PAMELA POUNCE

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS
JOHN SENESCHAL’S MARGARET
THE PRIDE OF JENNICO, Etc.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED

PAMELA POUNCE

A TALE OF
TEMPESTUOUS PETTICOATS

BY
AGNES & EGERTON CASTLE

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD.
TORONTO LONDON NEW YORK
ST. PAUL’S HOUSE WARWICK SQUARE E.C.4

CONTENTS

PREFACE

There can be no doubt that shedding her petticoats a woman has shed much, if not all, of her femininity, till she is now merely a person of an opposite sex. She is a female; for nothing will ever make her a man, but Woman (with a capital W), Woman with her charm, her elusiveness, her mystery, her reserves, her virginal withdrawals, her exquisite yieldings; she is that no longer.

How much of her queenship has she not given up with her petticoats?

At no time was Woman more thoroughly feminine, more absolutely mistress of her own fascinations and of the hearts of men, than in the eighteenth century; preferably the latter half.

That was a time when it may be said that no woman could look ugly; that beauty became irresistible. Take the period consecrated by the art of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and of Romney; take the picture of the Parson’s Daughter, by the latter artist; that little face, so piquante, innocent, fresh, sly, mischievous, is nothing at all without its cloud of powdered curls but a very ordinary visage; almost common indeed! With its distinctive coiffure, framing, softening, etherealising, giving depth to the eyes and allurement to the smile; how irresistibly delicious! How irresistibly delicious, too, is the mode which exposes the young throat so modestly between the soft folds of the muslin kerchief.

Youth then, even without much beauty, is served to perfection by the taste of the period. What of beauty itself? Look at the portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous one with the big hat, where she is holding the dancing baby. There is an answer more eloquent than any words can give.

And, rarest thing in a fashion! it became age as completely. Even elderliness emerged triumphant. I vow that Mrs. Hardcastle, Mrs. Malaprop, Mrs. Primrose are delightful figures of buxomness on any stage. Their double chins assume a pleasant sort of dignity, overshadowed by the curls and loops of their tremendous coiffures. The dress with its panniers, its apron, its general amplitude is peculiarly advantageous to the too, too solid flesh of the matron.

The mode of the moment has a singular effect on the morals of the moment. Our emotions are more moulded and coloured by our clothes than we are aware.

It is quite certain that when a young lady went panniered and patched, fichued and ruffled, powdered and rouged, tripping on high heels, ready for the minuet, her feelings went delicately with her, metaphorically garbed in daintiness to match.

And, when a gentleman of fashion was a Beau; when his fine leg showed to its utmost in a silk stocking; when his pampered hand was as elegant of gesture with a pinch of snuff between falling ruffles as it was in whipping out a small sword, he retained his masculine virility none the less; but like the blade of that same small sword, was cutting, polished, deadly, vicious even, all within the measure of courtesy and refinement.

The world has mightily changed since the days when hearts beat under the folds of the fichu or against the exquisite embroideries of the waistcoat. Sad divagations then, as now, were taken out of the path of rectitude, but they were taken with a rustle of protesting petticoats, to the gallant accompaniment of buckled shoes or, more romantic still, dashing top-boots.

A tale of 1788 is necessarily a tale of petticoats.

“A winning wave, deserving note

Of a tempestuous petticoat,”

cries the poet of an earlier age. Femininity must needs rustle and whisper, and curtsy and flounce through every chapter.

The collaborator whose name appears for the last time on this title page, turned to the century of The Bath Comedy and the subsequent and connected chronicles as a kind of relaxation of the mind from what he most hated: the ugliness of modern life. The realism which sets itself to describe the material, the grosser aspect of any emotion, the brutality that miscalls itself strength, that forcing of the note of horror—which is no more power than the beating of a tin can or the shrieking of a syren is music—were abhorrent to him. He liked the pretty period in spite of its artificialities; he liked the whole glamour of the time; he liked its reticence and its gaiety, its politeness, its wit, and its naughtiness and its quaintness, because, as in an artistic bout of fencing, it was all bounded by a certain measure of grace and rule.

The laughter he gave to these conceptions came, as true laughter must, from a most innocent and wholesome heart. It is this laughter which is his last legacy to a sad, tangled, and rather ugly world.

Agnes Egerton Castle.

PROLOGUE

“No man is hero to his valet”; so runs the cynical adage. But you can reverse the saying with reference to the other sex. Every woman is a heroine to her lady’s maid; it may not be true in all cases, but ’tis true enough for any proverb.

The romance of a lady’s own woman is centred in her mistress. She will clothe her in finery with a greater joy than if she were draping herself; rather than see her go shabby she would wear sackcloth; she will hang over the banisters, on a dinner-party night, to observe the sit of her train as she sweeps downstairs on the arm of some notable personage; she will lean out of the window to watch her step into her sedan, and if there are Beaux hovering and my Lady tosses her plumes and whisks her panniers to proper advantage it is Abigail’s heart that beats high with pride.

Even Miss Lydia Pounce, own woman to my Lady Kilcroney, a damsel remarkable from her earliest youth for her tart and contradictious ways, who was verging on elderliness now with the acidity and leanness peculiar to the “born old maid,” would have laid down her life to ensure that my Lady’s court gown should fit her trim waist without a wrinkle, or that the pink silk stocking that clothed her pretty leg was drawn to its proper skin-tight limit.

(Both the Incomparable Kitty and her Lydia were exceedingly particular that these same stockings should never be worn with the gross slovenliness that permitted a sag. Not indeed that anything but the merest glimpse of slender, arched feet, like the “little mice” of an earlier poet’s fancy, peeping in and out from under the flutter and foam of lace and silken flounce, was ever displayed to the vulgar eye; but to know these niceties complete in the smallest and most delicate detail was necessary to the comfort of any self-respecting Woman. And on this point Lydia was in thorough sympathy with her mistress, as upon all others connected with the elegance and bon ton of the most modish of Mayfair belles; of that leader of Fashion, Feeling and Style which the Lady Kilcroney undoubtedly was.)

If Woman be a heroine to her lady’s maid, in what light does she appear to her Milliner?

Here we come upon debatable ground. At first sight it would seem that the milliner, being dependent upon her customers for her very existence, it must follow that whatever her private opinion may be with regard to their appearance and taste, she can have but one burning desire: to please her patronesses. There is nevertheless another side to the question.

What Woman of intelligence but does not realise that a Mode may make or mar her? How much may hang on the droop of a feather; the tilt of a hat-brim; the glow of a rose in cunning juxtaposition with the soft carmine of a blushing cheek? Blue eyes may flash into sudden significance under a knot of azure ribbon, that had before languished their tenderest in vain. Saucy innocence may triumph beneath a shepherdess wreath; or tired charms kindle into new brilliancy stimulated by the consciousness of the perfect inspiration. In fine, all that life holds best is at the mercy of the mantua maker where the Lady of Fashion is concerned. Let but a clever business woman grasp this great and awful truth; and she who combines the brain that can devise, the taste that never fails, the acumen that knows no hesitation, the finger that is at once light and firm, unerring and ethereal, becomes to her employers a treasure beyond the mines of Golconda!

Such a treasure did Miss Pamela Pounce, with whom these pages are concerned, prove herself to the noted Madame Mirabel of Bond Street. And such an influence, far-reaching and subtle, did she exercise on the lives of the Elégantes who consulted her, with the eager submission and reverence of the believing Greek for his Oracles, though with far other and comfortably practical results!

Miss Pamela Pounce, Goddess of Modes, was ipso facto Goddess of the Machine of Life, deciding, with a lucky toss of ribbons or hitherto undreamt of combination of fallals, the fate of her fair customers, and incidentally that of their Beaux, their lovers and their husbands; my Lady Kilcroney and her lazy, jolly life-loving Lord; dark-browed Susan Verney, who would fain have bent the whole world to her sway as she did her weary Baron; Lady Anne, her sister, still fondly, foolishly in love with her stalwart, countrified Squire, Philip Day; their young sister, the last of the fair Vereker Ladies and the naughtiest, with her tangled love-stories; Mr. Stafford, the once famous Beau, proud of the startling beauty of his excellent, dull, childish wife, and anxious that she should flaunt it à la mode with the best of them; Sir Jasper Standish, the sporting Baronet, who, bereaved of his exquisite, clinging Julia, found himself entangled beyond belief with Miss Pamela Pounce’s ribbons; the noted young actress, Miss Falcon, known as “Fair Fatality,” whose brief life drama was more tragic than any she had enacted for the benefit of the public; the plain Miss Vibart, who found beauty and love and happiness all in a Pounce bandbox; Mistress Molly Lafone, own sister—who would believe it?—to the pearl of ingenuous womanhood, Prue Stafford, Molly Lafone that minx, whom the members of my Lady Kilcroney’s coterie were so unanimously leagued to suppress and exclude, and who, in spite of their efforts contrived to insinuate herself disastrously into all their combinations (was it not under a wreath twisted by Pamela’s long clever fingers that this elegant little adventuress came to her most deserved catastrophe?)—there was not one of them but came under her wand!

But at the same time the arbiter of the fate of others, in the shape of a very human young woman, guided the shuttle of her own destiny, and wove a remarkably pretty design for herself.

Milliners, unlike Oracles and Sybils, have each their personal human span with its joys and fears, pleasures, pains and triumphs. Pamela’s romance ran like a cherry-coloured thread through the warp and woof of those other existences, so far above her, in which her profession had involved her. To show the whole pattern, light and dark, sparkling and deep-hued, flowered, dotted, arabesqued, of this brocade of earthly life, the poor Modiste must assume as important a place as that of her clientele.

