“She is, upon my honour. Last night I know she was at ever so many places. She dined at the Bloxams’, for I was there. Then she said she was going to sit with old Mrs. Crackthorpe, who has broke her collar-bone (that Crackthorpe in the Life Guards, her grandson, is a brute, and I hope she won’t leave him a shillin’); and then she came on to Lady Hawkstone’s, where I heard her say she had been at the—at the Flowerdales’, too. People begin to go to those Flowerdales’. Hanged—if I know where they won’t go next. Cotton-spinner, wasn’t he?”
“So were we, my lord,” says Miss Newcome.
“Oh, yes, I forgot! But you’re of an old family—very old family.”
“We can’t help it,” said Miss Ethel, archly. Indeed, she thought she was.
“Do you believe in the barber-surgeon?” asked Clive. And my lord looked at him with a noble curiosity, as much as to say, “Who the deuce was the barber-surgeon? and who the devil are you?”
“Why should we disown our family?” Miss Ethel said, simply. “In those early days I suppose people did—did all sorts of things, and it was not considered at all out of the way to be surgeon to William the Conqueror.”
“Edward the Confessor,” interposed Clive. “And it must be true, because I have seen a picture of the barber-surgeon, a friend of mine, M’Collop, did the picture, and I dare say it is for sale still”
Lady Anne said “she should be delighted to see it.” Lord Farintosh remembered that the M’Collop had the moor next to his in Argyleshire, but did not choose to commit himself with the stranger, and preferred looking at his own handsome face and admiring it in the glass until the last speaker had concluded his remarks.
As Clive did not offer any further conversation, but went back to a table, where he began to draw the barber-surgeon, Lord Farintosh resumed the delightful talk. “What infernal bad glasses these are in these Brighton lodging-houses! They make a man look quite green, really they do—and there’s nothing green in me, is there, Lady Anne?”
“But you look very unwell, Lord Farintosh; indeed you do,” Miss Newcome said, gravely. “I think late hours, and smoking, and going to that horrid Platt’s, where I dare say you go——”