The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden

Author:Emily Eden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Romance

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE IMPORTANT MORNING CAME, and with it the four carriages and four, and Lady Portmore, resplendent in feathers and silks, and much to he admired, till Helen came in, looking like a genuine angel, so soft and white and bright. It is difficult for the unlearned to explain the component parts of a becoming dress, but some of the party observed that the embroidery on her silk pelisse must have been done at Lyons, to which Mrs. Douglas subjoined the oracular remark, “that it was a pity that it was white upon white.” There was also a quantity of shining lace, ordinarily, I believe, termed blonde, floating about, and forming an admirable cloud for the angel to float on.

“Well, Helen, you have gone and done it,” said Ernest.

“Am not I ‘bien mise’?” she said, blushing; “I have really taken a great deal of pains about my dress, that the people at N may approve of Lord Teviot’s taste. You know it is my first appearance there.”

“And mine,” said Lady Portmore.

“And mine,” added Mrs. Douglas, in a tone that made everybody laugh except Lady Portmore, and she went on, never minding.

“But, my dear Helen, we must not expect to attract much notice to-day. There stands the real lion.”

“My importance as a lion will not come into play till I begin roaring,” said Mr. G., “and my constituents will be glad to have something to look upon, even if they deign to listen to me. Really, my dear Teviot,” he whispered as Helen moved on, “I never saw such perfection. I cannot take my eyes from her.”

Such a speech from any other man would have given Lord Teviot a jet-black fit of jealousy, but it delighted him from Mr. G., who had established a right to make a little solemn political love to all the distinguished beauties of the day, and it was by no means a mere measure of custom and courtesy. He was as busy about his little flirtations, and as absorbed in his little sentiments, as if he had been a Lord Somebody Something just gone into the Guards, and doing his first London season, and nobody thought it odd. Half the women in London unblushingly paid court to him, and nobody said it was scandalous. If he got away from the House of Commons and came to a party, there was a sort of rustling sensation in the room, and two or three of his reigning loves immediately got up and made a circle round him, and drew their chairs close to his, and hated each other, and were as eager in their rivalries as if he had been thirty years younger, and were not absorbed in politics eleven hours out of every twelve.

Lady Teviot had taken his fancy prodigiously, and his unrivalled powers of pleasing were exerted for this young creature as if he were her own contemporary. Again, Lady Portmore was puzzled, — in another point she was baffled. She wished to be in the

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