CHAPTER I

How my Lady Kilcroney entered into Royal
Service under the Shadow of the Italian Hat
trimmed by Miss Pamela Pounce

While Miss Pamela Pounce was serving her third year as apprentice to the great art of Hat Confectionery, under the ægis of no less a personage than the world-famous Madame Eglantine of Paris—once “the little French Milliner” of Bath—her aunt and benefactress, who had placed her in these favourable circumstances, had begun to taste the proudest triumph of her life.

Miss Lydia Pounce was about to become own woman to a Court lady! My Lady Kilcroney—to whom she had so faithfully and ruthlessly devoted herself—from the days when, as the Widow Bellairs, she first scintillated in the world of fashion, to her present position of Viscountess—was chosen by Her Majesty, Queen Charlotte, to fill the post of Lady-in-Waiting to her own Sacred Person.

To enter Court circles had been the dream of Lydia’s angular and ambitious breast. Her mistress’s gratified vanity was a trifling emotion compared to the bursting satisfaction which this upward step on the social ladder afforded the maid. It is not too much to say that she regarded herself in the light of a Prime Minister who has successfully brought about some great political event, and who is a far more important person than the Sovereign whom he serves.

It came to pass in this wise.

His Most Gracious Majesty, King George III, had been ordered to Cheltenham Spa for the waters by his physicians; his state of health was causing anxiety, the extent of which was as yet quite unknown to the bulk of his loyal subjects. Queen Charlotte, the most devoted of spouses, of course determined to accompany him; and the Royal party duly proceeded to the Spa.

It happened to be Lady Flora Dare-Stamer’s term of attendance on Her Majesty, and that stout estimable Lady-in-Waiting happened to be Lady Kilcroney’s very close and dear friend. There was nothing remarkable, perhaps, in the conjunction of these two happenings; but it was indeed singular that Kitty Kilcroney should happen to discover a delicacy in her son and heir which necessitated an instant visit to the celebrated health resort now so vastly honoured.

These events having succeeded each other, nothing more natural than that my Lady Kilcroney should invite her “poor dear Flo” to a dish of tea and a chat at her lodgings, to rest her of the fatigue consequent upon her eminent but exhausting office.

Though Lady Flora had made no secret to her intimates of her intention to rid herself of her honours as soon as might be, who so surprised as her dearest Kitty to learn that she now believed her emancipation at hand?

“To tell you the truth, my dear,” said Lady Flo, chewing a macaroon, “it’s not a job that suits me in the least. ’Twould fit you vastly better.”

“O, Lady Flo!” cried Kitty in accents of amazement. “What a strange thought! I vow and declare such an idea never crossed my mind. And, in truth, ’tis rank impossible. There are a hundred reasons, a thousand reasons, why I am the last person likely to be selected by Her Majesty. I am too young.”

“Upon my word,” said her companion bluntly. “I doubt if there’s so much between us, my dear, were it not that I have run to fat. These macaroons are excellent. ’Tis like your genius to be so well served in lodgings. You’ve brought the best of your staff with you, I make no doubt.”

“And, O, my love! the difficulty of housing them! There’s scarce a tradesman in the town that hath not a servant of mine.”

Kitty spoke with the careless self-importance of the wealthy woman. And Lady Florence approved.

“How right of you, my love, to insist on Comfort!” Comfort was the first and last of her aspirations. “Aye, I will have a little more cream. This whipped stuff—I dare swear ’tis your idea to have it so lavishly flavoured with the vanilla; vastly delicate. Your chocolate is as incomparable as your agreeable self! But yours are not the years of giddiness. I speak in all friendship, I beg you to believe.”

Kitty murmured in an absent voice, that she had married her first—worthy Bellairs—a mere child, practically out of the nursery.

“Anyhow, my sweet Kilcroney, no woman who has had two husbands can deny a certain amount of experience, and upon rep,” with a rolling laugh, “I don’t care who knows that I’m on the wrong side of thirty! You must be pretty well advanced on the right side of it?”

“If you can call twenty-eight——”

“Admit to twenty-eight, by all means!—nevertheless, ’tis an age of discretion. And Her Majesty——”

“I understand——” said Kitty, balancing her teaspoon on the rim of her handleless cup with a musing air—she wondered in her soul if the excellent Lady Flo could really be taken in by this pretence; if it were possible she did not guess that she, Kitty Kilcroney, was longing, grilling to step into her Court shoes—as if she cared who knew that she was over thirty her last birthday, and warming but to riper beauty as the months slipped by!

“’Tis not,” she said aloud, with a pout, “that I would decline a post about our gracious Queen, if ’twere offered me, God forbid! I am too loyal a subject. But I understand the German woman, that frumpish creature, the Keeper of the Robes—what’s her barbarous name?—hath the royal ear, and will not suffer anything young or comely, if she can help it, about Her Majesty—(And there’s one for you, my Lady Flo, with your right and your wrong side of thirty!) ’Tis a vast of pity you will not continue to occupy a position so honourable and so becoming to you.”

“To tell you the truth,” said Lady Flora unmoved, helping herself to another macaroon, “’tis the standing that undoes your poor friend! Conceive it, my love, full fourteen stone, and on my feet hours every day. Hours did I say? Centuries. Look hither!” She thrust out a large sandalled foot, which certainly had a plethoric appearance. “’Tis swollen beyond belief. I acknowledge my stoutness. I made but little count of it, for I’ve been a prodigious comfortable woman along of it. ’Tis a cushioned life. It pads the mind as it were. I assure you, I believe myself to have been, only some three months ago, the most good-tempered woman in England. And now! ’Pon rep, I am growing peevish! Fie upon it—stout and peevish! Was there ever such a combination?”

As if to contradict her own statement she again gave way to her jolly laugh. Kitty, watching her through long eyelashes, sighed.

“But what can induce you to think of me, my Lady Flo? Poor little retiring me?”

“Pray my dear, do not play the Molly Lafone with me!”

Molly Lafone! Such a comparison was too comic! Kitty laughed, and dropped her not very successful mask.

“Upon my word, then, I believe it would suit me! But how can it be accomplished? I am not one to push myself forward. My Lord Kilcroney is an Irishman and no courtier, and their Majesties have their own favourites; and indeed to begin with, I doubt whether you will find it so easy to resign.”

“Resign, Kitty! Resign? No, dear Kilcroney, I am on the point of being graciously dismissed. It took some management, but I was desperate. Another month of this, I said, and Mr. Stamer will be able to look out for a new wife—which he would do, my dear love, across my very coffin—’twas yesterday sennight then, I made up my mind. I took my best rose-point flounce—by the mercy of heaven it was just returned from the lace-menders, neatly packed in tissue tied with ribbon and a scent bag within, as elegant a parcel as you could wish to see!—and I sought Mrs. Schwellenberg—aye, that same!—and says I, ‘For mercy’s sake, give me a chair. My poor feet will scarce support me?’ At which she looks as sour as a crab, and quoth she: ‘We all have veet, Lady Florence’ (you know her vile accent), ‘but we forget dem in our great honour and brivilege,’ ‘Would God I could forget mine,’ thinks I. But she glances at the parcel in my hand: ‘Take a zeat,’ she says with a roll of her old eye. ‘Ah, my good Frau,’ says I to myself, ‘you may look, but you shan’t clutch yet a bit!’”

Lady Florence laughed reminiscently, and Kitty screamed:

“Never tell me you gave the old Dutch villain your rose-point flounce!”

“And what would be the good of a rose-point flounce to me, when I should be dropped dead in the Queen’s apartment, like any hackney jade? My love, I showed that ancient toad my two feet—and I vow toad is a good name for her, for she hath the countenance and the croak of her own pet frogs—I showed her my feet, and I lamented my stones of weight. ’Pon rep! I gave myself sixteen, I did indeed, and what with the swelling, I looked ’em! ‘Let me confide in you,’ I cries, ‘if ever I saw a truly noble soul writ on a human brow, ’tis on yours! My frame,’ I cries, ‘is not equal to my devotion. My ankles will not support the loyalty of my heart! ’tis not that I should grudge passing away in such service,’ I cries, turning up my eyes—You could not have done it better, Kitty!—‘but were I to faint in those sacred precincts, were I to pass away in that august Presence, Her Majesty would be justly annoyed. Dr. Jebb has warned me. Alas! look at me. Am I not fat?’ ‘Vat you are,’ says she, ‘but so am I.’ Well, then, my love, I gave her a peep of the lace, and she began to dribble at the corners of her mouth, and I knew the trick was done! ‘If I speak to Her Majesty,’ says she, and she fingering my rose-point, ‘I vonder vot substitute I could suggest. Her Majesty she does not like the changes, and——’ And then, I thought of you, Kitty.”

“I wonder why, in the name of Heaven!” cried this lady tartly.

“Your feet won’t swell, my love.”

“I need not accept,” quoth Kitty, pinching her lips.

“Kitty, if you play your cards well, the post will be offered to you while their Majesties are here at Cheltenham. ’Tis all settled with the Schwellenberg. Do you not know,” said Lady Florence, pushing the dish with a single remaining macaroon upon it, virtuously from her, “that Susan Verney is making all the interest in the world for the honour? But she was rude to the Schwellenberg one day—you know poor Susan’s way!—when they met in my drawing-room at Queen’s Lodge, and the Schwellenberg will have none of her!”

“Say no more!” cried Kitty, and fires shot from her eyes.

“My love, I believe I have served you,” said Lady Florence, replying to the eloquence of that glance. “‘My royals are not bartial to the Irish,’ said Schwellenberg. ‘Ah, but Madam,’ I says. ‘My Lady Kilcroney is not Irish. She is true-born English, and has vast wealth—widow of an Indian Nabob—vast wealth and a generous heart!—And you admire the lace, Madam?’ says I, ‘in the very truth I was hoping I might venture to offer it to you, for ’tis lace that should be worn at court, Madam, and in no other place—and as I mentioned to you, my Lady Kilcroney and her Lord have practically severed all ties with Ireland. If you would accept the flounce, Madam, on my retirement (I think there is a narrow edging of rose-point to match).’ ‘I will tink of what you say about my Lady Kilcroney,’ croaks she. Am I not a good friend, Kitty?”

