’Twas very wonderful. Wonderful beyond all speech that these great ladies should so obligingly bestow any of their time and thought upon a stranger whose fate had drifted her into their sight as the sea drifts its weeds, to be borne away on the next tide.
For the hour was now arrived when she must bid farewell to Queensbury House that was grown so dear to her heart. As she lay in the red velvet bed gazing upon the room grown so familiar, she had spent much time considering in what most dutiful and grateful terms she must take her farewell of the Duchess.
Her Grace being absent at Kensington that day and my Lady Fanny entering unexpected, she resolved to consult her Ladyship. She now sat in a great library chair with the Duchess’s paper-cutting in her hand, a pastime all the mode and introduced at that house by the gifted Mrs. Pendarves, cousin to her Grace. With pointed scissors Diana snipped the paper into little rosy figures, urns, and temples in the Greek taste for decorating mantels and boxes in colors on a black background. Mr. Pope himself, the famous poet, had been pleased to direct the production of certain of these scenes from his own rendering of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” and to commend Diana’s skill.
“Our device shall be joyous, Madam,” says he. “You are too young and fortunate to represent the grief of Andromeda and Hecuba, or the rape of Helen. No,—Mrs. Fenton with her little sharp weapon, shall depict the Princess Nausicaa playing at ball with her maidens, or the divine Calypso singing as she speeds her golden shuttle, till all the woods ring to that celestial harmony. And, if you please, Madam, I would have the Princess to resemble the lady who reproduces her features, since no more youthful and lovely model can be. And Calypso also, since her melody cannot excel Mrs. Polly’s.” For even Mr. Pope diluted his venom when he spoke with her, and gazed with pleasure on a creature of such obliging sweetness.
She rose and curtseyed to my Lady and drew a chair, and presently displayed her little works to the critic.
“But you haven’t obeyed Mr. Pope, Diana. This Grecian Princess is more like Mrs. Pendarves than the model chose by Mr. Pope, and Calypso—who is she? I suspect this Hermes to be——”
She stopt suddenly, a little confused, but Diana, untroubled by knowledge of her thoughts, replied calmly.
“Madam, I thought of my Lord Baltimore in snipping it. My kind wishes attend his Lordship. I hope his wound heals.”
’Twas said with such a complete serenity and absence of any second meaning that my Lady could accept of it with the same tranquillity.
“You think of him then kindly?” says she. “I have heard the story. Don’t fear to speak.”