The Master of the Ceremonies. Fenn George Manville

it an honour, but my powers here are limited, and – ”

      “Rubbish!”

      “You’ll pardon me?”

      “I say – rubbish, Denville.”

      “Mamma, will you hold your tongue?”

      “No, miss; if it comes to that, I won’t! Speaking like that to your own mother, who’s always working for you as I am, right out here on the open cliff, where goodness knows who mayn’t – ”

      “Mother, be silent!”

      “Silent, indeed!”

      “Ladies, ladies, you’ll pardon me. I say my powers here are – er – very limited.”

      “Yes, I know all about that, but you must get invitations for mamma and me for the next Assembly.”

      “I’ll try, Miss Dean, but – you’ll pardon me – ”

      “There, don’t shilly-shally with him, Betsy; it’s all business. Look here, Denville, the day the invitations come there’ll be five guineas wrapped up in silver paper under the chayny shepherdess on my droring-room mantelpiece, if you’ll just call and look under.”

      “Really, Mrs Dean, you – you shock me. I could not think of – er – really – er – I will try my best.”

      “That you will, I know, Mr Denville. Don’t take any notice of mamma I hope Miss Denville and Mrs Burnett are well.”

      “In the best of health, Miss Dean, I thank you. I will – er – do my best. A lovely morning, Mrs Dean. Your humble servant. Miss Cora, yours. Good-morning.”

      “A nasty old humbug; but he’ll have the invitations sent,” said Mrs Dean, a big, well-developed, well-preserved woman of fifty, with bright dark eyes that glistened and shone like pebbles polished by the constant attrition of the blinking lids.

      “I wish you would not be so horridly coarse, mother; and if you don’t drop that ‘Betsy’ we shall quarrel,” said the younger lady, who bore a sufficient likeness to the elder for anyone to have stamped them mother and daughter, though the latter was wanting in her parent’s hardness of outline, being a magnificent specimen of womanly beauty. Dark and thoroughly classic of feature, large-eyed, full-lipped, perhaps rather too highly coloured, but this was carried off by the luxuriant black hair, worn in large ringlets flowing down either side of the rounded cheeks they half concealed, by her well-arched black brows and long dark lashes, which shaded her great swimming eyes. Her figure was perfect, and she was in full possession of the ripest womanly beauty, as she walked slowly and with haughty carriage along the cliff, beside the elder dame.

      Both ladies were dressed in the very height of the fashion, with enormous wide-spreading open bonnets, heavy with ostrich plumes, tightly-fitting dresses, with broad waistbands well up under the arms, loose scarves, long gloves and reticules ornamented with huge bows of the stiffest silk, like Brobdingnagian butterflies.

      “Horrid, coarse indeed! I suppose I mustn’t open my mouth next,” said the elder lady.

      “It would be just as well not,” said the younger, “when we are out.”

      “Then I shall open it as wide as I like, ma’am, and when I like, so now then, Betsy.”

      “As you please; only if you do, I shall go home, and I shall not go to Assembly or ball with you. It was your wish that I should be Cora.”

      “No, it wasn’t. I wanted Coral, or Coralie, miss.”

      “And I preferred Cora,” said the younger lady with languid hauteur, as if she were practising a part, “and you are always blurting out Betsy.”

      “Blurting! There’s a way to speak to your poor mother, who has made the lady of you that you are. Carriages and diamonds, and grand dinners, and – ”

      “The smell of the orange peel, and the candles, and the memory of the theatre tacked on to me. ‘Actress!’ you can see every fine madam we pass say with her eyes, as she draws her skirt aside and turns from me as if I polluted the cliff. I’ve a deal to be proud of,” cried the younger woman fiercely. “For heaven’s sake, hold your tongue!”

      “Don’t go on like that, Betsy – Cora, I mean, my dear. Let ’em sneer. If your poor, dear, dead father did keep a show – well, there, don’t bite me, Bet – Cora —theatre, and make his money, it’s nothing to them, and you’ll make a marriage yet, as’ll surprise some of ’em if you plays your cards proper!”

      “Mother!”

      “Say mamma, my dear, now; and do smooth down, my beauty. There, there, there! I didn’t mean to upset you. There’s Lord Carboro’ coming. Don’t let him see we’ve been quarrelling again. I don’t know, though,” she added softly, as she noticed her child’s heightened colour and heaving bosom; “it do make you look so ’andsome, my dear.”

      “Pish!”

      “It do, really. What a beauty you are, Cora. I don’t wonder at the fools going mad after you and toasting you – as may be a countess if you like.”

      “Turn 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