She looked at Kitty with such beaming kindness that all this latter’s caprices vanished; she cast herself affectionately on Lady Florence’s huge bosom and voted that she was indeed the best and dearest!

It was agreed between them before the large and jovial lady left the pleasant apartments overlooking the meadows, that she would call early next morning, and report the result of Mrs. Schwellenberg’s “tinking,” since she had been given to understand that Her Majesty would deliver her gracious dismissal that evening, during the process of the Royal disrobing.

“You must hold yourself ready, my sweet child, to be at any point considered suitable along Her Majesty’s path during the next few days. By the looks Her Majesty casts on me I am convinced Schwellenberg has kept her word, and prepared the ground ’ere we left Queen’s Lodge. Well, she knew she would not get the rose-point otherwise.”

Kitty stood reflecting in the bow-window long after Lady Florence’s chairmen had reeled away with their burden towards Lord Fauconberg’s small house on the hill, which had been placed at their Majesties’ disposal. It could not be said that she had quite so altogether consuming a desire for the post of Lady-in-Waiting since hearing Lady Florence’s talk and gazing on those swollen feet, but, rather than that Susan Verney—dark, overbearing Susan!—should have the advantage, Kitty would have stood on burning ploughshares. She had, thank Heaven, as good health as any lady in the kingdom, a back that was never tired, and a fund of humour and good humour that made her equal to most trials. Moreover she had a fighting spirit, and, she flattered herself, a charm of her own. If she did not get the better of Schwellenberg on the one hand, and ingratiate herself with Royalty on the other, then she was no longer Incomparable Bellairs!

Her agreeable reflections were broken in upon by the entrance of my Lord Kilcroney.

Now, hot-blooded, red-headed Irishman as he was, it was the rarest thing in the world for this nobleman to be seriously out of temper with anyone, let alone with the wife of his bosom; but, as he flung himself into Kitty’s hired parlour, he was in as irate a mood as he had ever indulged in, and that with his Lady.

“Here’s a pretty business!” quoth he, and cast his hat on the table in the middle of the room, very nearly dislodging the glass dome which protected a gold filigree basket containing the most purple plums, the reddest strawberries, the bluest grapes that ever artist in wax produced. “Here’s a pretty to-do!” cried Denis Kilcroney.

“There seems indeed to be a to-do!” retorted Kitty. She wheeled round from the window. “But you will condescend to explain the cause perhaps, my Lord?”

“So I hear you’ve got a place about the court, me darling,” said Denis, plunging into sarcasm, with a flushed countenance. “’Pon me soul, ’tis the grand lady you’re going to be entirely! ’Tis the back seat your husband will have to be taking. Glory be to God, what’s a husband? And an Irish one into the bargain!”

“Pray, my Lord,” cried Kitty, all eagerness. “Where have you heard the news? For, as I’m a living woman, ’tis news to me.”

“Ah! go on out of that.” My Lord was certainly very angry, and more than usually Hibernian. “Didn’t that fat baggage come straight out of these doors? Didn’t she put that full moon face of hers out of the sedan window and bawl to her men to stop, and them with the sweat dripping off them, God help them! And ‘oh,’ she calls, ‘My Lord Kilcroney,’ she cries, ‘’tis quite settled,’ she says. ‘And your Kitty to take my post about Her Majesty.’ Why, all Cheltenham could have heard her.”

“Tush!” Kitty’s peach-tinted countenance, agog with delight, fell. “Is that all? Why——” she was about to expound to Denis with some firmness the folly of giving way to passion over an event that was still in the uncertain future, at the same time conveying to him her clear intention to leave no stone unturned towards its accomplishment, when her little black page appeared at the open door, grinning at the sounds of dispute, and announced: “Mistress Lafone.” And if the sight of dusky innocence amused was exasperating to my Lady, what can be said of the feelings aroused by the smile of minxish artfulness?

“Good heavens,” cried Kitty. “And what brings you to Cheltenham, if one may ask?”

“Good-morrow, my sweet Kilcroney.”

This familiarity!

“Good-morrow, Madam.” Kitty swept a curtsy to mark her distance, the while my Lord kissed the creature’s hand, positively as if he liked doing so, and him but out of such a tantrum as never was.

“And what should bring me to Cheltenham—(no, my Lord, pray. I prefer the little stool. I do indeed)—why should not poor little me be here with the rest?”

“Why, indeed?” growled Kilcroney.

“And what has brought you, my Lady, if one may inquire?”

“She thought little Denis looked pale!” cried my Lord, and gave a great guffaw.

“You may laugh, Madam,” said Kitty, as Mrs. Lafone tinkled delicately. “There are feelings which only a mother can understand.”

Mistress Lafone was childless.

“One excuse will serve as well as another.” My Lord let himself fall into a chair that creaked threateningly beneath his weight.

“Oh, I seek for no excuse,” quoth Molly Lafone. Crouching on the low stool, she had a singular air of astuteness, in spite of her fostered childishness. “I never can understand why people should not tell the truth.” She raised arch eyes towards my Lord, while Kitty sat with the majesty of an Eastern idol, and had not as much as the quiver of an eyelash.

“I’m here to curry favour with royalty,” she laughed again sweetly, “like the rest of us!”

The brazenness of it! My Lord guffawed again. He certainly was in a most unpleasant mood.

“Huthen. I hope you’ll be as successful as my Lady there!”

“Oh! My Lady Kilcroney!...”

“Sure, isn’t it the surprise of her life.” Kilcroney once again waded heavily in sarcasm. “She hadn’t as much as the faintest notion such a thing could happen to her—had you, me Lady? She hadn’t as much as opened her mouth for the plum”—it was perhaps the purple artifice on the table that suggested the simile—“but didn’t it drop into it? It’s going to be Lady-in-Waiting she is, in place of my Lady Flo——”

“Oh! my Lord, say you so? Says he right, my dearest Lady Kilcroney? ’Tis the most splendid, the most monstrous delightful news I’ve heard this long time. Oh!” cried Mrs. Lafone, clasping and wringing her hands in an ecstasy. “May not your little Molly rejoice with you?”

“You are vastly disinterested,” said Kitty.

Mrs. Lafone gave her tinkling laugh.

“Ah, my Lady—indeed, my Lord, I have said that I am frank. Dearest Lady Kilcroney, I will be frank—If I could obtain some little post—the teeniest, weeniest little post at court——”

But Kitty interrupted, bouncing out of her stateliness.

“Pray, Mrs. Lafone, for what post should you consider yourself qualified about the august person of our gracious Queen?”

“Oh! My Lady Kilcroney, the least little post in all the world! Hath not the Queen appointed a plain Miss Burney reader? I believe I could very well be reader. Mr. Lafone says I have a silver tone in my voice, and our curate at home once told me——”

“Tush, the celebrated Miss Burney hath qualifications, child, which you in your foolishness fail to appreciate.”

“Yet she is but a music teacher’s daughter, Madam,” said Molly with a mighty sigh. She dropped her white eyelids and turned a green glint on my Lord, and sighed again. “Or if not actually about her Majesty—who am I, indeed, to aspire to that Presence?—some office about yourself, dear Lady Kilcroney. I would be your secretary, your Lady-in-waiting, your devoted attendant!”

“This is folly,” cried Kitty. “I am by no means appointed to my Lady Flo’s post, and if I were—well, to be frank with you, Lafone, since you like frankness so much—you are the last person in the world I should ever be instrumental in bringing to court. Heavens!” cried Kitty, gazing upwards at the low ceiling, as if she saw through it into the celestial regions. “What discretion, what faultless propriety of conduct, what a delicate sense of responsibility, what a blameless record should be demanded of one who would enter that sacred circle!...”

(It was the glint of her visitor’s green eye at my Lord which gave this stern decision to Kitty’s tones.)

Here, quite unexpectedly, and with admirable effectiveness, large tears rose in Mrs. Lafone’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks, without in the least disturbing the prettiness of her pointed visage. My Lord cast a glance from one to the other; it was lit with a tender sympathy as it fell on this touching impersonation of grief, and kindled with reproach as it shot to Kitty.

Mrs. Lafone gave a small sob.

“Your sweet lady,” she said, now audaciously addressing her male champion, “has ever been a friend in need. ’Tis for that, that I have ventured, my Lord, that I have ventured to come to her to-day, hearing—yes! I will own it, I already knew that she was like to be next in the Queen’s choice. I made the journey hither in the hopes—’tis for no reason of petty vanity, no mere envious ambition——” (Thus the minx) ... “oh! my Lord, I scarce know why, I have ever been sadly persecuted. I am the victim of evil tongues!... My reputation has been assailed....”

“Ha!” said Kitty. The ejaculation leaped from her.

Molly Lafone produced another silver sob. “Quite unfoundedly, I do assure you! My conscience is spotless, my Lady Kilcroney, spotless!”—she caught Kitty’s eye, and went on in a humble voice—“in this instance! Indeed, my Lady—but Mr. Lafone—I am sadly maligned, he is suspicious, he——” Here the unfortunate young woman became quite incoherent in her demonstrations of distress. She wrung her white hands with extra pathos. Another large tear flowed, and a volley of little sobbing, disjointed phrases accompanied it, “domestic happiness—ignorance of the world—poor little me, country-bred and guileless—salvation or despair!”

In the midst, Kitty rose, returning to majesty.

“I must put a stop to a scene so useless and so painful. How is it possible, Madam, you do not see that every word you utter but marks the impossibility of your request? Pray, my Lord, see Mistress Lafone to her chair.”

“Kitty!” cried Kilcroney, springing to his feet. He had not thought it of her, to requite these open-hearted confidences with insult; to turn so trusting and touching a creature into the street; a lady—an old friend! “Pray Mistress Lafone, let us be offering you a dish of tea,” cried he.

