“What! the man who has drunk of the source of the Nile, and seen Tadmor in the Wilderness? Ay, what could you expect but that he should be a wandering Scot, deserting the barren soil at home? But I hope, for all that, his drawings will turn out his own, for he claims to be the descendant of a king, though a poor and rude one. And there he goes, six feet four if he is an inch, and with the noble, handsome face of a gallant, adventurous gentleman.”
“I don’t mind the gentlemen so much; their place is at the levée, ain’t it? But I am set on seeing some of the court and town beauties.”
“Softly, all in good time, for here is the young duchess whom the whole world is agog about—and bless us, she is a Scotchwoman also, with an accent that would fright the French.”
“Ah! her grace of Gordon,” exclaimed Lady Bell, snapping her fan, and getting chidden for being noisy in her excitement.
There came the young queen of quips and cranks, whose broad Scotch accent contrasted so oddly to English ears with the extreme delicacy and perfection of her beauty, the sole flaw in which is said to have been the slight prominence of her square, white teeth.
“No heart can resist her when she smiles and tries her repartée, even in this presence,” said Lady Lucie. “A power of repartée is a great thing, girl; it becomes a fine woman better than diamonds. But if you desire to see pure beauty, though it is on the wane, there are the three graces standing together in a group, as if to do us a favour. In your ear, Bell, royalty has confessed the power of all the three, unless court gossip lies. The lady in blue is Lady Sarah Bunbury; she made hay when the sun shone as Lady Sarah Lennox, with a certain kingly youth riding by; and it was not the fault of her beaux yeux, or his tender heart neither, that the hay was made in vain. She is talking to the faithful widow, Lady Mary Coke, of whom prating tongues have reported that his late Royal Highness of York could have confessed that she was no widow in his day, but a royal duchess. That lady before them in lemon colour——”
“She is lovely!” interrupted Lady Bell, with an ecstatic sigh. “What eyes, what a skin to this day! She need not have recourse to the white paint poison.”
“And she is a royal duchess, though she was once but ‘Waldegrave’s fair widow,’ when a wag—or were there two of them at the deed?—writ,
“‘Full many a lover who longed to accost her,
Was kept at a distance by Humphrey of Gloucester.’”