Sir John Kirkland spent a week at Fareham House, employed in choosing a team of horses, suitable alike for the road and the plough, looking out, among the coachmakers, for a second-hand travelling carriage, and eventually buying a coach of Lady Fanshawe’s, which had been brought from Madrid with the rest of her very extensive goods and chattels.
One need scarce remark that it was not one of the late Ambassador’s state carriages, his ruby velvet coach, with fringes that cost three hundred pounds, or his brocade carriage, but a coach that had been built for the everyday use of his suite.
Sir John also bought a little plain silver, in place of that fine collection of silver and parcel-gilt which had been so willingly sacrificed to royal necessities; and though he breathed no sigh over past losses, some bitter thoughts may have come across his cheerfulness as he heard of the splendour and superabundance of Lady Castlemaine’s plate and jewels, or of the ring worth six hundred pounds lately presented to a pretty actress.
In a week he was ready for Buckinghamshire; and Angela had her trunks packed, and had bid good-bye to her London friends, amidst the chatter of Lady Fareham’s visiting-day, and the clear, bell-like clash of delicate china tea-cups—miniature bowls of egg-shell porcelain, without handles, and to be held daintily between the tips of high-bred fingers.
There was a chorus of courteous bewailing at the notion of Mrs. Kirkland’s departure.
Sir Ralph Masaroon pretended to be in despair.
“Is it not bad enough to have had the coldest winter my youth can remember? But you must needs take the sun from our spring. Why, the maids of honour will count for handsome when you are gone. What’s that Butler says?—
‘The twinkling stars begin to muster,
And glitter with their borrowed lustre.’
But what’s to become of me without the sun? I shall have no one to side-glass in the Ring.”
“Indeed, Sir Ralph, I did not know that you ever side-glassed me!”