"Because it is a cit's wife's colour, or a vain old woman's that wants to look young. 'Tis not the mode, Patty."
"My petticoat cost a pound a yard," said Patty, ruefully. "I thought the General would kill me when he saw the bill."
"Oh, 'tis pretty enough, and suits you well enough, chérie. I was half in jest. I have a kind friend who lectures me upon all such trifles, and so I thought I'd lecture you. And, my dearest Patty, as the cousin that's to dine with us is a very serious person, I should take it kindly of you not to talk of the playhouse, nor to abuse your husband."
"I hope I know how to behave in company," answered Patty, slightly huffed; and on Mr. and Mrs. Stobart being announced the next moment, she assumed a mincing stateliness which lasted the whole evening.
Stobart thought her an appalling personage, in spite of her reticence. Her cherry satin bodice was cut very low, and her ample bosom was spread with pearls and crosses like a jeweller's show-case. She made up for a paucity of diamonds by the size of her topazes and the profusion of her amethysts, and her Bristol paste buckles would have been big enough for the tallest of the Prussian king's grenadiers. Lucy Stobart, in her pearl-grey silk, made with a quaker-like simplicity, her pure complexion, golden-brown curls and slender shape, seemed all the lovelier by the contrast of Mrs. Granger's florid charms; but poor Patty behaved herself with an admirable reserve, and uttered no word that could offend.
Lucy looked at everything in a wondering rapture—the pictures, the marble busts on ebony and ormolu pedestals, the miniatures and jewels and toys scattered on tables, the glass cabinets displaying the most exquisite porcelain, the China monsters standing about the carpet, the confusion of beautiful objects which met her gaze on every side almost bewildered her. She looked about her like a child at a fair.
"And does your ladyship really live in this house?" she asked innocently. "'Tis not like a house to live in."
"Do you think it should he put under a glass case, or buried under burning ashes like Herculaneum, so that it may be found perfect and undisturbed two thousand years after we are all dead?" said Stobart, smiling at her.
He was pleased with her fresh young prettiness, which was not disgraced even by Antonia's imperial charms.
"You see, madam, how foolish I have been to indulge my wife with a sight of splendours which lie so far away from our lives," he said to Antonia, who accompanied them through the suite of drawing-rooms where clusters of candles had just been lighted in sconces on the walls, to show them the famous Gobelins tapestries that had once belonged to Madame de Montespan.