her still beloved boy!
"Corpo di Bacco," he said, pitching the end of his cigar on to the red nose of the Countess of Delawaddymore's coachman--who, having deposited her fat ladyship at No. 236 Piccadilly, was driving the carriage to the stables, before commencing his evening at the "Fortune of War" public-house--"what a lovely creature that was! What eyes! what hair! Who knows her? Do you, mon cher prince?"
"E bellissima, certamente," said the Duca de Montepulciano, and stroked down his jetty moustache.
"Ein gar schones Madchen," said the Hereditary Grand Duke of Eulenschreckenstein, and turned up his carroty one.
"Elle n'est pas mal, ma foi!" said the Prince de Borodino, with a scowl on his darkling brows. "Mon Dieu, que ces cigarres sont mauvais!" he added as he too cast away his Cuba.
"Try one of my Pickwicks," said Franklin Fox, with a sneer, offering his gold etui to the young Frenchman; "they are some of Pontet's best, Prince. What, do you bear malice? Come, let us be friends," said the gay and careless young patrician; but a scowl on the part of the Frenchman was the only reply.
"Want to know who she is? Borodino knows who she is, Bagnigge," the wag went on.
Everybody crowded around Monsieur de Borodino thus apostrophized. The Marquis of Alicompayne, young De Boots of the Lifeguards, Tom Protocol of the Foreign Office; the gay young Peers, Farintosh, Poldoody, and the rest; and Bagnigge, for a wonder, not less eager than any one present.
"No, he will tell you nothing about her. Don't you see he has gone off in a fury!" Franklin Fox continued. "He has his reasons, ce cher prince: he will tell you nothing; but I will. You know that I am au mieux with the dear old duchess."
"They say Frank and she are engaged after the duke's death," cried Poldoody.
"I always thought Fwank was the duke's illicit gweatgwandson," drawled out De Boots.
"I heard that he doctored her Blenheim, and used to bring her wigs from Paris," cried that malicious Tom Protocol, whose mots are known in every diplomatic salon from Petersburg to Palermo.
"Burn her wigs and hang her poodle!" said Bagnigge. "Tell me about this girl, Franklin Fox."
"In the first place, she has five hundred thousand acres, in a ring fence in Norfolk; a county in Scotland, a castle in Wales, a villa at Richmond, a corner house in Belgrave Square, and eighty thousand a year in the three-per-cents."
"Apres?" said Bagnigge, still yawning.
"Secondly, Borodino lui fait la cour. They are cousins, her mother was an Armagnac of the emigration; the old Marshal, his father, married another sister. I believe he was footman in the family, before Napoleon princified him."
"No, no, he was second coachman," Tom Protocol good-naturedly interposed--"a cavalry officer, Frank, not an infantry man."
"'Faith you should have seen his fury (the young one's, I mean) when he found me in the duchess's room this evening, tete-a-tete with the heiress, who deigned to receive a bouquet from this hand."
"It cost me three guineas," poor Frank said, with a shrug and a sigh, "and that Covent Garden scoundrel gives no credit: but she took the flowers;--eh, Bagnigge?"
"And flung them to Alboni," the Peer replied, with a haughty sneer. And poor little Franklin Fox was compelled to own that she had.
The maitre d'hotel here announced that supper was served. It was remarked that even the coulis de dindonneau made no impression on Bagnigge that night.
II.
The sensation produced by the debut of Amethyst Pimlico at the court of the sovereign, and in the salons of the beau-monde, was such as has seldom been created by the appearance of any other beauty. The men were raving with love, and the women with jealousy. Her eyes, her beauty, her wit, her grace, her ton, caused a perfect fureur of admiration or envy.
Introduced by the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe, along with her Grace's daughters, the Ladies Gwendoline and Gwinever Portcullis, the heiress's regal beauty quite flung her cousins' simple charms into the shade, and blazed with a splendor which caused all "minor lights" to twinkle faintly. Before a day the beau-monde, before a week even the vulgarians of the rest of the town, rang with the fame of her charms; and while the dandies and the beauties were raving about her, or tearing her to pieces in May Fair, even Mrs. Dobbs (who had been to the pit of the "Hoperer" in a green turban and a crumpled yellow satin) talked about the great HAIRESS to her D. in Bloomsbury Square.
Crowds went to Squab and Lynch's, in Long Acre, to examine the carriages building for her, so faultless, so splendid, so quiet, so odiously unostentatious and provokingly simple! Besides the ancestral services of argenterie and vaisselle plate, contained in a hundred and seventy-six plate-chests at Messrs. Childs', Rumble and Briggs prepared a gold service, and Garraway, of the Haymarket, a service of the Benvenuto Cellini pattern, which were the admiration of all London. Before a month it is a fact that the wretched haberdashers in the city exhibited the blue stocks, called "Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:" long before that, the monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline's, or sent couriers to Madame Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of her dresses; but, as the Mantuan bard observes, "Non cuivis contigit,"--every foot cannot accommodate itself to the chaussure of Cinderella.
With all this splendor, this worship, this beauty; with these cheers following her, and these crowds at her feet, was Amethyst happy? Ah, no! It is not under the necklace the most brilliant that Briggs and Rumble can supply, it is not in Lynch's best cushioned chariot that the heart is most at ease. "Que je me ruinerai," says Fronsac in a letter to Bossuet, "si je savais ou acheter le bonheur!"
With all her riches, with all her splendor, Amethyst was wretched--wretched, because lonely; wretched, because her loving heart had nothing to cling to. Her splendid mansion was a convent; no male person even entered it, except Franklin Fox, (who counted for nothing,) and the duchess's family, her kinsman old Lord Humpington, his friend old Sir John Fogey, and her cousin, the odious, odious Borodino.
The Prince de Borodino declared openly that Amethyst was engaged to him. Crible de dettes, it is no wonder that he should choose such an opportunity to refaire sa fortune. He gave out that he would kill any man who should cast an eye on the heiress, and the monster kept his word. Major Grigg, of the Lifeguards, had already fallen by his hand at Ostend. The O'Toole, who had met her on the Rhine, had received a ball in his shoulder at Coblentz, and did not care to resume so dangerous a courtship. Borodino could snuff a bougie at a hundred and fifty yards. He could beat Bertrand or Alexander Dumas himself with the small-sword: he was the dragon that watched this pomme d'or, and very few persons were now inclined to face a champion si redoutable.
Over a salmi d'escargot at the "Coventry," the dandies whom we introduced in our last volume were assembled, there talking of the heiress; and her story was told by Franklin Fox to Lord Bagnigge, who, for a wonder, was interested in the tale. Borodino's pretensions were discussed, and the way in which the fair Amethyst was confined. Fitzbattleaxe House, in Belgrave Square, is--as everybody knows--the next mansion to that occupied by Amethyst. A communication was made between the two houses. She never went out except accompanied by the duchess's guard, which it was impossible to overcome.
"Impossible! Nothing's impossible," said Lord Bagnigge.
"I bet you what you like you don't get in," said the young Marquis of Martingale.
"I bet you a thousand ponies I stop a week in the heiress's house before the season's over," Lord Bagnigge replied with a yawn; and the bet was registered with shouts of applause.
But it seemed as if the Fates had determined against Lord Bagnigge, for the very next day, riding in the Park, his horse fell with him; he was carried home to his house with a fractured limb and a dislocated shoulder; and the doctor's bulletins pronounced him to be in the most dangerous state.
Martingale was a married man,