‘O yes, I know her very well!’ said Lady Mabella eagerly. ‘She told me one day that she particularly wished to meet you. Poor thing—so sad—she lost her husband. Well, it was a long time ago now, certainly. Women ought not to marry and lay themselves open to such catastrophes, ought they, Mr. Pierston? I never shall. I am determined never to run such a risk! Now, do you think I shall?’
‘Marry? O no; never,’ said Pierston drily.
‘That’s very satisfying.’ But Mabella was scarcely comfortable under his answer, even though jestingly returned, and she added: ‘But sometimes I think I may, just for the fun of it. Now we’ll steer across to her, and catch her, and I’ll introduce you. But we shall never get to her at this rate!’
‘Never, unless we adopt “the ugly rush,” like the citizens who follow the Lord Mayor’s Show.’
They talked, and inched towards the desired one, who, as she discoursed with a neighbour, seemed to be of those—
‘Female forms, whose gestures beam with mind,’
seen by the poet in his Vision of the Golden City of Islam.
Their progress was continually checked. Pierston was as he had sometimes seemed to be in a dream, unable to advance towards the object of pursuit unless he could have gathered up his feet into the air. After ten minutes given to a preoccupied regard of shoulder-blades, back hair, glittering headgear, neck-napes, moles, hairpins, pearl-powder, pimples, minerals cut into facets of many-coloured rays, necklace-clasps, fans, stays, the seven styles of elbow and arm, the thirteen varieties of ear; and by using the toes of his dress-boots as coulters with which he ploughed his way and that of Lady Mabella in the direction they were aiming at, he drew near to Mrs. Pine-Avon, who was drinking a cup of tea in the back drawing-room.
‘My dear Nichola, we thought we should never get to you, because it is worse to-night, owing to these dreadful politics! But we’ve done it.’ And she proceeded to tell her friend of Pierston’s existence hard by.
It seemed that the widow really did wish to know him, and that Lady Mabella Buttermead had not indulged in one of the too frequent inventions in that kind. When the youngest of the trio had made the pair acquainted with each other she left them to talk to a younger man than the sculptor.