There are days when everything goes askew. Kitty’s great footman marched into the room and presented his mistress with a letter which, he said, had just been brought by a riding messenger. Kitty took it from the salver with all the air of one glad of the diversion, but no sooner had she perused it than she exclaimed, in tones of such consternation, that my Lord leant forward and took it out of her hand. He exclaimed in his turn, but in accents of pleasure.

“Why, what is this? Sure, Alanna, there is naught here to upset you, ’tis the best of good fortune on the contrary! Here’s your sweet friend, my Lady Mandeville, actually at Malvern and proposing to drive over and spend the day with you to-morrow, bringing her little rogue to play with ours.”

“Oh, this is intolerable,” cried Kitty, “this is past bearing! Bid the messenger wait. Good heavens, do I not hear him riding away?—Call him back, my Lord, call him back! On no account must my Lady Mandeville be permitted to visit me to-morrow.”

My Lord stood rooted to the spot, and the veins on his forehead swelled. Kitty rushed to the window and hailed vigorously; the rhythmic footfalls of a horse receding at slow pace along the cobble stones was, on a sudden, altered to the clatter of a returning trot.

“Damnation!” cried my Lord. “This passes all!”

Mistress Lafone had stopped the wringing of hands and the production of tears, and was all malicious interest.

Kilcroney had entered into a towering passion. He protested that it was the most monstrous low thing, that he forbade my Lady to behave so base to her friend.

“Tare an’ ’ounds!” cried he, “if it wasn’t ashamed you were, and that, not a minute ago, to be enjoying the finest hospitality in the world, the kindest, the most open-hearted, ’tis not ashamed you should be to return a thrifle of it! Shame!” ejaculated Denis. “Shame! ’tis on the other leg. Gad, ’tis the shameful bit of meanness you’d be practising and ’tis ashamed I am of you meself (that I should live to say it). Your best friend! And all for what? For what if ye please? For the favour of them that never as much as acknowledged your existence. ’Pon me soul, rather than wound the feelings of that angel upon earth, that fair, fond, gentle, noble creature——” My Lord’s voice cracked. “I’d see the whole of Windsor, and Kew to boot, tumble into the Liffey.”

Kitty, white under her delicate smears of rouge, sat down at her writing-table with the most sublime air of offended virtue, but the hand that dipped the pen into the ink shook, and there were tears in the voice which presently declared that if ever there was woman here maligned by her own husband, it was my Lady Kilcroney: she who had not liked to disturb her Lord, but who had nevertheless noticed a red spot behind their darling little Denis’s ear that very morning; which spot, as every one who was a mother knew, might very well betoken no less a malady than the measles, which malady, being highly infectious to young children, she, as a mother, now felt it her duty to put off her cherished Lady Mandeville and the adored little Impington to a more auspicious day.

“Spot!” interrupted my Lord, with a roar between derision and wrath, and

“Spot?” cooed Mistress Lafone, now letting herself go openly to insolence. “My dearest Lady Kilcroney, you are too droll!”

There was contempt written on the countenances of the pair so odiously conjoined against Kitty; neither of them being subtle enough to see that my Lady was content with any excuse, so long as it flung a veil of elegance over her set purpose.

This incomparable woman recovered herself, rose, summoned Pompey, and sent him forth with her letter to my Lord Mandeville’s groom. She watched its delivery, through the window, and having beheld the man start off again, returned to the centre of the room, made in silence a profound curtsy, which included her Lord and her visitor, and sailed forth, closing the door carefully behind her.

My Lord let himself fall again into the arm-chair, and once more this article of furniture protested with ominous creaks and cracks.

“There’s not a stick in the place, bejabers, that isn’t as rotten as pears. ’Pon my word,” grumbled Denis Kilcroney, “I wish the plaguey waters had never been discovered, I do indeed; ’tis a poor thing when a man’s own son and heir is made a weapon against him, and him but turned of three. ‘Little Denis is pale, and we must to Cheltenham. And we’ll lie at Lady Mandeville’s, which is on our way, my love’ (and it thirty miles out, taking the back and the forth of it). ‘And our little Denis will have a playfellow, ’twill be so vastly good for him. Little Impington and he will be comrades.’ And scarce are we settled at Impington Court with as good entertainment—aye—and as generous (’tis the cellar of the world my Lord Mandeville has, and ’tis as free with it he is—troth, as I’d be meself if my Lady’d let me, and I can give him no finer character!) No sooner are we settled, and scarce a cork drawn ye may say, but ’tis ‘Little Impington is too rough for our darling Denis. He will teach him ill ways, he will do him a hurt. And Impington Court is a thought too low for the child’s health. And we must move on to Cheltenham, my love, or there will not be a lodging to be had.’ And you should have seen the farewells, the clingings, the embracings, and the tears, and heard the promises. ‘We shall meet again soon, my dearest, dearest Rachel. I vow I’ll not be parted from the most cherished of my friends!’ And now ’tis: ‘Keep away—little Denis hath a spot!’ To be sure, our dearest Rachel must not cast a blight over my Lady’s Court prospects.”

“But why, pray you, why, my Lord Kilcroney, should my Lady Mandeville cast a blight? Is she not in the Court favour?”

Mistress Molly’s tones were as insinuating as the fillet of sweetness that issues from a flute; nevertheless, Denis, starting from his black mood, gave her a sudden odd look.

“Prithee, why, my Lord?”

Kitty was in the right of it. The little jade was as false as loaded dice! As if every one did not know poor Rachel’s story; how she had been a Quaker and an actress, and my Lord Mandeville’s mistress before she had been his wife; and how, save for that one stain, which, indeed, had been the fall of a pure woman piteously and devotedly in love, she had ever shone in a wicked world, the noblest example to her sex.

Mistress Lafone caught my Lord’s look upon her and deemed it time to depart. Without waiting, therefore, for his reply to her question, she feigned horror at the lateness of the hour, and bustled away from the Kilcroney lodgings, malcontent with her visit, the more so that my Lord Kilcroney brought a wooden countenance and a dry manner to the very hall door.

She went forth down the single street and across the meadows; for her rooms were in an out-of-the-way cottage, far from the fashionable quarter patronised by the well-to-do. Mrs. Lafone’s fortunes were indeed at a low ebb. Her elderly, niggardly husband had vowed some time ago that he would pay no more debts for her, and he was keeping his vow. In her efforts at self-extrication, Mistress Molly, not having a scrupulous delicacy of conduct, had become further considerably entangled. A scandal threatened which might be the undoing of her. And there was my Lady Kilcroney not only declining to help her, but as good as turning her out of the house!

Molly Lafone was sharp of scent as a weasel. It was unpleasantly clear to her that the irate great lady was determined to seize the first opportunity of cutting her altogether; and when my Lady Kilcroney, leader of society as she was, cast her off, she would be lost indeed! She had no thought in her breast, as she walked along the road between the flat fields, but the longing to pay Kitty out.

The way was deserted. Evening shadows were lengthening across the mellowness of the sun-steeped plain. Molly Lafone slackened her pace. Why, indeed, should she hurry back to the stuffy little room where she could afford herself no better supper than bread and milk?

Truly, if there are angels who reward the virtuous, there must be little demons who provide dainties for those who serve the ways of evil! There, just at her feet, shining quite golden in the rays of the setting sun, lay a letter.

It lay so that its superscription was visible, and Molly could hardly believe her eyes when she read in Kitty’s writing the words: “For the hand of my Lady, the Countess Mandeville.”

“The careless fellow,” said she, “he’s dropped it from his belt as he jogged along. Pshaw, how I hate a clumsy fool!”

Then she laughed shrilly. “My Lady Mandeville will never get her Kitty’s affectionate answer, nor hear how little Denis hath a spot, and she will come driving in to-morrow to hang herself and her tarnished name round Kitty’s neck for all Cheltenham to see, under the nose of the virtuous Queen Charlotte. That is very well done!” cried Molly. “That is a very fit punishment for such base intentions. I am very glad.”

And lest anyone should be busybody enough to pick up the dropped letter and forward it to its destination, which would be a sad interference with the just action of Providence, Mistress Lafone picked it up herself and minced it into small pieces as she walked along towards her cottage lodging. She had quite a good appetite for her bread and milk that night.

It had been my Lady Kilcroney’s intention to keep her cherished little Denis in his cot, for the space of at least a day, for indeed there was more than one red mark on the satin of his small, plump body, and Kitty vowed it was of a piece with the rest of my Lord’s brutality to declare that those who leave their own homes for the discomforts of lodgings must expect the occasional flea. But on receipt of a letter sent round by my Lady Flora’s woman, she promptly altered her plans, and ordered the protesting cherub to be arrayed in his best robe-coat covered with fine muslin, and his white satin hat with feathers.

My Lord, as soon as his infant’s roars had been soothed by candies, picked up the letter which Kitty had dropped on the floor in her hurried exit to her bed-chamber; and, while his Lady was alternately pealing at her bell and shouting for Lydia, without compunction read it.

