The tears filled the girl's eyes, the colour rose and fell in her cheeks as mercury in a barometer before a hurricane.
Jesse, who saw her distress, and was vexed with her mother, said, so as to produce a diversion, 'Now, mother, the story of the pills—anything but this Catechism on your Duty to your Inferiors.'
'No, my dear, I will not tell the story of the pills, as you so pertly call it. The narrative touches the Crown, and whatever touches the Crown should be treated with respect, even if its association with the name of your august father did not exact that it should be approached with decorum. Oh! there is Frank Wardroper! Here! Baker! stay! I wish to speak with a gentleman.'
Then signing to a young man irreproachably dressed, she turned to Winefred, and said in a low tone, 'Son of Sir Barnaby Wardroper, you know. I will introduce him. An eligible acquaintance.'
The chariot was arrested, and to the signalling of the gloved hand and bobbing head, the youth approached with raised hat and graceful bow.
After the usual salutations had been interchanged, with remarks on the weather and inquiries that were mutual as to health—
'Allow me, my dear Mr. Frank, to introduce you to a charming friend from the green lanes of old England, a flower from its most rural nooks. Mr. Wardroper, my dear Miss Holwood, Mr. Frank Wardroper; she belongs, you know, to that delightful family, the Finnboroughs—allied that is. So unfortunate that the Viscount has left Bath; he and Lady Finnborough would have been so charmed, you know. My dear Mr. Frank'—aside into his ear, but audible to Winefred—'an heiress, daughter—sole child of the Governor-General of—I forget—one of our most vast and important of our Colonial possessions—a veritable gold mine.'
Then she pursed up her lips, winked and nodded, and made symbolic gestures with her hands and parasol, as though unfurling something—the rent-roll of Winefred, and pouring forth something, the plunder of the Colony of Tierra del Fuego.
'By the way, Mr. Frank Wardroper, you are a man of exquisite taste, you know, and, I wonder, I wonder now, whether you could be induced by any poor words of mine to take a seat in our equipage, beside Jesse, and accompany us. In fact, positively we are going to the milliner's and dressmaker's to rehabilitate my dear little country friend here, and you are such a judge, have so fine a perception in colour and cut, such tact as to fit, that I feel we should acquire an incalculable advantage could we secure your opinion.'
'Delighted!' said Mr. Wardroper.