London Pride, Or, When the World Was Younger

by M. E. Braddon

  CHAPTER VII.

  AT THE TOP OF THE FASHION.

  Nothing could have been more cordial than Lady Fareham's welcome to hersister, nor were it easy to imagine a life more delightful than that atChilton Abbey in that autumnal season, when every stage of the decayingyear clothed itself with a variety and brilliancy of colouring which maderuin beautiful, and disguised the approach of winter, as a court harridanmight hide age and wrinkles under a yellow satin mask and flame-coloureddomino. The Abbey was one of those capacious, irregular buildings in whichall that a house was in the past and all that it is in the present arecomposed into a harmonious whole, and in which past and present are socunningly interwoven that it would have been difficult for any one but anarchitect to distinguish where the improvements and additions of yesterdaywere grafted on to the masonry of the fourteenth century. Here, where thespacious plate-room and pantry began, there were walls massive enough forthe immuring of refractory nuns; and this corkscrew Jacobean staircase,which wound with carved balusters up to the garret story, had itsfoundations in a flight of Cyclopean stone steps that descended to thecellars, where the monks kept their strong liquors and brewed their beer.Half of my lady's drawing-room had been the refectory, and the longdining-parlour still showed the groined roof of an ancient cloister; whilethe music-room, into which it opened, had been designed by Inigo Jones, andbuilt by the last Lord Fareham. All that there is of the romantic in thiskind of architectural patchwork had been enhanced by the collection of oldfurniture that the present possessors of the Abbey had imported from LadyFareham's chateau in Normandy, and which was more interesting though lesssplendid than the furniture of Fareham's town mansion, as it was the resultof gradual accumulation in the Montrond family, or of purchase from thewreck of noble houses, ruined in the civil war which had distracted Francebefore the reign of the Bearnais.

  To Angela the change from an enclosed convent to such a house as ChiltonAbbey, was a change that filled all her days with wonder. The splendour,the air of careless luxury that pervaded her sister's house, and suggestedcostliness and waste in every detail, could but be distressing to the pupilof Flemish nuns, who had seen even the trenchers scraped to make soup forthe poor, and every morsel of bread garnered as if it were gold dust. Fromthat sparse fare of the convent to this Rabelaisian plenty, this plethoraof meat and poultry, huge game pies and elaborate confectionery, thisperpetual too much of everything, was a transition that startled andshocked her. She heard with wonder of the numerous dinner tables that werespread every day at Chilton. Mr. Manningtree's table, at which the RomanPriest from Oxford dined, except on those rare occasions when he wasinvited to sit down with the quality; and Mrs. Hubbock's table, where thesuperior servants dined, and at which Henriette's dancing-master consideredit a privilege to over-eat himself; and the two great tables in theservants' hall, twenty at each table; and the _gouvernante_, Mrs. PriscillaGoodman's table in the blue parlour upstairs, at which my lady's Englishand French waiting-women, and my lord's gentlemen ate, and at whichHenriette and her brother were supposed to take their meals, but where theyseldom appeared, usually claiming the right to eat with their parents. Shewondered as she heard of the fine-drawn distinctions among that rabble ofservants, the upper ranks of whom were supplied by the small gentry--ofservants who waited upon servants, and again other servants who waited onthose, down to that lowest stratum of kitchen sluts and turnspits, whoactually made their own beds and scraped their own trenchers. Everywherethere was lavish expenditure--everywhere the abundance which, among thatuneducated and unthoughtful class, ever degenerates into wanton waste.

  It sickened Angela to see the long dining-table loaded, day after day, withdishes that were many of them left untouched amidst the superabundance,while the massive Cromwellian sideboard seemed to need all the thicknessof its gouty legs to sustain the "regalia" of hams and tongues, pasties,salads and jellies. And all this time _The Weekly Gazette_ from Londontold of the unexampled distress in that afflicted city, which was but thenatural result of an epidemic that had driven all the well-to-do away, andleft neither trade nor employment for the lower classes.

  "What becomes of that mountain of food?" Angela asked her sister, afterher second dinner at Chilton, by which time she and Hyacinth had becomefamiliar and at ease with each other. "Is it given to the poor?"

  "Some of it, perhaps, love; but I'll warrant that most of it is eaten inthe offices--with many a handsome sirloin and haunch to boot."

  "Oh, sister, it is dreadful to think of such a troop! I am always meetingstrange faces. How many servants have you?"

