as she came down the marble staircase in an enormous black hat with a wonderful feather, a miracle of harmonious daring, and in a lilac frock, not answering, it is true, in every detail to that in which her famous great-grandmamma had been painted by Gainsborough, but none the less a triumph for all concerned in it. However, to judge by the demeanor of shocked stupefaction of the virtuous man who first encountered it, who himself was about to accompany Mrs. Plunket to Divine worship, this was an achievement that was not to the taste of everybody. In the opinion of Mr. Marchbanks it might be magnificent, but it was not religion.
By one of those coincidences in which real life indulges so recklessly, Miss Perry had not reached the bottom of the stairs when Cheriton, duly admitted by John, and himself armed cap-à-pie for Divine worship in a brand-new wig, with freshly dyed mustache, light-gray trousers, lilac gloves, white gaiters, and a gardenia in his buttonhole, was enabled to take up a strategical position in the entrance-hall.
His greeting was almost as melodramatic as his appearance.