“Dear, dear Bastien,” cried Madame Mirabel, who had scarcely known Bastien in the old days, but who would have been glad to see a dog from Versailles.
“‘I recollect this young lady well.’”
Lady Betty stood for a moment throbbing and thrilling as to whether she should speak to Bastien or not. But having, with all her grace and spirit, her own share of hard Scotch sense, she saw in a moment that she would be a laughing-stock forever, and would have to leave Holyrood, if ever that green fan episode came out, she wisely determined to ignore it for the present. Besides, did Bastien really know her? and had he ever known her name? Bastien was perfectly familiar with both, but he did not choose to acknowledge it, and so he made Lady Betty a low bow, and carefully divested his countenance of the smallest recognition.
“’Tis too late to see their Royal Highnesses to-night,” cried De Bourmont, “so there is nothing for it but to come and sup in my apartment—you, too, Bastien,” thinking from Madame Mirabel’s cordial greeting that they were bosom friends of long standing.
Bastien, at this, had his moment of hesitation. Should he risk it with that beautiful young virago or not? but he arrived by an instantaneous course of reasoning at the very same conclusion that Lady Betty had come to regarding himself,—he thought she did not recognize him, and Bastien devoutly hoped she never would. And there was something else—a more serious thing—Bastien tried to put it out of his mind but he could not; he felt himself shudder slightly at the expectation that the name of Lady Betty’s dead brother be spoken before him—he never liked to hear that name. However, a little while saw them seated around a supper-table in De Bourmont’s grim, half-furnished room in the old palace, with a good fire and wax lights and a Scotch-French supper to cheer them up.
The Lady Betty Stair was distinctively a child of palaces, so that she would have been perfectly happy but for Bastien’s presence,—and even that could not seriously affect her happiness. Besides—blessed thought—he did not know her! Ah, Lady Betty, Lady Betty, he knows you well enough, and he means to make you pay for that once-skinned nose of his!
Madame Mirabel did an almost inconceivable amount of eating and talking, and Bastien, with an eye to punishing Lady Betty’s Scotch pride, began to complain bitterly of Edinburgh and Holyrood.
“An old rat-hole, my dear Madame. And the parties—oh, the parties! Once a week we have levees in an old hall full of nightmares in canvas,—portraits of Scotch kings,—and the great people from the town are invited. Perhaps you thought the old nobility of France proud, but you ought to see these people. Their pedigrees go back to Moses, and their pride is as long as their pedigrees.”
Lady Betty would have dearly liked to box Bastien’s ears for this, but De Bourmont, who was a sharp fellow, said, very artfully: “I think our levees most charming—and every spot consecrated to the memory of Mary Stuart, as this old castle is, must ever be interesting.”