There was not one among all the crowd in the drawing-room who had ever been invited to accompany Iden Pacha.
Three days ago at home, if anyone had told Amaryllis that she would be singled out in this way, first to receive the Iden medal—the spade-guinea stamp of approval—and then, above all things, to be honoured by walking out with this "almighty" grandfather, how delighted she would have been at the thought of the triumph!
But now it was just the reverse. Triumph over these people—pah! a triumph over rats and flies or some such creatures. She actually felt lowered in her own esteem by being noticed at all among them. Honoured by this old horror—she revolted at it. He honour her with his approval—she hated him.
The other day a travelling piano was wheeled through Coombe and set up a tune in that lonesome spot. Though it was but a mechanical piece of music, with the cogs as it were of the mechanism well marked by the thump, thump, it seemed to cheer the place—till she went out to the gate to look at the Italian woman who danced about while the grinding was done, and saw that she had a sound pair of boots on. That very morning her mother in crossing the road had set the Flamma rheumatism shooting in her bones, for the dampness of the mud came through the crack in her boot.
This miserable old Iden Pacha thought to honour her while he let her mother walk about with her stocking on the wet ground!
The Flamma blood was up in her veins—what did she care for guineas!
As she was putting her hat on in the bedroom before the glass she looked round to see that no one was watching, and then stooped down and put the spade-guinea in the dust of the floor under the dressing-table. She would have none of his hateful money. The sovereign she took care of because it was for her father, and he might buy something useful with it; he wanted a few shillings badly enough.
So the spade-guinea remained in the dust of the floor for a week or two, till it pleased the housemaid to move the dressing-table to brush away the accumulation, when she found the shining one in the fluff.
Being over thirty, she held her tongue, the guinea henceforward travelled down the stream of Time fast enough though silently, but she took the first opportunity of examining the iron box under the Pacha's bed, thinking perhaps there might be a chink in it. And it was curious how for some time afterwards a fit of extraordinary industry prevailed in the house; there was not a table, a chair, or any piece of furniture that was not chivvied about under pretence of polishing. She actually had a day's holiday and a cast-off gown given to her as a reward for her labours.
