While Mr. Montenero wrote, Berenice, alarmed for her father, stood leaning on the back of his chair, in silence.
“Oh! Mr. Harrington! Mr. Harrington!” repeated Lady Anne, “what will become of us! If Colonel Topham was but here! Do send to the Opera, pray, pray, with my compliments—Lady Anne Mowbray’s compliments—he’ll come directly, I’m sure.”
“That my son, Lord Mowbray, should be out of town, how extraordinary and how unfortunate!” cried Lady de Brantefield, “when we might have had his protection, his regiment, without applying to strangers.”
She walked up and down the room with the air of a princess in chains. The orange-woman bolted into the room, and pushed past her ladyship, while Mr. Montenero was sealing his note.
“Give it, jewel!—It’s I’ll be the bearer; for all your powdered men below has taken fright by the dread the first messenger got, and dares not be carrying a summons for the military through the midst of them: but I’ll take it for yees—and which way will I go to get quickest to your general’s? and how will I know his house?—for seven of them below bothered my brains.”
Mr. Montenero repeated the direction—she listened coolly, then stowing the letter in her bosom, she stood still for a moment with a look of deep deliberation—her head on one side, her forefinger on her cheek-bone, her thumb under her chin, and the knuckle of the middle-finger compressing her lips.
“See, now, they’ll be apt to come up the stable lane for the back o’ the house, and another party of them will be in the square, in front; so how will it be with me to get into the house to yees again, without opening the doors for them, in case they are wid ye afore I’d get the military up?—I have it,” cried she.
She rushed to the door, but turned back again to look for her pipe, which she had laid on the table.
“Where’s my pipe?—Lend it me—What am I without my pipe?”
“The savage!” cried Lady de Brantefield.