“My Dearest Lady Kilcroney: ’Tis all arranged. I consider my freedom well purchased at the price of the rose-point flounce, and the service to a friend, no less, by the trimmings to match. Her Majesty received me in her closet last evening, and the matter was settled quick. I must confess, dearest Kitty, with all the veneration and love (these words were heavily underlined) that I cherish for her August Person, I did feel it hard to find that my poor feet were represented as the dropsy. Dropsy, my love. And I but turned of thirty! ‘You should have warned me,’ said Her Majesty, ‘that you were suffering from a disease.’ ‘Ma’am,’ said I, ‘if disease there is’—(I was afraid to deny it, dear Kitty, lest the fetters should not be struck off my aching ankles)—‘’twas contracted in Your Majesty’s service.’ And now if my Kilcroney has a taste for gilded slavery (though there’s less gilding than you would believe), let her be at the entrance of the pump room, to receive Her Majesty at the head of the other lady visitors, on her first visit thither this very morning at eleven o’clock. The Gentlemen-in-Waiting are informing the other notabilities of the town, and Her Majesty is prepared for the little ceremony which she desires shall have the appearance of an Impromptu, it being her wish to avoid state during the Royal Visit and not to be incommoded by the crowd. If your little Denis were to offer a bunch of roses, it would, I think, please the Queen, who likes to see ladies occupied of their children and is interested in any who are about the age of the Princess Amelia. From what Mrs. Schwellenberg—oh! Kitty, to think of that toad festooned about with my lace—hath wrote to me (thank God we have left the frog-fancier behind at Windsor) I understand you can consider the appointment as good as made——”

The letter dropped from Kilcroney’s hand. His good-natured face (for in spite of tantrums he was to the core a man of good nature), clouded with genuine dismay. It looked as if the plaguey business, which he had regarded in the light of a mere game, was like to turn to earnest.

Why, in the name of Heaven, a woman with all the world could give her, and a devoted husband besides, should break up her family life for the pleasures of an annual three months’ slavery—Lady Florence had well named it—passed his comprehension.

“Nay, Lydia,” Kitty’s voice was uplifted in the other room, “take back the tabby; aye, and the satin cloak from Madame Mirabel’s. I have thought better of it, child. Put away the Eglantine new hat with the feathers. I will wear muslin and a plain straw. I wish to Heaven,” cried Kitty pettishly, “that there was a milliner in the Kingdom who could run up a hat to suit a lady’s eyelashes or the tilt of her nose outside Paris.”

“There’s the Italian straw we bought last time we was staying over there at Madame the Duchess’s,” said Lydia tentatively; “the same your ladyship ordered for yourself to wear at the Feet at Trianon to which the French Queen asked us—and a sweet elegant creature Her Majesty is, with all her fancies for dairies and such—and the thunderstorm coming on it was the disappointment of the world, and one that I am not like to forget in a hurry! Sure your ladyship ain’t forgotten it? A plain rice straw, with a ribbon round, but with a set to it! Aye, and trimmed by my blood-niece, as is apprenticed to Madame Eglantine out of my own poor savings; me being always one to stand by my family, cost what it do.”

“The Italian straw,” my Lady reflected; “’twas monstrous thoughtful of you, child, to pack it—la, Lydia, ’tis the very thing—trimmed by your niece did you say? Nay, only the genius of Eglantine could twist a bow like that. Put it on my head. Why, ’tis perfect—aye, I will wear it. Her Majesty desires simplicity.”

“Simplicity, is it?” Kilcroney groaned. “God help us all!”

As Kitty sallied forth, all in vapoury white, fresh and sweet as a privet blossom, her face delicately pink under the artful shepherdess hat, Pompey following with the great rose-bunch in a bandbox, and little Denis trotting alongside scarlet-cheeked from a triumphant battle royal over the wearing of gloves, my Lord looked after them with some melancholy.

“I’ll stroll along presently and keep in the background. I’d not like to be blighting Kitty’s prospects after the fashion of yonder poor Rachel. By all accounts Her gracious Majesty Queen Charlotte is no more like to fancy an Irishman than the unhappy girl that has a mistake to her name.”

Kitty had determined to walk to the pump room. ’Twas scarce a hundred yards away, and “squeeze those crisp flounces into a chair before they had served their purpose—never!” She had taken but a few steps along the street when who should cross her but Mrs. Lafone. Molly, all in the modesty of lilac dimity, with pensiveness, something even approaching penitence, on her pert face. Kitty was in a fair humour, and as her little enemy flung her a deprecating glance of green eyes, actually paused and smiled.

“Whither away, Lafone?”

“Alas, my Lady Kilcroney, stepping into the pump room anon to drink my glass of the waters, I heard as how Her Majesty was expected, and how you and the other ladies of note are to receive her on this, her first appearance.... My Lady Kilcroney, knowing myself so unfit, feeling myself so out of spirits, I deemed it more becoming to retire till all was over.”

Now Kitty, riding on the top of the wave, was a trifle intoxicated. It was in a tone of almost Royal patronage that she exclaimed:

“Why should you miss the sight, child? You could very well find a little place where you could see and not be seen. Retrace your steps with me.”

“Oh! My Lady Kilcroney,” cries Molly, with her dramatic clasp of the hands, “was there ever anyone so truly benevolent as you are!”

Hanging her head, the little minx started off, a humble step behind her patroness, and, looking over his shoulder at her, Denis the younger was fascinated by the wicked mockery on her face, and nearly fell into a puddle for staring.

There was no excitement in the town, for Her Majesty’s intention was known but to the favoured few. The Royal Family, it was bruited, were still reposing from the fatigues of their journey. There was, however, a small group of gentlemen about the pump room doors, in elegant morning attire, and two or three barouches and as many chairs were in the very act of depositing their fair burdens as Lady Kilcroney sailed up. She was just in time, indeed, to see Lady Verney—black-browed Susan, panting, flushed, incredibly plumed—hurl herself out of her hired sedan. At sight of Kitty this personage halted in her rush forward into the pump room.

“You here, dear Kilcroney?” her voice shook. There was fury in her eye.

“Even so, dear Verney. Pray, my Lord Courtown, shall I take my stand on this spot? Hither with the flowers, Pompey. My little son is to offer these to Her Majesty, Colonel Digby; certainly ’twould be a mercy if you would have the kindness to hold them till the right moment comes. Such tender years are scarcely to be trusted!—Nay, Denis, lambkin, no more sugar plums till we get home again, or little pandies would be so sticky, Denis couldn’t give the nosegay to the beautiful Queen—What a pity, my dearest Susan, you should have made yourself so fine. By Her Majesty’s most express wish, all is to have the appearance of the simplest impromptu! Still, my skirts are fairly wide. If you place yourself behind me——”

Place herself behind Kitty! Had her beloved friend run mad, she that was always so flighty? My Lady Verney to place herself in the rear, be hidden by another’s flounces, she who had posted day and night, all the way from Hertfordshire, upon the news of a probable vacancy about the Queen’s person! Was it possible that Kitty, with her Irish husband, labelled with such a name, could fancy that she was like to meet with the Queen’s favour? Susan was sorry for her poor friend. She tossed her head with a snort. My Lady Verney had something of the appearance of a handsome horse.

But stupefaction succeeded indignation when Lord Courtown, very civilly addressing her, begged her to take her place with the other ladies in the rear of my Lady Kilcroney, for the royal party might be expected any moment.

“Mrs. Tracy, ma’am, as one conversant in these matters, will you stand at my Lady’s elbow?—My Lady Kilcroney, Mrs. Tracy—Her Majesty’s Senior Bedchamber Woman, who is at the waters on her own account.”

My Lady Verney, biting her lip, stamped heavily on her neighbour’s foot as she shifted her position. Turning at the low cry, her fierce black eyes met the plaintive green ones of Mrs. Lafone, who in spite of her discreet protestations, had taken as forward a place in the group as well she could. As a rule Molly was in no better favour with Susan Verney than with the rest of the coterie, but at that moment they shared a sentiment which made them suddenly and momentarily sympathetic.

“Oh, my Lady Verney,” whispered Molly, “did you ever see anyone so sadly cocked up as our poor Kitty? It frightens me for her, it does indeed. I fear such pride must have a fall.”

Although Susan could see no sign of this prognostication being fulfilled, it comforted her nevertheless; and she was able to bear, with a better equanimity than any who knew her would have thought possible, the painful spectacle of my Lady Kilcroney’s success with the Queen. Success it indubitably was, though Her Majesty was a dry woman and not given to displays of affability. It was evident that she had come prepared to be pleased with Kitty Kilcroney and that pleased she found herself. And truly, Kitty in her snowy flounces, so charmingly blushing under her wide-brimmed hat—which was indeed trimmed by Lydia’s niece, Miss Pamela Pounce—Kitty so daintily maternal with the sturdy little boy clutching his roses, was as pretty a picture as any would wish to gaze upon.

The two blooming Princesses exclaimed upon the darling child, and good-natured Lady Flo was one broad beam behind “her Royals’” back. And if Kitty blushed she had nevertheless the most elegant ease. Her curtsy was a model; the dignified modesty with which she advanced and then retreated within the due measure of etiquette was perfect of its kind. And when the incident took place, which might indeed have proved awkward, of Master Denis declining to part with his posy, his mother saved the situation. “Denis,” quoth she, bending but not whispering; all with a modest assurance that could not have been bettered by one who had been years at Court. “Lambkin, do you not remember what I bid you? To whom were you to offer these flowers?”

“To the beautiful Queen,” said the child, his great brown eyes roaming about as if he were seeking—as well he might, poor innocent!—whom the description might fit. The Queen, with a flattered smile, herself took the offering from his chubby fingers.

“Pretty rogue!” said Princess Augusta.

When the other introductions had been gone through it seemed to be nobody’s business to present Mistress Lafone; and though the equerries looked tentatively at her and then at my Lady Kilcroney, nothing could be less responsive than that usually alert being. So Molly made an artless curtsy as became her simplicity, and thought, in her disloyal heart, how frumpish and dowdy Her Majesty looked; and wondered if ’twas Miss Burney who appeared so shortsighted and awkward and timid, with no more air than nothing at all. And save for the gentlemen, who were very personable and had bright looks about them as if they might be enjoyable company to a woman of spirit, there was really naught in this vision of the Court which would make her, little Molly, yearn for it—a vast stiffness and dullness indeed! If it had not been that needs must when the devil drives she would have snapped her slender fingers and ‘thank you,’ but as matters stood—the drowning do not pause to contemplate the quality of the spar flung to them.

