“What! what!” the king questioned, “Penruddock? Etheredge? Then the young lady is not a grand-daughter of my Lady Lucie? As for Etheredge, can any one tell me why I have not heard the name before?” his Majesty asked, having forgotten the earldom which had become extinct, though he never forgot a face.
A model of virtue, also, in her formality and starch, with her fixed ideas of what was due to a queen, even as her George would be a king, stood little plain-featured Queen Charlotte, with her plainness still redeemed by the freshness of comparative youth, in addition to the indomitable queenliness which age and trials failed to subdue.
The queen commended the modesty of Lady Bell’s dress and demeanour in a few pointed words, reverentially received by Lady Bell’s guardian, and took further advantage of the brief conversation to throw out some valuable hints on constant industry, with “early to bed and early to rise” as the routine calculated to preserve Lady Bell’s manners, morals, and health.
There were other good couples more gracefully drawn and tenderly tinted than the royal couple at the drawing-room, though Lady Bell, dazzled and enchanted by the first childish contact with royalty, could not see any pair equal to the king and queen.
It is reserved for those who gaze wistfully back through the mists of years, and by the commentary of long-told histories, to dwell with a sense of refreshment, whether pensive or cheerful, on heroes and heroines a shade humbler in rank.
There were faithful pairs, like young Lord and Lady Tavistock, whose attachment was so fond, that when he was killed in stag hunting, she died of grief within the year; or like Lord and Lady Carlisle, who, after trouble, parting, banishment, with manly facing of hardship and danger, came together again, and lived happily for ever afterwards, because, in spite of his folly in losing his ten thousand pounds at one sitting at cards, he was still true at heart to honour, home, wife, and children.
There were worthy elderly folk, such as that Duke and Duchess of Richmond, the father and mother of many children, who remained so content with each other, that busybodies of letter-writers were driven to chronicle how he would sit the entire evening an unheard-of ducal Darby by his Joan, who was fairer in her matronly peace and bounty than the fairest of her famously beautiful daughters.
There was still a large share of nature’s nobility, of reverence, purity, constancy, and all kindly and sweet domestic charities in some of these men and women, who have long gone home and taken their wages, else it would be worse for the England of this day.
Lady Lucie was no sibyl to read the fortunes of the company to Lady Bell, gaping lightly and genteelly with wonder. For that matter, Lady Bell was so full of the present that she did not want the future to enlighten her. But, if Lady Lucie had been inspired, she might have shuddered at some figures like wandering ghosts, that passed in succession before her and Lady Bell. One was that of a young man, with a furtive glance of the eyes looking out of his sallow face from beneath his long chestnut hair. That was Lord George Gordon, then the puppet of his witty sister-in-law, but at last to die in Newgate.
Lady Lucie and Lady Bell made the most of the drawing-room after they had kissed hands, shown themselves, and looked at their neighbours. They exchanged a good deal of gossip with their friends on the war which was threatening, on any remote chance that existed of Lady Bell’s being named an honorary housekeeper of one of the palaces, or a seamstress of the queen, in right of the young lady’s poverty and noble birth.