United States or Barbados ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The next morning, before I left my room to go down to breakfast, my servant told me that Lady de Brantefield's housekeeper, Mrs. Fowler, begged to speak to me she had been come some time. I went into my mother's dressing-room, where she was waiting alone.
We had leisure to look about us, as we had previously agreed to do, for Lady De Brantefield's muff. I had a suspicion that, notwithstanding the veneration with which it had been said to be treated, it might have come to the common lot of cast clothes.
The shopboy lifted them up to display their merits, by the dimness of the candle-light, and, as he raised them up, there appeared beneath the gray fox-skin with its scarlet lining and pompadour knots, the Lady de Brantefield's much venerated muff. I could scarcely refrain from seizing upon it that moment, but Jacob again restrained me.
The priest was anxious to obtain leave to build on certain lands which belonged to the crown. These lands were in the county where Lord Mowbray's or Lady de Brantefield's property lay.
Pride once more gave way to undisguised terror in Lady de Brantefield's countenance, and both ladies stood in speechless consternation. Before we had time to hear or to say more, the orange-woman opened the door, and putting in her head, called out in a voice of authority, "Jantlemen, here's one wants yees, admits of no delay; lave all and come out, whether you will or no, the minute."
I was in no humour to admire them, and her ladyship took much offence at a general observation I made, "that people of sense submit to the reigning fashion, while others are governed by it." We parted this night so much displeased with each other, that when we met again in public, we merely exchanged bows and curtsies in private we had seldom met of late I never went to Lady de Brantefield's.
I'm sure I hope those wretches will not destroy our house and, oh! the great mirror, mamma!" Mr. and Miss Montenero returned with much concern in their countenances: they announced that the messenger had brought word that the mob were actually pulling down Lady de Brantefield's house that the furniture had all been dragged out into the street, and that it was now burning.
But when two fools pour out their reasons at once, it is difficult to profit even by their folly. The mother's authority at last obtaining precedency, I heard Lady de Brantefield's cause of belief, first: her ladyship declared that she never wore Sir Josseline's ring without putting on after it a guard ring, a ring which, being tighter than Sir Josseline's, kept it safe on her finger.
Jacob offered to replace, as far as he could, the value of this ring; but in Lady de Brantefield's opinion nothing could compensate for its loss. Poor Jacob was in despair. Before I heard this story, I thought that nothing could have forced my attention from my own affairs; but I could not be so selfish as to desert or neglect Jacob in his distress.
As soon as the finale of Lady de Brantefield's sentence, touching honour, happiness, and family connexion, would permit, I receded, and turned from the mother to the daughter, little Lady Anne Mowbray, a light fantastic figure, bedecked with "daisies pied," covered with a profusion of tiny French flowers, whose invisible wire stalks kept in perpetual motion as she turned her pretty head from side to side.
Word Of The Day