Mrs. Lafone looked vindictively at Kitty and then turned a watchful glance at the door. She wondered how soon and in what circumstances Kitty’s dearest friend, who was not received at Court, might make her appearance? However Kitty might strive to hide the visit, Mrs. Lafone would take care that it should be known of; she had but to whisper the fact to my Lady Verney and she did not doubt that the Royal occupants of Fauconberg Hall would promptly be in possession of the damning fact. Other people could put spokes in wheels besides my Lady Kilcroney; and the more swiftly they were rolling to favour, the greater might be the upset!

Her Majesty, talking very affably to Kitty, had advanced towards the counter where the waters were distributed. Here divers magnates of the town were awaiting her, whom the Comptroller of the Household, my Lord Courtown, named to her, one after the other. Kitty and her group of ladies were left thus for the moment outside the Royal circle of attention. The hall by this time contained a certain amount of curious spectators, very respectfully aligned against the walls, for the public of Cheltenham, genteel quiet folk, would have died rather than presume on Her Majesty’s condescending informality.

“Pray,” said the Queen, to Mr. Clark, the town doctor, “let me have a taste of the water, sir, to drink which the King has been sent hither. I ought at least to know,” she added archly, “to what penance he hath been condemned.”

She sipped and declared she had expected worse; Princess Royal and Princess Augustus also sipped, but they cried out and protested that they were sorry for dear papa. And while the Royal pleasantries were producing the most exquisite if refined mirth throughout the whole assembly, Mrs. Lafone, who had been conscious that she was the object of considerable interest to one of the equerries (indeed, he was lifting his quizzing glass to mark his notice), perceived his glance wander from herself and become fixed. He dropped his quizzing glass, the better to see; a warmth of wondering admiration, prodigiously different from the familiar ogle she had herself evoked, wrote itself on his countenance. But for the presence of Royalty, she thought he might have exclaimed out loud. Molly’s glance promptly followed his. She could hardly believe her eyes. Here was fate playing her game with a vengeance. Her enemy was delivered into her hands. Everyone knew the face of Rachel Peace!

My Lady Mandeville advanced, clad, like Kitty herself, in white, but with a flutter of grey ribbons here and there to mark her Quaker preference. Her delicate pale face was faintly flushed, under the wide brim of her simple hat. She was not less fair than the pearls at her throat, not less shining in delicate beauty. She held by the hand a noble boy, slightly older than little Denis, who marched as if the place belonged to him and gazed about under frowning brows as though he wondered who dared occupy it without his permission.

If Kitty made a charming picture with her little son, Rachel, with the heir of Mandeville, graceful and gracious, with a lovely tenderness emanating from her, was the very embodiment of sweet motherhood.

She came across the wide hall with swift step, looking from right to left, a smile hovering on her lips, her seeking eyes already lit with fond pleasure. Where was her dear Kitty? Suddenly she stopped—the smile faded, the light of the expectant gaze went out, shadow fell upon her radiance, a flutter as of fear shook her; yet she had but encountered the gaze of my Lady Verney. Susan Verney, who was very well acquainted with Rachel Mandeville, who had indeed also tasted of her hospitality, both in town and in the country, now withered her with a blasting stare of denegration, a stare which said: “My Lady Mandeville, I am pure virtue to-day, I do not know you.”

The room was all eyes to look at Rachel, and though so decorous it was all whispers.

The next moment the poor thing saw the Queen and the Princesses, and Kitty Kilcroney white as death and good Lady Flora scarlet in the face; she saw and understood. Motionless she strove to rally her courage. She wanted strength of heart and clearness of mind to do just what would be right; Quaker Rachel who had never done wrong but once! And for that breathless moment, unknown to herself, her eyes hung on Kitty’s face; and Kitty’s eyelids were cast down.

The little Viscount Impington tugged at her hand. His was an impatient spirit.

“Come on, Mamma,” cried he, in loud authority; and at the same moment little Denis O’Hara raised a piping cry: “Imp, Imp, Imp!” and tearing himself from the maternal clasp, galloped across the room to hurl himself upon his baby comrade.

The Queen looked at Kitty with an air of profound surprise and disapproval, and Kitty looked back at the Queen. And her heart rose within her; for, with all her foibles and fancies, she had a heart.

It led her then to do the noblest act of her whole existence.

Holding herself very erect and moving with a beautiful dignity, she slowly backed the length of the room that divided her from Rachel Mandeville; and, keeping her eyes on the Royal face the while, she took her friend by the hand. Then she stood very upright and waited. Rachel could do naught else but wait too.

In the dead silence the Queen prepared to take her departure.

Little Mr. O’Hara and my Lord Impington were beginning to show signs of following up their affectionate greeting with a rough-and-tumble fight and each mother had to take possession of her child and keep him firmly held; but they kept tighter hold of each other still.

The Royal group advanced; the kindly young Princesses with awed looks, as if they felt how ill things were going without understanding. When she reached my Lady Kilcroney and her friend, Queen Charlotte paused and seemed to hesitate. She cast a strange troubled glance at the two young women, and Kitty and Rachel fell, still clasping hands, into a great curtsy. And the question was, which of the two made it with a nobler grace.

The last of the equerries to follow looked back at the door, and saw my Ladies Mandeville and Kilcroney embracing and kissing and he thought they were both in tears.

My Lord Kilcroney had been among those who unobtrusively joined the lookers-on in the pump room during the Royal visitation, and, beholding the scene, his own eyes filled. In the effort to regain his self-control he turned his dimmed gaze away from the two who enfolded each other in such affecting and unaffected friendship and it fell upon Mistress Lafone. As awhile ago his son and heir, he was fascinated by the expression on the small pale visage. Molly caught his riveted glance, wilted beneath it, and somehow vanished. Not my Lord Kilcroney nor anyone could ever as much as guess at her share in the morning’s business; yet so does conscience make cowards of us all, as Mr. Shakespeare has it.

My Lord kissed his wife’s hand before most respectfully saluting that of my Lady Mandeville. At sight of him, Kitty mingled laughter with her tears.

“Is it not delightful, Denis,” cried she, “that our sweet Rachel should have had this happy thought? But, oh, my dear love, our little rascals are at fisticuffs again!”

“My dear Kitty,” wrote Lady Florence that evening, in a letter brought round from Fauconberg Hall by one of the pages in waiting, “I thought you were dished, I did indeed. And of all the odd tiresome contretemps, my love!... Well, I have not time to say even a word of what I felt: Her Majesty is not fond of audacities and you did, dearest Kitty, the most audacious deed.... Well, never mind again!

“’Twas your hat did the trick to begin with, my love; you was always so clever about clothes, Kitty. Sure, it was the finest inspiration to wear that modest country straw with its plain ribbon. It caught Her Majesty’s eye from the first moment, and that you know means so much. So modest, sensible and quiet you showed beside poor Susan! Susan, with that tow-row of feathers on her head! ’Tis she who is dished after all: ‘A loud young woman,’ says the Queen to me. ‘I do not approve of Lady Verney’s style.’ And what must she do on the top of it but present herself in my parlour at Fauconberg Hall this very afternoon?—a vast piece of presumption, since the Queen hath forbidden visitors to all and sundry!—And wants an interview of Her Majesty, to apologise—prithee, Kitty, think of it!—for Her Majesty’s having been exposed to such a meeting. She, to apologise for the town! She, to cast her stone at poor Rachel! I have never known my Royal so angry! ‘Are you then not acquainted with my Lady Mandeville?’ She asks our Verney. You should have seen Susan’s face under her red plumes. (I had taken good care Her Majesty should know we all were.) To be brief, Kitty, Verney went forth with her comb considerably cut, and Her Majesty took a twist in the other direction and spoke very kind to me; though regretting the incident, she said she could not find too grave a fault with a display of loyalty. ‘Tell my Lady Kilcroney,’ she says, ‘that about My Person I appreciate loyalty!’”

Denis Kilcroney heard the contents of this missive with a grave countenance. Then, looking at his wife’s charming face, all irradiated between the joys of her good conscience and its unexpected reward, he exclaimed generously that it was a proud day for the House of O’Hara. “Though,” he added, “the proudest moment of it all was when I saw you stand by your friend, me darling girl!”

CHAPTER II

In Which Miss Pamela Pounce is ordered
to Pack

Pamela Pounce sat with a bunch of cowslips in one hand and the lid of the ribbon box in the other; she had fallen into a profound muse.

It was the cowslips, though they were but artifice, which had set her active brain thus suddenly and idly day-dreaming. They had brought her back with a rush to the old farm where she had been born and brought up. The whole surroundings of her exile had vanished. She was no longer in the big, bare, stuffy, untidy workroom at the back of Madame Eglantine’s celebrated Paris hat shop: in the centre of snippets and straws, feathers, fringes, flowers and other fashionable fripperies; under the glare of the skylight; with the patter and gabble of French voices, the click of scissors, the long-drawn sighs or quick pants of energetic stitching, the rustle of crumpled silks, in her ears, and in her nostrils the indescribable atmosphere of the atélier, as it was called. An apartment hermetically sealed to the outer airs, save what might penetrate of them through the opening of its doors; redolent of the gums of artificial flowers, of last year’s and this morning’s succulent cookery—Monsieur Ildefonse, the husband of Madame Eglantine, liked a point of garlic in most dishes—and of the faint sickly scents of hair powder and fine lady’s perfumes which hung about the whole establishment. There were other odours in the workroom besides, of which the less said the better. It was little wonder that Pamela Pounce should now and again feel her splendid vitality slacken; that she should have considerably fined down from a country buxomness since she had joined Madame Eglantine’s staff.

But the bunch of cowslips had brought her away—far away from it all for a blissful moment.

She was back again at home. The exquisite freshness of an early summer morning on the Kentish downs encompassed her. Her young bosom lifted with ecstasy. Oh! the breath of England: pungent of the sea, sweet of the moorland herbs, free from the hills and whispering of the woods, was there ever anything like it? There was a fragrance of breadmaking too from mother’s oven, and a lovely reek of burning weeds where father was busy over the potato fields!

