'True by you, but these stones were her mother's I make no doubt, and that mother was a gambling old Spanish Countess, who would sell her soul for money. I've heard Mr. Trampleasure say as much.'
'She don't look as if she had any constitution to speak of,' observed one old lady.
'That transparent skin,' answered another, 'always means that the heart is bad. I ought to know, for my uncle was a chemist. The highest person in the land—and when I say it, I mean the highest—came into my uncle's place one morning and asked for a seidlitz-powder, and he took it on the premises, and he told my uncle that he never took a better seidlitz in his life.'
'She is proud as Lucifer,' said one. 'Look! she's gone and refused Mr. Sampson Tramplara. That is too bad, and she owes her meat and bread, and the roof that covers her, to the charity of his father.'
'He is getting angry,' said the lady whose uncle was in the chemical line. 'Sampson is not one who can bear to be treated impolitely.'
'She will dance with no one but that strange gentleman whom they call Herring, and Captain Trecarrel. Stuck up because of her rank, I suppose.'
'Ah! as if her rank was anything. The highest in the land spoke quite affable to my uncle, and said his seidlitz was the best seidlitz he had ever drunk.'
'Do you call Mr. Sampson handsome?'
'Handsome! I should rather say so; and better than that, he will be rich.'
'Better than all, he will be good,' said a serious lady, Mrs. Flamank, impressively.