  "I have never reckoned them. Manningtree knows, no doubt; for his wagesbook would tell him. I take it there may be more than fifty, and less thana hundred. Anyhow, we could not exist were they fewer."

  "More than fifty people to wait upon four!"

  "For our state and importance, _cherie_. We are very ill-waited upon. Inearly died last week before I could get any one to bring me my afternoonchocolate. The men had all rushed off to a bull-baiting, and the womenwere romping or fighting in the laundry, except my own women, who are toogenteel to play with the under-servants, and had taken a holiday to go andsee a tragedy at Oxford. I found myself in a deserted house. I might havebeen burnt alive, or have expired in a fit, for aught any of those over-feddevils cared."

  "But could they not be better regulated?"

  "They are, when Manningtree is at home. He has them all under his thumb."

  "And he is an honest, conscientious man?"

  "Who knows? I dare say he robs us, and takes a _pot de vin_ wherever 'tisoffered. But it is better to be robbed by one than by an army; and ifManningtree keeps others from cheating he is worth his wages."

  "And you, dear Hyacinth. Do you keep no accounts?"

  "Keep accounts! Why, my dearest simpleton, did you ever hear of a woman ofquality keeping accounts--unless it were some lunatic universal genius likeher Grace of Newcastle, who rises in the middle of the night to scribbleverses, and who might do anything preposterous. Keep accounts! Why, if youwas to tell me that two and two make five I couldn't controvert you, frommy own knowledge."

  "It all seems so strange to me," murmured Angela.

  "My aunt supervised all the expenditure of the convent, and was unhappy ifshe discovered waste in the smallest item."

  "Unhappy! Yes, my dear innocent. And do you think if I was to investigatethe cost of kitchen and cellar, and calculate how many pounds of meat eachof our tall lackeys consumes per diem, I should not speedily be plaguedinto grey hairs and wrinkles? I hope we are rich enough to support theirwastefulness. And if we are not--why, _vogue la galere_--when we are ruinedthe King must do something for Fareham--make him Lord Chancellor. HisMajesty is mighty sick of poor old Clarendon and his lectures. Fareham hasa long head, and would do as well as anybody else for Chancellor if hewould but show himself at Court oftener, and conform to the fashion of thetime, instead of holding himself aloof, with a Puritanical disdain foramusements and people that please his betters. He has taken a leaf out ofLord Southampton's book, and would not allow me to return a visit LadyCastlemaine paid me the other day, in the utmost friendliness: and toslight her is the quickest way to offend his Majesty."

  "But, sister, you would not consort with an infamous woman?"

  "Infamous! Who told you she is infamous? Your innocency should be ignorantof such trumpery tittle-tattle. And one can be civil without consorting, asyou call it."

  Angela took her sister's reckless speech for mere sportiveness. Hyacinthmight be careless and ignorant of business, but his lordship doubtless knewthe extent of his income, and was too grave and experienced a personage tobe a spendthrift. He had confessed to seven and thirty, which to the girlof twenty seemed serious middle-age.

  There were musicians in her ladyship's household--youths who playedlute and viol, and sang the dainty, meaningless songs of the latestballad-mongers very prettily. The warm weather, which had a bad effectupon the bills of mortality, was so far advantageous that it allowed t
hesegentlemen to sing in the garden while the family were at supper, or onthe river while the family were taking their evening airing. Their newestperformance was an arrangement of Lord Dorset's lines--"To all you ladiesnow on land," set as a round. There could scarcely be anything prettierthan the dying fall of the refrain that ended every verse:--

  "With a fa, la, la, Perhaps permit some happier man To kiss your hand or flirt your fan, With a fa, la, la."

  The last lines died away in the distance of the moonlit garden, as thesingers slowly retired, while Henri de Malfort illustrated that finalcouplet with Hyacinth's fan, as he sat beside her.

  "Music, and moonlight, and a garden. You might fancy yourself amidst thegrottoes and terraces of St. Germain."

  "I note that whenever there is anything meritorious in our English lifeMalfort is reminded of France, and when he discovers any obnoxious featurein our manners or habits he expatiates on the vast difference between thetwo nations," said his lordship.

  "Dear Fareham, I am a human being. When I am in England I remember all Iloved in my own country. I must return to it before I shall understand theworth of all I leave here--and the understanding may be bitter. Call yoursingers back, and let us have those two last verses again. 'Tis a finetune, and your fellows perform it with sweetness and brio."

