“Magnanimous!” I flashed out at him, and curled my lip in scorn, “you impudent young fool! Do you suppose that anything a beggar with bare elbows, whose mansion is the pillory, and whose carriage is the cart, can contrive to do or say will touch in any way my Lady Barbara, the toast of the Prince of Wales? You presumptuous rogue, to hear you talk one would think you at least a lord-in-waiting, or a minister of the Crown.”
“Then you are not hurt?” he did persist.
“Hurt,” I laughed, “if I am bitten with a fly, I am not hurt, though perchance I am annoyed.”
“You are annoyed, madam?” he persisted still.
“You can call it annoyance, you little fly,” I said.
“Then let me crave your pardon for it,” he implored, and the humility was so delightful he did it with that sure I could not say which was the most appealing—his meekness, his softness, or his insolence. By good luck the supper bell here intervened between us and our feelings; a few final touches from the maid, and we were tripping down the staircase to the Ordeal in the dining-room. The chamber was bright-lit; the dowager was already there, and the Earl, my papa, was momentarily expected. Let me confess to being feverish, and in a twitter of the nerves. One mishap, and all was over. But Miss Prue was the perfection of address; withstood the glare of the candelabra without a twitch; talked to the dowager with the confidential light and charming silliness of a girl; carried herself with the queenly ease of one born to overcome; played her fan often and superbly; laughed archly with her shoulders in the female way, either “doated” on a thing, else thought it “horrid,” and slightly patronised my aunt and me as one of equal breed, but as superior in her youth, and infinitely more so in her charms.
The vivacious creature was retailing to the dowager in her engaging fashion the foibles and private history, now for the first time published, of that “Old cat the Marchioness of Meux,” when my foolish heart sprang in my throat, for the door was softly opened, and the Earl, my papa, smirkingly minced in.
I plunged headlong into the Ordeal. Sweeping up on the instant to his lordship, I saluted him with a great appearance of delight and eagerness, and sang out then:
“So happy that you’ve come, my lord; I am dying to present you to my dear Prue Canticle, the very Prue I love so, the dearest Prue in Christendom!”
His old lordship could not get a word in ere I had led him to the lovely minx who was entertaining my aunt the dowager in such a shocking manner. Mon père put on his glasses with the most killing simper, quizzed the handsome dog with high-bred insolence, and said: