It was late in the same evening that Lady Fareham’s maid came to her bed-chamber to inquire if she would be pleased to see Mrs. Lewin, who had brought a pattern of a new French bodice, with her humble apologies for waiting on her ladyship so late.
Her ladyship would see Mrs. Lewin. She started up from the sofa where she had been lying, her forehead bound with a handkerchief steeped in Hungary water. She was all excitement.
“Bring her here instantly!” she said, and the interval necessary to conduct the milliner up the grand staircase and along the gallery seemed an age to Hyacinth’s impatience.
“Well? Have you a letter for me?” she asked, when her woman had retired, and Mrs. Lewin had bustled and curtsied across the room.
“In truly, my lady; and I have to ask your ladyship’s pardon for not bringing it early this morning, when his honour gave it to me with his own hand out of ‘his travelling carriage. And very white and wasted he looked, dear gentleman, not fit for a voyage to France in this severe weather. And I was to carry you his letter immediately; but, eh, gud! your ladyship, there was never such a business as mine for surprises. I was putting on my cloak to step out with your ladyship’s letter, when a coach, with a footman in the royal undress livery, sets down at my door, and one of the Duchess’s women had come to fetch me to her Highness; and there I was kept in her Highness’s chamber half the morning, disputing over a paduasoy for the Shrove Tuesday masquerade—for her Highness gets somewhat bulky, and is not easy to dress to her advantage or to my credit—though she is a beauty compared with the Queen, who still hankers after her hideous Portuguese fashions——”
“And employs your rival, Madame Marifleur——”
“Marifleur! If your ladyship knew the creature as well as I do, you’d call her Sally Cramp.”
“I never can remember a low English name. Marifleur seems to promise all that there is of the most graceful and airy in a ruffled sleeve and a ribbon shoulder-knot.”
“I am glad to see your ladyship is in such good spirits,” said the milliner, wondering at Lady Fareham’s flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes.
They were brilliant with a somewhat glassy brightness, and there was a touch of hysteria in her manner. Mrs. Lewin thought she had been drinking. Many of her customers ended that way—took to cognac and ratafia, when choicer pleasures were exhausted and wrinkles began to show through their paint.