  The song was new. The victory which it celebrated was fresh in the mindsof men. The disgrace of later Dutch experiences--the ships in the Noreravaging and insulting--was yet to come. England still believed herfloating castles invincible.

  To Angela's mind the life at Chilton was full of change and joyousexpectancy. No hour of the day but offered some variety of recreation, frombattledore and shuttlecock in the _plaisance_ to long days with the houndsor the hawks. Angela learnt to ride in less than a month, instructed by thestud-groom, a gentleman of considerable importance in the household; an oldcampaigner, who had groomed Fareham's horses after many a battle, andmany a skirmish, and had suffered scant food and rough quarters withoutmurmuring; and also with considerable assistance and counsel from LordFareham, and occasional lectures from Papillon, who was a Diana at tenyears old, and rode with her father in the first flight. Angela was soonequal to accompanying her sister in the hunting-field, for Hyacinth likedfollowing the chase after the French rather than the English fashion,affecting no ruder sport than to wait at an opening of the wood, or onthe crest of a common, to see hounds and riders sweep by; or, favouredby chance now and then, to signal the villain's whereabouts by a lacehandkerchief waved high above her head. This was how a beautiful lady whohad hunted in the forests of St. Germain and Fontainebleau understoodsport; and such performances as this Angela found easy and agreeable. Theyhad many cavaliers who came to talk with them for a few minutes, to tellthem what was doing or not doing yonder where the hounds were hidden inthicket or coppice; but Henri de Malfort was their most constant attendant.He rarely left them, and dawdled through the earlier half of an Octoberday, walking his horse from point to point, or dismounting at shelteredcorners to stand and talk at Lady Fareham's side, with a patience that madeAngela wonder at the contrast between English headlong eagerness, crashingand splashing through hedge and brook, and French indifference.

  "I have not Fareham's passion for mud," he explained to her, when sheremarked upon his lack of interest in the chase, even when the music of thehounds was ringing through wood and valley, now close beside them, anondiminishing in the distance, thin in the thin air. "If he comes not homeat dark plastered with mire from boots to eyebrows he will cry, likeAlexander, 'I have lost a day.'"

  Partridge-hawking in the wide fields between Chilton and Nettlebed was moreto Malfort's taste, and it was a sport for which Lady Fareham expressed acertain enthusiasm, and for which she attired herself to the perfection ofpicturesque costume. Her hunting-coats were marvels of embroidery on atlasand smooth cloth; but her smartest velvet and brocade she kept for thesunny mornings, when, with hooded peregrine on wrist, she sallied forthintent on slaughter, Angela, Papillon, and De Malfort for her _cortege_, aneasy-paced horse to amble over the grass with her, and the Dutch falconerto tell her the right moment at which to slip her falcon's hood.

  The nuns at the Ursuline Convent would scarcely have recognised theirquondam pupil in the girl on the grey palfrey, whose hair flew loose undera beaver hat, mingling its tresses with the long ostrich plume, whosetrimly fitting jacket had a masculine air which only accentuated thewomanliness of the fair face above it, and whose complexion, somewhat toocolourless within the convent walls, now glowed with a carnation thatbrightened and darkened the large grey eyes into new beauty.

  That open-air life was a revelation to the cloister-bred girl. Could thisearth hold greater bliss than to roam at large over spacious gardens,to cross the river, sculling her boat with strong hands, with her nieceHenriette, otherwise Papillon, sitting in the stern to steer, and screaminstructions to the novice in navigation; and then to lose themselves inthe woods on the further shore, to wander in a labyrinth of reddeningbeeches, and oaks on which the thick foliage still kept its dusky green; toemerge upon open lawns where the pale gold birches looked like fairy trees,and where amber and crimson toadstools shone like jewels on the skirts ofthe dense undergrowth of holly and hawthorn? The liberty of it all, thedelicious feeling of freedom, the release from convent rules and conventhours, bells ringing for chapel, bells ringing for meals, bells ringingto mark the end of the brief recreation--a perpetual ringing and drillingwhich had made conventual life a dull machine, working always in the samegrooves.

  Oh, this liberty, this variety, this beauty in all things around and abouther! How the young glad soul, newly escaped from prison, revelled andexpatiated in its freedom! Papillon, who at ten years old, had skimmedthe cream off all the simple pleasures, appointed herself her aunt'sinstructress in most things, and taught her to row, with some help fromLord Fareham, who was an expert waterman; and, at the same time, triedto teach her to despise the country, and all rustic pleasures, excepthunting--although in her inmost heart the minx preferred the liberty ofOxfordshire woods to the splendour of Fareham House, where she was coopedin a nursery with her _gouvernante_ for the greater part of her time, andwas only exhibited like a doll to her mother's fine company, or seated upona cushion to tinkle a saraband and display her precocious talent on theguitar, which she played almost as badly as Lady Fareham herself, at whosefeeble endeavours even the courteous De Malfort laughed.

  Never was sister kinder than Hyacinth, impelled by that impulsive sweetnesswhich was her chief characteristic, and also, it might be, moved to lavishgenerosity by some scruples of conscience with regard to her grandmother'swill. Her first business was to send for the best milliner in Oxford, aLondon Madam who had followed her court customers to the university town,and to order everything that was beautiful and seemly for a young person ofquality.

  "I implore you not to make me too fine, dearest," pleaded Angela, who wasmore horrified at the milliner's painted face and exuberant figure thancharmed by the contents of the baskets which she had brought with her inthe spacious leather coach--velvets and brocades, hoods and gloves, silkstockings, fans, perfumes and pulvilios, sweet-bags and scented boxes--allof which the woman spread out upon Lady Fareham's embroidered satin bed,for the young lady's admiration. "I pray you remember that I am accustomedto have only two gowns--a black and a grey. You will make me afraid of myimage in the glass if you dress me like--like--"

  She glanced from her sister's _decollete_ bodice to the far more appallingcharms of the milliner, which a gauze kerchief rather emphasised thanconcealed, and could find no proper conclusion for her sentence.

  "Nay, sweetheart, let not thy modesty take fright. Thou shalt be clad asdemurely as the nun thou hast escaped being--

  'And sable stole of Cyprus lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn.'

  We will have no blacks, but as much decency as you choose. You will markthe distinction between my sister and your maids of honour, Mrs. Lewin. Sheis but a _debutante_ in our modish wo
rld, and must be dressed as modestlyas you can contrive, to be consistent with the fashion."

  "Oh, my lady, I catch your ladyship's meaning, and your ladyship'sinstructions shall be carried out as far as can be without making a savageof the young lady. I know what some young ladies are when they first cometo Court. I had fuss enough with Miss Hamilton before I could persuade herto have her bodice cut like a Christian. And even the beautiful Miss Brookswere all for high tuckers and modesty-pieces when I began to make for them;but they soon came round. And now with my Lady Denham it is always, 'Gud,Lewin, do you call that the right cut for a bosom? Udsbud, woman, youhaven't made the curve half deep enough.' And with my Lady Chesterfield itis, 'Sure, if they say my legs are thick and ugly, I'll let them know myshoulders are worth looking at. Give me your scissors, creature,' and thenwith her own delicate hand she will scoop me a good inch off the satin,till I am fit to swoon at seeing the cold steel against her milk-whiteflesh."

  Mrs. Lewin talked with but little interruption for the best part of an hourwhile measuring her new customer, showing her pattern-book, and exhibitingthe ready-made wares she had brought, the greater number of which Hyacinthinsisted on buying for Angela--who was horrified at the slanderousinnuendoes that dropped in casual abundance from the painted lips of themilliner; horrified, too, that her sister could loll back in her armchairand laugh at the woman's coarse and malignant talk.

  "Indeed, sister, you are far too generous, and you have overpowered me withgifts," she said, when the milliner had curtsied herself out of the room;"for I fear my own income will never pay for all these costly things. Threepounds, I think she said, was the price of the Mazarine hood alone--andthere are stockings and gloves innumerable."

  "Mon Ange, while you are with me your own income is but for charitiesand vails. I will have it spent for nothing else. You know how rich theMarquise has made me--while I believe Fareham is a kind of modern Croesus,though we do not boast of his wealth, for all that is most substantialin his fortune comes from his mother, whose father was a great merchanttrading with Spain and the Indies, all through James's reign, and luckierin the hunt for gold than poor Raleigh. Never must you talk to me ofobligation. Are we not sisters, and was it not a mere accident that made methe elder, and Madame de Montrond's _protegee_?"

  "I have no words to thank you for so much kindness. I will only say I am sohappy here that I could never have believed there was such full content onthis sinful earth."

  "Wait till we are in London, Angelique. Here we endure existence. It isonly in London that we live."

  "Nay, I believe the country will always please me better than the town.But, sister, do you not hate that Mrs. Lewin--that horrid painted face andevil tongue?"

  "My dearest child, one hates a milliner for the spoiling of a bodice or theill cut of a sleeve--not for her character. I believe Mrs. Lewin's is amongthe worst, and that she has had as many intrigues as Lady Castlemaine. Asfor her painting, doubtless she does that to remind her customers that shesells alabaster powder and ceruse."

  "Nay, if she wants to disgust them with painted faces she has but to showher own."

  "I grant she lays the stuff on badly. I hope, if I live to have as manywrinkles, I shall fill them better than she does. Yet who can tell what ahideous toad she might be in her natural skin? It may be Christian charitythat induces her to paint, and so to spare us the sight of a monster.She will make thee a beauty, Ange, be sure of that. For satin or velvet,birthday or gala gowns, nobody can beat her. The wretch has hadthousands of my money, so I ought to know. But for thy riding-habit andhawking-jacket we want the firmer grip of a man's hand. Those must be madeby Roget."

  "A Frenchman?"

  "Yes, child. One only accepts British workmanship when a Parisian artist isnot to be had. Clever as Lewin is, if I want to eclipse my dearest enemyon any special occasion I send Manningtree across the Channel, or ask DeMalfort to let his valet--who spends his life in transit like a king'smessenger--bring me the latest confection from the Rue de Richelieu."

  "What infinite trouble about a gown--and for you who would look lovely inanything!"

  "Tush, child! You have never seen me in 'anything.' If ever you shouldsurprise me in an ill gown you will see how much the feathers make thebird. Poets and play-wrights may pretend to believe that we need noembellishment from art; but the very men who write all that romanticnonsense are the first to court a well-dressed woman. And there are few ofthem who could calculate with any exactness the relation of beauty to itssurroundings. That is why women go deep into debt to their milliners,and would sooner be dead in well-made graveclothes than alive in anold-fashioned mantua."

  Angela could not be in her sister's company for a month without discoveringthat Lady Fareham's whole life was given up to the worship of the trivial.She was kind, she was amiable, generous, even to recklessness. She wasnot irreligious, heard Mass and went to confession as often as the hardconditions of an alien and jealously treated Church would allow, had neverdisputed the truth of any tenet that was taught her--but of serious views,of an earnest consideration of life and death, husband and children,Hyacinth Fareham was as incapable as her ten-year-old daughter. Indeed, itsometimes seemed to Angela that the child had broader and deeper thoughtsthan the mother, and saw her surroundings with a shrewder and clearer eye,despite the natural frivolity of childhood, and the exuberance of a finephysique.

  It was not for the younger sister to teach the elder, nor did Angela deemherself capable of teaching. Her nature was thoughtful and earnest: but shelacked that experience of life which can alone give the thinker a broadand philosophic view of other people's conduct. She was still far from thestage of existence in which to understand all is to pardon all.

  She beheld the life about her with wonder and bewilderment. It was sopleasant, so full of beauty and variety; yet things were said and done thatshocked her. There was nothing in her sister's own behaviour to alarm hermodesty; but to hear her sister talk of other women's conduct outraged allher ideas of decency and virtue. If there were really such wickedness inthe world, women so shameless and vile, was it right that good women shouldknow of them, that pure lips should speak of their iniquity?

  She was still more shocked when Hyacinth talked of Lady Castlemaine with agood-humoured indulgence.

  "There is something fine about her," Lady Fareham said one day, "in spiteof her tempers and pranks."

  "What!" cried Angela, aghast, having thought these creatures unrecognisedby any honest woman, "do you know her--that Lady Castlemaine of whom youhave told me such dreadful things?"

  "C'est vrai. J'en ai dit des raides. Mon Ange, in town one must needs knoweverybody, though I doubt that after not returning her visit t'other day, Ishall be in her black books, and in somebody else's. She has never been oneof my intimates. If I were often at Whitehall, I should have to be friendswith her. But Fareham is jealous of Court influences; and I am only allowedto appear on gala nights--perhaps not a half-dozen times in a season. Thereis a distinction in not showing one's self often; but it is provoking tohear of the frolics and jollities which go on every day and every night,and from which I am banished. It mattered little while the Queen-motherwas at Somerset House, for her Court ranked higher--and was certainly morerefined in its splendour--than her son's ragamuffin herd. But now she isgone, I shall miss our intellectual _milieu_, and wish myself in the RueSt. Thomas du Louvre, where the Hotel du Rambouillet, even in its decline,offers a finer style of company than anything you will see in England."

