“Oh, what a time I had of it!” she exclaimed, gliding with only half-unconscious distaste from the subject of her own discreditable omniscience. “What a scolding!”
“From that hateful old prude?”
“Yes, from Camilla. But she is not quite all hateful. I thought she was at first, but she isn’t. After having ground me to powder—while those two women looked on—oh, I should like to be even with them!—she told me she would give me another chance! It doesn’t sound any great catch,” beginning to laugh heartily; “but I can assure you that I was very much relieved, as I felt certain that I was going to be turned out then and there, neck and crop.”
“I wish you had. I should have got you for good then.”
The phrase, in one sense, was scarcely a happy one, since it could not, by any stretch of language, be considered a good thing for any young woman to be taken under the soiled and tarnished wing of Lady Tennington.
Bonnybell’s heart did not in the least echo the aspiration, but her lips brought out their “It would have been too delightful for words!” with their accustomed lying glibness.
She looked with pretty, grateful affection at her hostess as she spoke, asking herself alternately whether it was that she had forgotten Flora, or that the latter had lost her eye and donned a greenlier gold wig than of yore, imparted a more sealing-waxy red to her mouth, and laid the powder on her nose, thick as snow on the summit of the Jung Frau, without knowing it.
“Tell me some more,” said the unconscious object of these silent queries, in the delighted voice of a child asking for the repetition of a favourite fairy tale. “Ah, here is Charlie Landon? I told you you would meet an old friend. You must begin all over again for him.”
CHAPTER XV
So this was the “old friend” with whom the hook for her had been partially baited! Charlie Landon, the hero of that dinner at the Réservoir at Versailles; Charlie Landon, the odious old voluptuary most detested by her of all her mother’s disreputable entourage; the one whose degrading admiration and nauseous overtures she had had the most difficulty in keeping within decent bounds; Charlie Landon!