With this dwarf tree in my arms, when came the auspicious afternoon, I
followed Lady Pollacke's parlourmaid--her neat little bonnet tied with a
bow under her ear--down my Bateses, and was lifted by Mrs Bowater into
the carriage. How demure a greeting we exchanged when, the maid and I
having seated ourselves together under its hood, my glance fell upon the
bloodstone brooch pinned conspicuously for the occasion near the topmost
button of her trim, outdoor jacket. It gave me so much confidence that
even the sudden clatter of conversation that gushed out over me in the
doorway of Lady Pollacke's drawing-room failed to be disconcerting. The
long, flowery room was thronged with company, and everybody was talking
to everybody else. On my entry, as if a seraph had spoken, the busy
tongues sank instantly to a hush. I stood stilettoed by a score of eyes.
But Sir Walter had been keeping good watch for me, and I at once
delivered my great pot into his pink, outstretched hands.
"My dear, dear young lady," he cried, stooping plumply over me, "the
pleasure you give me! A little masterpiece: and real old Nankin. Alas,
my poor Hypnos!"
"But it is me, _me_," I cried. "If I could only tell you!"
A murmur of admiration rippled across the room, in which I distinctly
heard a quavering, nasal voice exclaim, "Touching, touching!"
The words--as if a pleasant sheep had bleated--came, I fancied, from a
rather less fashionable lady with a lorgnette, who was sitting almost
alone on the outskirts of the room, and who I afterwards discovered was
only a widowed sister of Lady Pollacke's. But I could spare her but one
startled glance, for, at the same moment, I was being presented to the
younger daughter of Lord B. Mrs Monnerie sat amply reclining in an
immense gilded chair--a lady with a large and surprising countenance.
Lady Pollacke's "_younger_" had misled my fancy. Far from being the
slim, fair, sylphlike thing of my expectations, Mrs Monnerie cannot have
been many years the junior of my godmother, Miss Fenne.
Her skin had fallen into the queerest folds and puckers. Her black
swimming eye under a thick eyebrow gazed down her fine, drooping nose at
me with a dwelling expression at once indulgent, engrossed, and amused.
With a gracious sweep of her hand she drew aside her voluminous silk
skirts so that I could at once install myself by her side in a small,
cane-seated chair that had once, I should fancy, accommodated a baby
Pollacke, and had been brought down from the nursery for this occasion.
Thus, then, I found myself--the exquisitely self-conscious centre of
attention--striving to nibble a biscuit, nurse my child-size handleless
tea-cup, and respond to her advances at one and the same time.
Lady Pollacke hung like a cloud at sunset over us both, her cheek
flushed with the effort to be amused at every sentence which Mrs
Monnerie uttered and to share it as far as possible with the rest of her
guests.
"A little pale, eh?" mused Mrs Monnerie, brooding at me with her great
eye. "She wants sea-air; sea-air--just to _tinge_ that rose-leaf
porcelain. I must arrange it."