"I shall tell your father."
"La, ma'am," the child retorted, with a curtsey, "you are married! There is no doubt about that!"
Sophia reddened, but did not answer; and for a moment Betty sat on the bed, picking the coverlet with her fingers and looking sulky. On a sudden she leapt up and threw her arms round Sophia's neck. "Well, do as you like!" she cried effusively. "After all, 'twill be a charming scene, and do him good, the fright! Don't think," the little minx continued, tossing her head disdainfully, "that I ever wish to see him again, or would let him touch me with his little finger! Not I! But--one does not like to----"
"We'll have no but, if you please," Sophia said gently, but firmly. She had grown wondrous wise in the space of a short month. "Whatever he is, he is no fit mate for Lady Betty Cochrane, and shall not get her into trouble! I'll call your woman, and bid her go find him."
Fortunately the maid knocked at the door at that moment. She came, anxious to learn if anything ailed them, and why they did not return to finish their supper. They declined to do so, bade her have it removed, and a pot of tea brought; then Sophia told her what she wanted, and having instructed her, despatched her on her errand.
An assignation, through her woman, was the guise in which the affair appeared to Mr. Fanshaw's eyes when he got the message. And great was his joy nor less his triumph. Was ever lover, he asked himself, more completely or more quickly favoured? Could Rochester or Bellamour, Tom Hervey or my Lord Lincoln have made a speedier conquest? No wonder his thoughts, always on the sanguine side, ran riot as he mounted the stairs; or that his pulses beat to the tune of--
But he so teased me,
And he so pleased me,
What I did, you must have done!
as he followed the maid along the passage.
The only sour in his cup, indeed, arose from his costume. That he knew to be better fitted for the road than for a lady's chamber; to be calculated rather to strike the youthful eye and captivate the romantic imagination at a distance than to become a somewhat puny person at short range. As he passed an old Dutch mirror, that stood in an angle of the stairs, he made a desperate attempt to reduce the wig, and control the cloak; but in vain, it was only to accentuate the boots. Worse, his guide looked to see why he lingered, caught him in the act, and tittered; after which he was forced to affect a haughty contempt and follow. But what would he not have given at that moment for his olive and silver, a copy of Mr. Walpole's birth-night suit? Or for his French grey and Mechlin, and the new tie-wig that had cost his foolish father seven guineas at Protin, the French perruquier's? Much, yet what mattered it, since he had conquered? Since even while he thought of these drawbacks, he paused on the threshold of his lady's chamber, and saw before him his divinity--pouting, mutinous, charming. She was standing by the table waiting for him with down cast eyes, and the most ravishing air in the world.
Strange to say he felt no doubt. It was his firm belief, born of Wycherley and fostered on Crébillon that all women were alike, and from the three beauty Fitzroys to Oxford Kate, were wax in the hands of a pretty fellow. It was this belief that had spurred him to great enterprises, if not as yet, to great conquests; and yet so powerfully does virtue impress even the sceptics, that he faltered as he entered the room. Besides that ladyship of hers dashed him! He could not deny that his heart bounced painfully. But courage! As he recalled the invitation he had received, he recovered himself. He advanced, simpering; he was ready, at a word, to fall at her feet. "Oh, ma'am, 'tis a happiness beyond my desert," he babbled--in his heart damning his boots, and trying to remember M. Siras' first position. "Only to be allowed to wait on your ladyship places me in the seventh heaven! Only to be allowed to worship at the shrine of beauty is--is a great privilege, ma'am. But to be permitted to hope--that I am not altogether--I mean, my lady," he amended, growing a little flustered, "that I am not entirely----"