"She was," rejoined Lord Baskerville, looking very wise; "but, a-hem! that's all off now. I know all about it—hem! for he is so involved, hem! that marriage is impossible—hem! And really the poor girl has echappé belle; for I never knew such a puritanical affected—hem! I cannot conceive what the women see about him to endure him for a moment—hem!"
By this time the report of Lady Glenmore's having fainted spread through the rooms, and there were assembled around her Lady Tilney, Lady Ellersby, and the Comtesse Leinsengen.
"I do not wonder you were overcome, my dear Lady Glenmore; it was terribly hot," said Lady Tilney in her most coaxing manner. "These vile drawing-rooms are quite enough to kill one. Such a heat, and such a crowd of Heaven knows whom! And then to see whom, or what? for one never sees the ostensible object for whom one comes here. If it were not to oblige Lord Tilney, and because one must, I would never come to such a horrid place again. My dear Lady Glenmore, you who have suffered so much are, I am sure, out of all patience with the whole thing."
Lady Glenmore, who had by this time quite recovered, and who was placed very comfortably enjoying the fresh breeze that came to her unpolluted by the heat and breath of the crowd, as she sat close by the window, now resumed her accustomed smiling cheerfulness, and replied,
"Not at all, Lady Tilney; I assure you I have been much amused, and think it is a very splendid scene;—so much beauty, so much magnificence, that I was quite provoked at myself for being overcome, and unable to enjoy it; but I am perfectly well again now, and I hope another time to be more used to it."
"Quelle niaiserie!" whispered the Comtesse Leinsengen to Lord Baskerville. "She ought to go back to her nursery."
"Nothing is so tiresome," replied Lord Baskerville, "as low people who are always diverted. They must be false or fools, a-hem! after their first existence in the world—hem! our world I mean—hem! As to me, I don't care for any thing or any body, and am always bored to death here, a-hem! ar'n't you?"
"C'est selon," answered the comtesse in her most abrupt manner.
"Don't you know," cried Lady De Chere, "that there are a certain number of people who live upon getting up scenes all their life? they are always either fainting, or crying, or haranguing."