Pamela started. A voice, sharp as a pen-knife, had recalled her to reality.

“Ah, Meess”—she went by no other name in this French servitude, either from her employer or her sister workers. It was an unconscious tribute to a certain fine apartness of character, as well as to her British independence. “Ah, Meess,” cried Madame Eglantine, “is this how I find you? Asleep with your eyes open! My faith, is this how you conduct yourself in the thick of the business hours? And the Marquise who expects that hat by noon!”

Pamela opened her day-dreaming eyes full upon the speaker, gave an inaudible sigh and a small ironic smile. She did not start or blush or show any sign either of flurry or vexation at the acrid accent of the rebuke, she was too completely mistress of herself for that. Her hand hovered over the ribbon box; then with a decisive movement she nipped a shimmering purple roll and began to draw out its darkly radiant lengths.

“Purple!” ejaculated Madame Eglantine, surprised into a quite amiable tone; “purple for that blonde Marquise who is not yet twenty! And she means to wear all white muslins with lace in floods. Did I not tell you so? That ribbon I bought for Madame la Gouvernante—it is for dowagers——”

She broke off and stared.

Pamela had twisted and snipped and pinched and the hat was trimmed in what her famous patronne herself would have described as “un tour de main.” She now held it up on her balled hand, and turned it slowly from side to side.

“But it is a stroke of genius!” exclaimed the little Frenchwoman. She hated Pamela, but she was above all an artist. “No, no, do not touch it again, no one must touch it! You have a thousand times reason. Blue or green or pink—anyone with the ordinary mind would have blended me the banal pretty-pretty with those cowslips. The Marquise would have been but one of a score of shepherdesses, no more distinguished than a dragée box for a baptism! But now——”

She paused and waved her hands before the delight of the mental picture. A small, dusky woman with very bright eyes and extraordinarily swift movements, she was like some quick furry animal of the mouse tribe; a greater contrast to the fair, large, composed English girl could hardly be imagined; yet on one point these two were singularly akin. Both were geniuses in the same restricted yet fascinating realm of art.

If there were a creature on earth capable of stepping straight off into the shoes of Madame Eglantine, first milliner in the world of Fashion, it was Pamela Pounce, the British yeoman’s daughter!

Perhaps it was this consciousness of her rival’s merits which made the Frenchwoman, while too acute of intellect not to recognise them, regard her clever apprentice with feelings which approached detestation. Yet she was soon to find another cause.

“I’d better put in the stitches myself, I suppose, M’dame?” said Pamela tranquilly. She spoke French fluently by this time, with a pronounced if not unpleasing British accentuation. “The young ladies are so fond of sewing things to death. It’s like a hand on pastry,” she went on meditatively, as she bit her thread, and flung a cool, tantalising glance at the irate ring of countenances about her. “You have, or you haven’t got it, and no one to blame.”

“That will do, Meess. There is too much conversation here, Mademoiselle Panache!” Madame hopped spitefully from Pamela upon the directress, who, sitting large, square and sallow at the centre table, dispensing materials, had permitted herself a gratified smile over the snubbing of the English girl. For a moment or two there was silence in the over-lighted, under-ventilated apartment. The season was early July; a blazing white sunshine was pouring down through the casements which their muffed glass but feebly mitigated.

Then the little angry, sharp-toothed mouse that was the bland, coaxing, fluent Eglantine of the showroom found a fresh grievance.

“My God, Mademoiselle Anatoline, are you making a bouquet or tying bristles on a broomstick? And Heaven pardon me, Mademoiselle Eulalie, but if those hands of yours have been washed since—since—— What have you been doing with those hands, ma fille? Blacking the boots or scratching your head?”

Anatoline, who was large and fat and fair, became an apoplectic purple; and Eulalie, who was the colour of a lemon with hair like a raven’s wing, turned a shade more livid than nature had made her.

There was a titter, beginning sycophantically upon the lips of Mademoiselle Panache. But Pamela’s smooth face, white where it was not delicately carnation, might have been that of a handsomely tinted statue. She cut her thread, tweaked one of the shimmering purple loops, and once again putting the hat on her clenched hand, gave it a little shake. The creation was complete!

Madame’s swift beady eye rolled in her direction.

“Give yourself the trouble to bring that upstairs to the showroom, Meess,” she ordered. “Madame D’Aimargues said she would call, herself, before midday, to try it on before it was sent. I will join you presently and you had better remain, in case there were required an alteration.”

“Bien, M’dame,” Pamela responded with some alacrity. She might get a whiff of good open air as she went up the stairs. There might even be a window ajar in the showroom. Such a miracle had been known to occur on a very hot day.

Monsieur Ildefonse, Eglantine’s husband, was sitting in the little glass cage off the back showroom, pompously referred to as the Bureau. This individual had once been a very noted personality; no other, actually, than the French Queen’s appointed coiffeur; in consequence sought after to frenzy by every woman with the smallest pretension to Fashion. Fine ladies had had their heads dressed at six o’clock in the morning, nay, even three days before some special assembly at Court.

To be able to say, with a toss of flying vaporous curls, exquisitely redolent of Poudre à la Maréchale: “In effect, my dear one, Ildefonse’s last idea, what do you think of it? It is succeeded. Hein?” To be responded to, perchance, with a cry of envy and despair: “Ildefonse! You managed to get Ildefonse!” And to know your interlocutor, younger than you perhaps, and prettier, yet altogether at a disadvantage, “a positive frump, my dear,” under less skilful hands, that had been to reach, in verity, the very needle-peak of feminine triumph, a few years ago.

But star succeeds to star; one Monsieur Charles was Court twiddler, curler, crimper, frizzer, and general head artist. For Monsieur Ildefonse had come into a heritage and retired. Not a fallen star, therefore; merely astronomically removed to another hemisphere! He shone now, though, it may be added, with a doubtful radiance, in a restricted connubial circle; in other words, he sat at home and totted up accounts for his clever, money-making spouse; made bargains for her with flower manufacturers and mercers, and bullied the stewards of great houses when Madame la Duchesse or Madame la Connétable forgot to remember such insignificances as the settlement of bills.

Unanimously the workgirls adored him, with the single exception of Pamela; and the relations between Madame Eglantine and her consort, characterised in public by the most touching demonstrativeness, were regarded as the very romance of matrimony. But Pamela, who had come under the glance, more often than she cared, of Monsieur Ildefonse’s slyly roving eye, had her private opinion.

She shuddered from him as she had shuddered from the fat, sleek, brown slugs that came out after rain on the garden walls at home.

As a little girl she would explain: “’Tain’t that I’m afraid, you see, but it makes me creep.”

She could have found no better words in which to describe the effect upon her of the fascinating Monsieur Ildefonse.

There was a midday lull, this scorching day, even in Madame Eglantine’s thriving establishment. It was late season, too, and save for orders like that of the little Marquise D’Aimargues, for such as were privileged to join in the pastimes of Royal haymaking and churning, or a stray wedding order, business was slack, and the great little milliner herself was preparing for that round of the most noted watering places, with “just a few models” in her baggage, which was her thrifty fashion of spending the holidays.

Pamela cast, in passing, a hasty glance between the green curtains of the Bureau, to assure herself that her pet aversion was safely employed.

He had removed his wig on account of the heat, and she turned her eyes quickly away from the revolting spectacle of his close-cropped bristling black head and the roll of olive fat at the back of his neck above the embroidered collar of his blue cloth coat.

The pink, be-padded, be-wreathed, be-gilded, be-mirrored, be-draped salons of Madame Eglantine were empty. Pamela walked slowly into the middle of the front room and hesitated. Her own charming shape was reflected from every possible angle. Down below, the whole Place seemed asleep; a buzz of flies within and without, a lazy footfall on the shady side and a distant rumble emphasised the universal drowsiness.

When Madame la Marquise’s coach came along there would be a prodigious clatter to wake them all up. Pamela knew that she was quite safe. It’s all very well to trim a hat. You never know what it’s like till you’ve tried it on.

Very deliberately she divested her glossy chestnut hair of its discreet cap, loosened the swelling waves a trifle more on either side of the firm rose-tinted ivory of her face.

“If a dash of powder was for poor girls like me, I wouldn’t be too bad-looking. I’d say that for myself,” she thought, and firmly set the hat of the Marquise at the right angle over her radiant brow.

Well, it was a complete success. Like every true artist she was doubly critical of herself, but Pamela had to admit that she could find no flaw in her own taste and that the wide-brimmed curving Italian straw with its bold sweep of purple ribbon, and its hanging bunches of cowslips was a remarkably fine set-off for the glory of her amber hair and the audacious brilliance of her complexion. Without a tinge of envy or discontent she surveyed herself thoughtfully.

“Upon my word, Pamela Pounce, my girl!”—she was fond of addressing herself mentally; as it were her strong reasonable mind to her agreeable body. “You would have held your own with the best of them if it had been the fancy of Providence to set you in the aristocracy. Ugh!”

With a piercing scream she started out of her complacent reflection.

A horrible olive-hued, leering face appeared over her shoulder in the mirror; a blue-clothed arm stole round her waist.

Pamela swung herself free, whisked the hat off her head ready to use it as a weapon should Monsieur Ildefonse pursue his advances.

In the dead pause the quick rustle of Madame Eglantine’s light summer flounces were heard on the stairs.

Instantly the ex-hairdresser’s countenance lost its satyr smiles, and became composed into its usual mask of smooth propriety.

“Is that you, mon Agneau rose?” he cooed.

“Yes, yes, it is I, petit rat de mon cœur,” she replied.

These endearments having perfunctorily passed between them, Madame halted on the threshold and sent the glitter of her swift glance from her spouse to her apprentice.

“I took the liberty of trying on the hat what I’ve just trimmed, M’dame,” said Pamela then in her brazen way.

