"I am going to—ar—hum—to a friend of mine," said Little Grand, less glibly than usual.
"Very well; I only asked, because I would have taken you to Mrs. Fortescue's with me; they're having some acting proverbs (horrible exertion in this oven of a place, with the thermometer at a hundred and twenty degrees); but if you've better sport it's no matter. Take care what friends you make, though, Grand; you'll find some Maltese acquaintances very costly."
"Thank you. I should say I can take care of myself," replied Little Grand, with immeasurable scorn and dignity.
Conran laughed, struck him across the shoulders with his whip, stroked his own moustaches, and went out again, whistling one of Verdi's airs.
"I don't want him bothering, you know," explained Little Grand; "she's such a deuced magnificent woman!"
She was a magnificent woman, this Eudoxia Adelaida, Marchioness St. Julian; and proud enough Little Grand and I felt when we had that soft, jewelled hand held out to us, and that bewitching smile beamed upon us, and that joyous presence dazzling in our eyes, as we sat in the drawing-room of that Casa di Fiori. She was about thirty-five, I should say (boys always worship those who might have been schoolfellows of their mothers), tall and stately, and imposing, with the most beautiful pink and white skin, with a fine set of teeth, raven hair, and eyes tinted most exquisitely. Oh! she was magnificent, our Marchioness St. Julian! Into what unutterable insignificance, what miserable, washed-out shadows sank Stars and Garters' lady, and the Mitchell girls, and all the belles of La Valetta, whom we hadn't thought so very bad-looking before.
There was a young creature sitting a little out of the radiance of light, reading; but we had no eyes for anybody except the Marchioness St. Julian. We were in such high society, too; there was her brother, Lord Adolphus, and his bosom Pylades, the Baron Guatamara; and there was a big fellow, with hooked nose and very curly hair, who was introduced to us as the Prince of Orangia Magnolia; and a little wiry fellow, with bits of red and blue ribbon, and a star or two in his button-hole, who was M. le Due de Saint-Jeu. We were quite dazzled with the coruscations of so much aristocracy, especially when they talked across to each other—so familiarly, too—of Johnnie (that we Lord Russell), and Pam, and "old Buck" (my godfather Buckingham, Lord Adolphus explained to us), and Montpensier and old Joinville; and chatted of when they dined at the Tuileries, and stayed at Compiègne, and hunted at Belvoir, and spent Christmas at Holcombe or Longleat. We were in such high society! How contemptible appeared Mrs. Maberly's and the Fortescue soirées; how infinitesimally small grew Charlie Ruthven, and Harry Villiers, and Grey and Albany, and all the other young fellows who thought it such great guns to be au mieux with little Graziella, or invited to Sir George Dashaway's. We were a cut above those things now—rather!
That splendid Marchioness! There was a head for a coronet, if you like! And how benign she was! Grand sat on the couch beside her, and I on an ottoman on her left, and she leaned back in her magnificent toilette, flirting her fan like a Castilian, and flashing upon us her superb eyes from behind it; not speaking very much, but showing her white teeth in scores of heavenly smiles, till Little Grand, the blasé man of seventeen, and I the raw Moses of private tutelage, both felt that we had never come across anything like this; never, in fact, seen a woman worth a glance before.
She listened to us—or rather to him; I was too awestruck to advance much beyond monosyllables—and laughed at him, and smiled encouragingly on my gaucherie (and when a boy is gauche, how ready he is to worship such a helping hand!), and beamed upon us both with an effulgence compared with which the radiance of Helen, Galatea, [OE]none, Messalina, Laïs, and all the legendary beauties one reads about, must have been what the railway night-lamps that never burn are to the prismatic luminaries of Cremorne. They were all uncommonly pleasant, all except the girl who was reading, whom they introduced as the Signorina da' Guari, a Tuscan, and daughter to Orangia Magnolia, with one of those marvellously beautiful faces that one sees in the most splendid painters' models of the Campagna, who never lifted her head scarcely, though Guatamara and Saint-Jeu did their best to make her. But all the others were wonderfully agreeable, and quite fête'd Little Grand and me, at which, they, being more than double our age, and seemingly at home alike with Belgravia and Newmarket, the Faubourg and the Pytchley, we felt to grow at least a foot each in the aroma of this Casa di Fiori.
"This is rather stupid, Doxie," began Lord Adolphus, addressing his sister; "not much entertainment for our guests. What do you say to a game of vingt-et-un, eh, Mr. Grandison?"