This was his chance to repay my insolence. You may be sure he took it, and also that my heart quailed when he held that sinister blue paper up, and asked me whether I did not think it elegant.
“And again would I venture to suggest, my Lady Barbara,” says he, “that though the first fall may rest with you, the game is not quite over yet.” The man smiled with such a malicious affability that I dropped him a curtsey and swept out in a huff.
That blue paper was my nightmare. It must not go to London, yet how could I give the prisoner up? I desired to eat my cake and yet to keep it, and felt like working myself into a passion because this was impossible. Accordingly, when I repaired to a dish of tea, and to have an eye upon Miss Prue, my mind was both disordered and perplexed. I was grieved to discover that the dowager and my dear Miss Canticle had discarded religious topics for the secular. Miss Prue was pouring into my aunt’s receptive ear some most surprising details that presumably adorned the histories of many of the brightest ornaments of our world. And she was doing this with a vivacity that took my breath away.
“God bless me! yes,” Miss Prue was saying as I entered, “of course I know my Lady Wensley Michigan. A dreadful woman, madam! Plays at hazard every night till three, and poor Michigan hath to put a new mortgage on his property every morning.”
“Never heard anything so monstrous!” cries my aunt in horror, but very anxious nevertheless to glean as many facts of a similar kind as possible. “And my dear Miss Canticle, are you acquainted with the Carews, and the Vortigerns, and those people?”
“Am acquainted with ’em all,” cries my dear Miss Canticle, with a promptitude and emphasis that made me shudder; “and a pretty company they are! Shouldn’t tell you a word of this, my dear madam, only it is as well for persons who know what virtue is to be forewarned against those who don’t.”
“Exactly,” says my aunt, with a grim and gleaming eye.
“Prue,” says I, sweetly as a song, though I was pale with rage, “I am going to dress for supper. Come along with me, dear, and I will show you my new watered-silk. ’Twill make you dream of it to-night.”
“A watered silk!” she cried, and instantly jumped up and followed me with a wonderful excitement that only a woman could have shown. How could I be angry with a villain with such a deal of genius?
“Prue,” says I, as we ascended to my chamber, “you are a perfect devil.”