She wasn’t going to put it into Monsieur Ildefonse’s power to tell on her behind her back, or worse still, to pretend to be shielding her. She knew his slimy ways.

“You do well to call it a liberty,” said Madame Ildefonse, showing all her small pointed teeth as if she wanted to bite Pamela. She was panting a little, and there was a sort of whiteness about her nostrils that pointed to considerable if repressed emotion. “But let it pass. You were giving your opinion, I presume, my cabbage-stalk?”

“Meess very naturally wished me to admire your exquisite taste, ma tendre biche,” he responded. “‘No one,’ says she to me, ‘but Madame Eglantine could have made this inimitable, this absolutely original and distinguished combination, all the while retaining the stamp of the most high tone.’”

Monsieur Ildefonse was very glib of tongue.

“A-ah!” said Madame, smiling horribly. “You and Meess flatter me in your private conversations.”

“My charmer, how can I console myself in your absence, except by——” he broke off, for at that moment, with sounds of pomp, a thunder of hoofs, a crash and a clatter, the street woke up indeed, as Miss Pounce had prognosticated. And Madame D’Aimargues drove up in her four-horsed coach.

Madame Eglantine cast off her rage, as one may divest oneself of a garment, to be re-assumed at the chosen moment; Monsieur Ildefonse, with a relieved shrug of his huge shoulders, began to retire, cat-footed, to his den.

“Remain as you are, Meess,” commanded the milliner, now entirely concentrated on the exigencies of her business.

She shook out her flounces and summoning the bland business smile to her features cast a swift glance at the nearest mirror before taking two steps to greet her valuable patroness.

It was that glance at the mirror which precipitated the catastrophe. By some counter-reflection, Madame Eglantine’s jealous eyes caught a vision of Ildefonse, her husband, her cabbage, the little rat of her heart, pausing in his turn to cast a final ogle upon the abandoned, the sly, the seductive, the shameless Meess!

Eglantine beheld that ogle. She swallowed her emotion. She was above all femme d’affaires. Everything must give way before the profit of the moment. She could wait.

The little Marquise, blonde and slim and rouged, ethereal yet vivid, fluttered in, fanning herself, tried on her hat, chattered, laughed, approved, exclaimed upon the heat, and, still fanning herself, departed, leaving on Pamela’s mind the impression of a glittering butterfly, as lovely, as useless, and as impalpable. You could crush her, thought the girl, between finger and thumb.

Her serious lambent gaze had hardly followed the radiant apparition to the door, when the explosion burst forth.

It was all the more devastating for having been withheld.

Wanton! Hussy! Baggage! Designing intriguing slut! Meess de Malheur! What was Pamela, after all, but a stray apprentice, and an English one at that, flung upon her, Madame Eglantine’s, benevolence for the sake of old friendship, living on charity, a beggar! Cette Lydie, how she had haggled! But if such wickedness had been paid for in all the gold of false Albion, Madame Eglantine would not have kept her, to the destruction of her domestic happiness!

“Meess, you pack this day.”

She further added a flood of vituperation, to which Pamela, all her pretty carnations dead on her white cheeks, listened in a fixed silence.

When the Frenchwoman had run herself out of breath on a high scream, Pamela answered her in English, which the whilom Bath milliner spoke brokenly, but understood perfectly. “That’ll do, M’dame. I’m as pleased to get out of this place as ever you can be to see the back of me. As for that fat husband of yours, I wouldn’t touch him with a pair of tongs. And as for yourself, I’d not remain a moment longer than I can help with one as doesn’t know the meaning of truth, and would take an honest girl’s character away out of pure spite and malice. And don’t you dare,” pursued Pamela, with a swelling voice, “say anything against my character, or as sure as there is justice in Heaven, I’ll bring your business about your ears. I’ll tell that old cat, my Aunt Lydia, what’s happened, that you caught your horrid old Ildefonse ogling me in the glass, and that you haven’t that trust in him—and sure, I’m with you there, for he ain’t fit to be trusted the length of your apron, and so I tell you fair—you haven’t that trust in him that you could have another moment of peace with me under your roof. God help you; I don’t blame you! Give me the price of my ticket home, and I’ll see Aunt don’t get at you over the indenture.”

For all her courage, for all the longing which the thought of England brought her, the heart of Pamela Pounce was heavy as lead. She knew that, at the Kentish farm, things were going badly with the yeoman; she knew that she dared not add the burden of her penniless self to that which rested on his shoulders. She knew that odious as it would be, that abominably as her relative would abuse of the situation, there would be nothing for it, but to throw herself again on her Aunt Lydia’s family feeling, as soon as the Dover coach landed her in London town.

Her aunt was now with her mistress in Hertford Street, back from the Wells, according to the latest reports, and that was one bit of luck; another was, that judging by the tone of the letter just received by Madame Eglantine with an order for hats, my Lady Kilcroney’s maid was in the highest exultation over her mistress’s royal promotion.

CHAPTER III

In which Miss Pamela Pounce, the Milliner’s Assistant,
becomes Arbiter of Life and Death in High
Society

“Pray Mrs. Tabbishaw,” wrote my Lady Kilcroney’s woman to the Mantua maker in Cheapside, “send Pamela along with those white feathers of her ladyship’s, which you has, this ever so long, to be died blew, yours obleeged,

“Lydia Pounce.”

Now the fact of Pamela being Lydia’s niece did not endear her to that maturing damsel, “which,” she was fond of remarking to any beholding them together, “do seem prodigious absurd, seeing as how there’s scarce a year or two betwixt us.”

But if Miss Lydia was not fond of displaying herself in public with a fine strapping young woman of twenty-three who had an inconsiderate way of dropping out “Aunt” at every second word (“which, reely, my dear, I vow she does a’ purpose”—and perhaps indeed she did), my Lady Kilcroney’s indispensable Abigail, as she never omitted informing all and sundry, had a remarkable sense of family feeling. She had placed the inconvenient niece with the matchless Eglantine. With such a start in life she considered the girl’s fortune made; and if Paris were to become the stable abode of so much bloom and bumptiousness, she, for one, would continue to bear the separation with fortitude.

When, after two or three years’ absence, however, Pamela reappeared on the scene, extraordinarily Frenchified, unconscionably beautified, and quite unpardonably wideawake, having quarrelled to the death with Madame Eglantine, and possessing, to boot, only the clothes on her back and the price of her ticket, Miss Lydia Pounce was very justly annoyed. It was quite impossible to send the girl home, since bankruptcy threatened the Kentish farm. Once again Lydia’s fine conception of family obligation came to the fore. There was Mrs. Tabbishaw, at whose second-rate establishment in Cheapside the elder Miss Pounce had been in the habit of having such odd jobs done for her ladyship as the dyeing and re-curling of feathers, the cleaning and mending of unimportant laces, the quilting of winter petticoats. Mrs. Tabbishaw owed her a good turn, and if she would now make room for Pamela, give her board and just enough wage for her clothes, Lydia would see to it that her mistress should go as far as to purchase an occasional hat.

Pamela had no choice but to fall in with her aunt’s arrangements, for had not Madame Eglantine sworn that she would give her no character? (As if, indeed, it had been her fault that that odious Monsieur Ildefonse should take to ogling her behind Madame’s back, and her staring into the mirror!) She knew very well, however, that she was sadly wasted at the poor, unmodish place; and, indeed, since Mrs. Tabbishaw was too stupid to realise the treasure that had come her way, the younger Miss Pounce was forthwith turned into a maid-of-all-work. Her long, clever fingers were set to scrub and to cook, to pink or to quilt, or to whatever odd job pressed the most. She was kept running to and fro with parcels, and up and downstairs on messages. She was sent galloping to shops and warehouses to match ribbons and velvets, and all the while the wives and daughters of the city went on purchasing the modes of the year before last, as interpreted by vulgar minds, while spirit, delicacy, art, dash, millinery genius in fine, was actually within their reach! Not that Pamela Pounce had any desire to adorn them. Her aspirations flew very high. Some day she meant to be as great in her line as Eglantine herself, to exercise her talents upon heads as worth while as my Lady Kilcroney’s own.

“You’re jealous of me, you cat!” It was thus she apostrophised the worthy Aunt Lydia in the solitude of her bare attic chamber. “You’re jealous of me. You know you’re an old maid and peevish, and I’m only twenty-three and better-looking than you ever were in your life, with twice your wits, though yours are as sharp as your elbows. You think I’d take the shine out of you, you lemon-faced thing! You know I’d toss up a bit of lace and feather for your ladyship’s boudoir cap, and that her ladyship would nigh faint with the ecstasy of it when she saw herself in the glass. And a sweet pretty creature she is—the one glimpse I ever had of her, and that through the door, you mean thing! Ah, give me a chance, and I swear the sedans and the carriages would be blocking the streets to get at me. But not if you can help it, old Miss Pounce! You’re to be the only important Miss Pounce in this world; that’s your little game! But ’tis not for nothing I’ve got it all in me!”

And hugging her knees as she sat on her bed—the chair being too rickety to bear her fine proportions—Miss Pounce the younger would map out her future in glorious processions of feathers and head-dresses, hats and bonnets, wreaths and négligés.

Through all the hardships, the dreary daily grind, the unkindness and the unremitting exertions, her star shone upon her with a light that never wavered. The first winter was a trying one, and Pamela found London, after Paris, a cruel, ugly place; a cruel cold one, and a cruel hard one. When the summer came, existence might be easier, but the hours were longer with the daylight, and there were nights when even Pamela’s high heart gave way, and she would drop on her pallet bed almost too exhausted to sleep. She had grown thin, and there was a certain fierceness in the fire of her bright grey eyes, as if they looked on all humanity as an enemy, by that July 16th, 1789, when my Lady Kilcroney’s woman wrote for the “blew feathers.”

“Oh, drat!” said Mrs. Tabbishaw.