He summoned himself for the defensive. The lady must not carry off all the honours of war from my Lord Baltimore.
“My dear creature—what is there to respect in them, I ask your sincerity? Here’s yourself has trained me on to make a declaration that you might quote to the town that I was at your feet and you spurned me. Indeed I have not much cause to honour your sex.”
“Fear not. I shall not quote it to the town, my Lord, for I don’t feel it a distinction,”—says the lady coolly. “I would not have it known that the Grand Bashaw believed he might throw me the handkerchief when another had refused to stoop for it. No,—the comedy we have played is over—here is the epilogue. You may find a slave, but never a wife, and your contempt of my sex shows an ignorance that deserves no better. There are few women but might despise you if they knew your worth and their own.”
She rose, performed a magnificent curtsey and left her Adam to an Eve-less Paradise.
Rage and unbelief struggled in my Lord Baltimore’s mind. Rejected a second time and where most he thought himself secure! It appeared an evil dream from which he must presently waken though the lights shone and music filled the air and the faces of men and women known to him passed the retreat where he sat alone in a very fever of thoughts he never supposed possible for his triumphant self. Sooner than be remarked, he rose presently and went out into the near dancing room where the first to catch his eye was my Lady Fanny with his master the Prince of Wales.
The Prince laughed heartily in answer to somewhat she said, and my Lord could hear his words:—
“Why, Madam, indeed I deserve your pity. I know not my fate as yet, but that she is some little German lady in her pinafore in the nursery! What is the use to be Prince of Wales if they don’t let me choose among the beauties I see about me?”
“Because,”—says her Ladyship laughing, “your Royal Highness’s admiration might make them Vane!”
’Twas known she was not enamoured of the reigning family, but this bold allusion to the name of his discarded English favourite was so daring as to terrify my Lord Baltimore and excite mingled laughter and fright in all who heard, and they were many. No one but she had dared it.
The Prince, a fine fair young man, stared doubtful a moment, then burst into a great laugh clapping his hands and applauding.