‘You know the Swinford woman’s gone off,’ he said. ‘What a release for that poor Leo who was never allowed to stir from her apron-strings!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lady William, ‘that he will think it such a release.’
‘And, of course, you know why she’s going,’ said the young man of fashion. ‘The old witch thought everybody had forgotten her naughty ways. Well, she’s old enough, she might be allowed benefit of clergy: and she meant to go to the Drawing Room and get whitewashed, don’t you know. But H.M. has a long memory—wouldn’t have her at any price—asked what they meant by insulting her Court, bringing such a Person there. When Her Most Gracious calls a woman a Person there’s an end of her. So town don’t agree with that old lady’s health, no more does the Hall—and she’s off to her beloved France, she says, where there’s something like society—society, don’t you know, where there’s nobody that has any right to interfere.’
‘Is that the reason?’ said Lady William—her heart was touched, though she was aware that she had little cause to love Mrs. Swinford. ‘I have not been very much in charity with her lately, but she was once very kind. I am sorry this should have happened. Everything that is naughty, as you say, must have been over long ago.’
‘Oh, don’t you be too sure of that,’ said Lord Will. ‘The old hag, made up for a burlesque, would have flirted with me the other day, between the showers of the venom she was shooting out upon you.’
‘Did she shoot out venom upon me?’ said Lady William. Her face lighted up for a moment with a gleam of angry indignation. And then, ‘Poor old woman!’ she said.
I am afraid Lord Will had no comprehension whatever of this misplaced pity. He stared; and he made up his mind that his handsome aunt overestimated his simplicity, and intended to take him in by that show of feeling—which was the most unlikely undertaking, seeing that Lord Will was a young man about town, and up, as he himself would have said, to all the dodges. It was trouble altogether thrown away in his case.
‘What did Will mean by H.M. having a long memory?’ said Mab, who had overheard part of this talk.
‘He means that Her Majesty remembers all about everybody—it is a point of Royal politeness—and that the Queen will not receive anybody at Court with a stain upon her name.’
‘But that is the very thing she ought to do!’ cried Mab.