down here,” said Cora abruptly. “I don’t want to see Carboro’.”
“But he made me a sign, my dear; with his eyeglass, dear.”
“Let him make a hundred,” cried Cora angrily. “He is not going to play with me. Why, he’s hanging about after that chit of Denville’s.”
“Tchah! Cora dear. I wouldn’t be jealous of a washed-out doll of a thing like that. Half-starved paupers; and with the disgrace of that horrid murder sticking all over their house.”
“Jealous!” cried Cora, with a contemptuous laugh; “jealous of her! Not likely, mother; but I mean to make that old idiot smart if he thinks he is going to play fast and loose with me. Come along.”
Without noticing the approaching figure, she turned up the next street, veiling her beautiful eyes once more with their long lashes, and gliding over the pavement with her magnificent figure full of soft undulations that the grotesque fashion of the dress of the day could not hide.
“Oh, Cora, my darling,” said her mother, “how can you be so mad and obstinate! – throwing away your chances like that.”
“Chances? What do you mean?” cried the beauty.
“Why, you know, my dear. He has never married yet; and he’s so rich, and there’s his title.”
“And are we so poor that we are to humble ourselves and beg because that man has a title?”
“But it is such a title, Betsy,” whispered the elder woman.
“And he is so old, and withered, and gouty, and is obliged to drive himself out in a ridiculous donkey-chaise.”
“Now, what does that matter, dear?”
“Not much to you, seemingly.”
“Now, my lovely, don’t – don’t. To think that I might live to see my gal, Betsy Dean, a real countess, and such a one as there ain’t anywhere at court, and she flying in my face and turning her back upon her chances.”
“Mother, do you want to put me in a rage.”
“Not in the street, dear; but do – do – turn back!”
“I shall not.”
“Then I know the reason why,” cried the elder woman.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re thinking of that nasty, poverty-stricken, brown-faced fiddler of a fellow, who hasn’t even the decency to get himself shaved. I declare he looks more like a Jew than a Christian.”
“You mean to make me angry, mother.”
“I don’t care if I do. There, I say it’s a sin and a shame. A real Earl – a real live Lord as good as proposing to you, and you, you great silly soft goose, sighing and whining after a penniless pauper who won’t even look at you. Oh! the fools gals are!”
Cora Dean’s lips were more scarlet than before, and her beautiful eyes flashed ominously, but she said nothing.
“Going silly after a fellow like that, who’s for ever hanging about after Denville’s gal. Oh! I hav’n’t patience.”
She said no more, for her daughter walked so fast that she became short of breath.
“Egad! Juno’s put out,” said James, Earl of Carboro’, peer of the realm, speaking in a high-pitched voice, and then applying one glove to his very red lips, as if he were uneasy there. “What a magnificent figure, though! She’s devilish handsome, she is, egad! It’s just as well, perhaps. I won’t follow her. I’ll go on the pier. Let her come round if she likes, and if she doesn’t – why, demme, I don’t care if she doesn’t – now that – ”
He smacked his lips, and shook his head, and then drew himself up, rearranging his quaint beaver hat that came down fore and aft, curled up tightly at the sides, and spread out widely at the flat top. He gave his ancient body a bit of a writhe, and then raised his gold eyeglass to gaze at the pier, towards which people seemed to be hastening.
“Eh? Egad, why, what’s the matter? Somebody gone overboard? I’ll go and see. No, I won’t; I’ll sit down and wait. I shall soon know. It’s deuced hot. Those railings are not safe.”
He settled himself on the first seat on the cliff, and, giving the wide watered-silk ribbon a shake, used his broad and square gold-rimmed eyeglass once more, gazing through it at the long, old-fashioned pier that ran down into the sea, amongst whose piles the bright waves that washed the chalky shore of fashionable Saltinville were playing, while an unusual bustle was observable in the little crowd of loungers that clustered on the long low erection.
Meanwhile the Master of the Ceremonies of the fashionable seaside resort honoured of royalty had continued his course towards the pier.
The trouble at his house seemed to be forgotten, and in the pursuit of his profession to serve and be observed – gentleman-in-waiting on society – he looked to-day a tall, rather slight man, with nut-brown hair, carefully curled and slightly suggestive of having been grown elsewhere, closely-shaven face of rather careworn aspect, but delicate and refined. He was a decidedly handsome, elderly man, made ridiculous by a mincing dancing-master deportment, an assumed simpering smile, and a costume in the highest fashion of George the Third’s day. His hat has been already described, for it was evidently moulded on the same block as my Lord Carboro’s, and the rest of the description will do for the costume of both – in fact, with allowances for varieties of colour and tint, for that of most of the gentlemen who flit in and out in the varied scenes of this story of old seaside life.
His thin, but shapely legs were in the tightest of pantaloons, over which were a glossy pair of Hessian boots with silken tassels where they met the knee. An extremely tight tail coat of a dark bottle green was buttoned over his breast, leaving exposed a goodly portion of a buff waistcoat below the bottom buttons, while the coat collar rose up like a protecting erection, as high as the wearer’s ears, and touched and threatened to tilt forward the curly brimmed hat. Two tiny points of a shirt collar appeared above the sides of an enormous stock which rigidly prisoned the neck; a delicate projection of cambric frilling rose from the breast; the hands were tightly gloved, one holding a riding-whip, the top of which was furnished with a broad-rimmed square eyeglass; and beneath the buff vest hung, suspended by a broad, black watered-silk ribbon, a huge bunch of gold seals and keys, one of the former being an enormous three-tabled topaz, which turned in its setting at the wearer’s will.
Such was the aspect of the Master of the Ceremonies in morning costume – the man whose services were sought by every new arrival for introduction to the Assembly Room and to the fashionable society of the day – the man who, by unwritten canons of the fashionable world, must needs be consulted for every important fête or dance, and whose offerings from supplicants – he scorned to call them clients – were supposed to yield him a goodly income, and doubtless would do so, did the season happen to be long, and society at Saltinville in force.
Parting from the ladies he had met, he passed on with a feeble smirk, growing more decided, his step more mincing, to bow to some lady, a proceeding calling for grace and ease. The raising and replacing of the hat was ever elaborate, so was the kissing of the tips of the gloves to the horsemen who cantered by. There was quite a kingly dignity full of benevolence in the nods bestowed here and there upon fishers and boatmen in dingy flannel trousers rising to the arm-pits, trousers that looked as if they would have stood alone. Then there was an encounter
