“Have I said so? It is very likely,” said that lady, languidly. “It repays one for a great deal of ingratitude on the part of the world, to have a friend who remembers all one says.”
“Oh, I have the best of memories,” said Lady Betsinda; “and, as I was saying, if you don’t go down on your knees to them they punish you. I was reading somebody’s life the other day— I remember her perfectly well, one used to meet her at Lady Cheddar’s, and one or two other places—rather pretty and lackadaisical, and very, very civil. Poor thing! one saw she was there on sufferance; but if you will believe me—perhaps you have read the book, Cecilia Montagu? you would think she was the center of everything, and all the rest of us nowhere! And so poor Lady Cheddar, a really nice woman, will go down to posterity as the friend of Mrs. So-and-so, whom she asked out of charity! It is enough,” said Lady Betsinda, with indignation, “to make one vow one will never read another book as long as one lives.”
“Mrs. So-and-so!” said Lady Randolph, “I remember her very well. I think everybody was kind to her. There was some story about her husband, and poor Lady Cheddar took her up and fought all her battles—”
“And has been rewarded,” said Mrs. Berry-Montagu, softly satirical, “with immortality. Good people, what would you have more? Fifty years hence who will know anything about Lady Cheddar except from the life of Mrs. So-and-so? And so it will be in—another case we know of. After all, you see that, though you make so little account of them, it is the poor authors who hold the keys of fame.”
“As for the other case, that is not a parallel case at all,” Lady Betsinda cried. “Mrs. So-and-so was bad enough, but she did not put poor dear Lady Cheddar in the papers. No, no, she never put her in the papers; and Lady Cheddar was a woman of a certain age, and people did not need to be told what to think about her. These papers are a disgrace, you know; they are dreadful, nobody is safe.”
“But what should we do without them?” said Mrs. Berry-Montagu, lifting up her languishing eyes.
“That’s true enough,” said Lady Betsinda, softening; “one must know what is going on. But about a young girl, you know; I really think about a young girl—”
Here Lady Randolph interposed with rapid and alarmed dumb-show, and Sir Thomas made a stride forward, with such a lowering brow as Lucy had never seen before. What could be the matter? she wondered; but there the discussion stopped short, and she heard no more.
This was the matter, however: that one of the newspapers of which society is so fond had taken up the romantic dedication of “Imogen,” and with an industry that might have been praiseworthy (as the police reports say) if employed in a better cause, had ferreted out a still more romantic edition of the story. It was not true, but what had that mattered? It gave a fancy sketch of Lucy, and her heiress-ship, and her rusticity, and described how the young novelist was to be rewarded with the hand of the wealthy object of his devotion, a devotion which had begun while she was still poor. Lucy had not learned to care for newspapers, and it was not at all difficult to keep it from her. But Sir Thomas gave all belonging to him a great deal of trouble to soothe him down, and persuade him that nobody cared for such assaults.
“It is quite good-natured; there is no harm intended,” Lady Randolph said; “we all get a touch now and then.”