Finding that his malice had taken effect, with a careless air the malicious puppy threw his clumsy limbs on the sofa, which Miss Dundas had just quitted to seat herself nearer the window, and cried out, as in a voice of sudden recollection:
"By the bye, that Miss Mary Beaufort, when she chooses to be sincere, is a staunch little Queen Bess."
"You may as well tell me," replied Miss Dundas, with a deriding curl of her lip, "that she is the Empress of Russia."
"I beg your pardon!" cried he, and raising his voice to be better heard, "I do not mean in the way of learning. But I will prove in a moment her creditable high-mightiness in these presumptuous times, though a silly love of popularity induces her to affect now and then a humble guise to some people beneath her. When she gave me this gewgaw," added he, flourishing the purse in his hand, "she told me a pretty tissue about a fair friend of hers, whose music-master, mistaking some condescension on her part, had dared to press her snowy fingers while directing them towards a tender chord on her harp. You have no notion how the gentle Beaufort's blue eyes blazed up while relating poor Tweedledum's presumption!"
"I can have a notion of anything these boasted meek young ladies do when thrown off their guard," haughtily returned his contemptuous auditress, "after Miss Beaufort's violent sally of impertinence to you last night."
"Impertinence to me!" echoed the fop, at the same time dipping the end of the knitting into Diana's lavender-bottle, and dabbing his temples; "she was always too civil by half. I hate forward girls."
Thaddeus shut the large dictionary which lay before him with a force that made the puppy start, and rising hastily from his chair, with a face all crimson, was taking his hat, when the door opened, and Mary appeared.
A white-chip bonnet was resting lightly on the glittering tresses which waved over her forehead, whilst her lace-shade, gently discomposed by the air, half veiled and half revealed her graceful figure. She entered with a smile, and walking up to the side of the table where Thaddeus was standing, inquired after his friend's health. He answered her in a voice unusually agitated. All that he had been told by the countess of her favorable opinion of him, and the slander he had just heard from Diana's lover, were at once present in his mind.
He was yet speaking, when Miss Beaufort, casually looking towards the other side of the room, saw her purse still acting the part of a handkerchief in the hand of Mr. Lascelles.
"Look, Mr. Constantine," said she, gayly tapping his arm with her parasol, "how the most precious things may be degraded! There is the knitting you have so often admired, and which I intended for Lady Tinemouth's pocket, debased to do the office of Mr. Lascelles's napkin."