“But, indeed, Lady Sarah, it is we of the old faith who have most need to complain,” said Lady Fareham, “since these wretches make us pay a double poll-tax; and all our foreign friends are being driven away for the same reason—just because the foolish and the ignorant must needs put down the fire to the Catholics.”
“Indeed, your ladyship, the Papists have had an unlucky knack at lighting fires, as Smithfield and Oxford can testify,” said Penington; “and perhaps, having no more opportunity of roasting martyrs, it may please some of your creed to burn Protestant houses, with the chance of cooking a few Protestants inside ’em.”
Angela had drawn away from the little knot of fine ladies and finer gentlemen, and was sitting in the bay window of an ante-room, with Henriette and the boy, who were sorely dejected at the prospect of losing her. The best consolation she could offer was to promise that they should be invited to the Manor Moat as soon as she and her father had settled themselves comfortably there—if their mother could spare them.
Henriette laughed outright at this final clause.
“Spare us!” she cried. “Does she ever want us? I don’t think she knows when we are in the room, unless we tread upon her gown, when she screams out ‘Little viper!’ and hits us with her fan.”
“The lightest touch, Papillon; not so hard as you strike your favourite baby.”
“Oh, she doesn’t hurt me; but the disrespect of it! Her only daughter, and nearly as high as she is!”
“You are an ungrateful puss to complain, when her ladyship is so kind as to let you be here to see all her fine company.”
“I am sick of her company, almost always the same, and always talking about the same things. The King, and the Duke, and the General, and the navy; or Lady Castlemaine’s jewels, or the last new head from Paris, or her ladyship’s Flanders lace. It is all as dull as ditch-water now Monsieur de Malfort is gone. He was always pleasant, and he let me play on his guitar, though he swore it excruciated him. And he taught me the new Versailles coranto. There’s no pleasure for any one since he fell ill and left England.”
“You shall come to the Manor. It will be a change, even though you hate the country and love London.”