  "Sister, I fear you left half your heart in France."

  "Nay, sweet; perhaps some of it has followed me," answered Hyacinth, witha blush and an enigmatic smile. "_Peste_! I am not a woman to make a fussabout hearts! There is not a grain of tragedy in my composition. I am likethat girl in the play we saw at Oxford t'other day. Fletcher's was it, orShakespeare's? 'A star danced, and under that was I born.' Yes, I was bornunder a dancing star; and I shall never break my heart--for love."

  "But you regret Paris?"


  "_Helas_! Paris means my girlhood; and were you to take me back thereto-morrow you could not make me seventeen again--and so where's the use? Ishould see wrinkles in the faces of my friends; and should know that theywere seeing the same ugly lines in mine. Indeed, Ange, I think it is myyouth I sigh for rather than the friends I lived with. They were such merrydays: battles and sieges in the provinces, parliaments disputing here andthere; Conde in and out of prison--now the King's loyal servant, now inarms against him; swords clashing, cannon roaring under our very windows;alarm bells pealing, cries of fire, barricades in the streets; and amidstit all, lute and theorbo, _bouts rimes_ and madrigals, dancing andplay-acting, and foolish practical jests! One could not take the smalleststep in life but one of the wits would make a song about it. Oh, it was aboisterous time! And we were all mad, I think; so lightly did we reckonlife and death, even when the cannon slew some of our noblest, and thefinest saloons were hung with black. You have done less than live,Angelique, not to have lived in that time."

  Hyacinth loved to ring the changes on her sister's name. Angela was tooEnglish, and sounded too much like the name of a nun; but Angeliquesuggested one of the most enchanting personalities in that brilliantcircle on which Lady Fareham so often rhapsodised. This was the beautifulAngelique Paulet, whose father invented the tax called by his name, LaPaulette--a financial measure, which was the main cause of the first Frondewar.

  "I only knew her when she was between fifty and sixty," said Lady Fareham,"but she hardly looked forty; and she was still handsome, in spite of herred hair. _Trop dore_, her admirers called it; but, my love, it was as redas that scullion's we saw in the poultry yard yesterday. She was a reigningbeauty at three Courts, and had a crowd of adorers when she was onlyfourteen. Ah, Papillon, you may open your eyes! What will you be atfourteen? Still playing with your babies, or mad about your shock dogs, Idare swear!"

  "I gave my babies to the housekeeper's grand-daughter last year," saidPapillon, much offended, "when father gave me the peregrine. I only carefor live things now I am old."

  "And at fourteen thou wilt be an awkward, long-legged wench that willfrighten away all my admirers, yet not be worth the trouble of a complimenton thine own account."

  "I want no such stuff!" cried Papillon. "Do you think I would like a Frenchfop always at my elbow as Monsieur de Malfort is ever at yours? I lovehunting and hawking, and a man that can ride, and shoot, and row, andfight, like father or Sir Denzil Warner--not a man who thinks more of hisribbons and periwig and cannon-sleeves than of killing his fox or flyinghis falcon."

  "Oh, you are beginning to have opinions!" sighed Hyacinth. "I am indeed anold woman! Go and find yourself something to play with, alive or dead. Youare vastly too clever for my company."

  "I'll go and saddle Brownie. Will you come for a ride, Aunt Angy?"

  "Yes, dear, if her ladyship does not want me at home."

  "Her ladyship knows your heart is in the fields and woods. Yes, sweetheart,saddle your pony, and order your aunt's horse and a pair of grooms to takecare of you."

  The child ran off rejoicing.

  "Precocious little devil! She will pick up all our jargon before she is inher teens."

  "Dear sister, if you talk so indiscreetly before her----"

  "Indiscreet! Am I really so indiscreet? That is Fareham's word. I believeI was born so. But I was telling you about your namesake, MademoisellePaulet. She began to reign when Henri was king, and no doubt he was one ofher most ardent admirers. Don't look frightened! She was always a model ofvirtue. Mademoiselle Scudery has devoted pages to painting her perfectionsunder an Oriental alias. She sang, she danced, she talked divinely. She dideverything better than everybody else. Priests and Bishops praised her. Andafter changes and losses and troubles, she died far from Paris, a spinster,nearly sixty years old. It was a paltry finish to a life that began in ablaze of glory."