"Would it surprise Mr. Asterley to hear that the heiress is found already?" asked Judith languidly, looking downward at the jewelled Moorish salver and chocolate service of German china which Juba and his minions had arranged on the table in front of her. The copper chocolate-pot was of curious shape, and was supposed to be as ancient as the destruction of Pompeii, and to have held some witch's concoction in the way of a philtre for love or hate. There was a tiny spirit-lamp under it, which burned with a diabolical blue flame.
"Found already, while Lavendale has been hiding in Surrey?" cried the dowager. "You astound me!"
"Yes, the young lady danced at the birthnight ball, and was the observed of all observers for her grace and beauty. Everybody was asking where she had learnt to walk a minuet with such a mixture of ease and stateliness, till Mary Campbell, who has the impudence of the devil, went about asking questions, and ferreted out the new beauty's history. She is the daughter of Squire Bosworth, Lord Lavendale's next-door neighbour, a curious old money-grubber who made a hundred thousand pounds in that odious South Sea scheme which beggared so many women of fashion and disgraced not a few: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for instance, who still trembles at the very name of that unlucky Frenchman whose money she ventured and lost."
"And whose very warm advances she must at one time have encouraged," suggested Lady Polwhele. "Poor Molly would never have been so frightened had there not been something more than money transactions between her and Monsieur Rémond. But pray tell us more of the heiress."
"She is as simple as Wycherley's country wife, but much more genteel," replied Lady Judith lightly, while Juba carried round the chocolate, and while Lavendale sat on thorns. "She has learnt to sing and dance from a lame old Frenchwoman, who taught Lady Tredgold's gaunt daughters—"
"And never succeeded in teaching them to step to the music," said Asterley.
"But this girl is a born sylph, and a musician by instinct. Topsparkle has heard of her singing, though he has never seen her, and he wants me to ask her to Ringwood. Surely you must have observed her, Lady Polwhele?"
"I was not at the birthnight; my dearest pug had a fit of the colic so severe that I trembled lest every breath should be his last. I would not have left him for a galaxy of kings and princes."
"But you must have seen her to-night. A slim, nymph-like creature, disguised as Diana, with a silver crescent in her hair. She and Lavendale were the prettiest couple in the room."
"Lady Judith is bent upon rekindling the ashes of a long-extinguished vanity," said Lavendale.