"Here we are at last. How d'ye do, dear? Why, little one" (to Molly),
"how nice you're looking! Aren't we shamefully late?"
"Oh! it's only just past twelve," said Mrs. Gibson; "and I daresay
you dined very late."
"It wasn't that; it was that ill-mannered woman, who went to her own
room after we came out from dinner, and she and Lady Alice stayed
there invisible, till we thought they were putting on some splendid
attire--as they ought to have done--and at half-past ten, when mamma
sent up to them to say the carriages were at the door, the duchess
sent down for some beef-tea, and at last appeared _à l'enfant_ as
you see her. Mamma is so angry with her, and some of the others are
annoyed at not coming earlier, and one or two are giving themselves
airs about coming at all. Papa is the only one who is not affected by
it." Then turning to Molly Lady Harriet asked,--
"Have you been dancing much, Miss Gibson?"
"Yes; not every dance, but nearly all."
It was a simple question enough; but Lady Harriet's speaking at all
to Molly had become to Mrs. Gibson almost like shaking a red rag at
a bull; it was the one thing sure to put her out of temper. But she
would not have shown this to Lady Harriet for the world; only she
contrived to baffle any endeavours at further conversation between
the two, by placing herself betwixt Lady Harriet and Molly, whom the
former asked to sit down in the absent Cynthia's room.
"I won't go back to those people, I am so mad with them; and,
besides, I hardly saw you the other day, and I must have some gossip
with you." So she sat down by Mrs. Gibson, and as Mrs. Goodenough
afterwards expressed it, "looked like anybody else." Mrs. Goodenough
said this to excuse herself for a little misadventure she fell into.
She had taken a deliberate survey of the grandees at the upper end of
the room, spectacles on nose, and had inquired, in no very measured
voice, who everybody was, from Mr. Sheepshanks, my lord's agent, and
her very good neighbour, who in vain tried to check her loud ardour
for information by replying to her in whispers. But she was rather
deaf as well as blind, so his low tones only brought upon him fresh
inquiries. Now, satisfied as far as she could be, and on her way
to departure, and the extinguishing of fire and candle-light, she
stopped opposite to Mrs. Gibson, and thus addressed her by way of
renewal of their former subject of conversation:--