A Lady of Quality. Frances Hodgson Burnett

set the tankard on the table with a rollicking smack, and thrust her hands in her breeches-pockets, swaying with laughter; and, indeed, ’twas ringing music, her rich great laugh, which, when she grew of riper years, was much lauded and written verses on by her numerous swains.

      “If ’twere my pleasure to go away and allow you to speak, free from the awkwardness of a young lady’s presence,” she said. “But ’tis not, as it happens, and if I stay here, I shall be a protection.”

      In truth, he required one. Sir Jeoffry broke into a torrent of blasphemy. He damned both kinsman and chaplain, and raged at the impudence of both in daring to approach him, swearing to horsewhip my lord if they ever met, and to have the chaplain kicked out of the house, and beyond the park gates themselves. But Mistress Clorinda chose to make it her whim to take it in better humour, and as a joke with a fine point to it. She laughed at her father’s storming, and while the chaplain quailed before it with pallid countenance and fairly hang-dog look, she seemed to find it but a cause for outbursts of merriment.

      “Hold thy tongue a bit, Dad,” she cried, when he had reached his loudest, “and let his reverence tell us what his message is. We have not even heard it.”

      “Want not to hear it!” shouted Sir Jeoffry. “Dost think I’ll stand his impudence? Not I!”

      “What was your message?” demanded the young lady of the chaplain. “You cannot return without delivering it. Tell it to me. I choose it shall be told.”

      The chaplain clutched and fumbled with his hat, pale, and dropping his eyes upon the floor, for very fear.

      “Pluck up thy courage, man,” said Clorinda. “I will uphold thee. The message?”

      “Your pardon, Madam—’twas this,” the chaplain faltered. “My lord commanded me to warn your honoured father—that if he did not beg you to leave off wearing—wearing—”

      “Breeches,” said Mistress Clorinda, slapping her knee.

      The chaplain blushed with modesty, though he was a man of sallow countenance.

      “No gentleman,” he went on, going more lamely at each word—“notwithstanding your great beauty—no gentleman—”

      “Would marry me?” the young lady ended for him, with merciful good-humour.

      “For if you—if a young lady be permitted to bear herself in such a manner as will cause her to be held lightly, she can make no match that will not be a dishonour to her family—and—and—”

      “And may do worse!” quoth Mistress Clo, and laughed until the room rang.

      Sir Jeoffry’s rage was such as made him like to burst; but she restrained him when he would have flung his tankard at the chaplain’s head, and amid his storm of curses bundled the poor man out of the room, picking up his hat which in his hurry and fright he let fall, and thrusting it into his hand.

      “Tell his lordship,” she said, laughing still as she spoke the final words, “that I say he is right—and I will see to it that no disgrace befalls him.”

      “Forsooth, Dad,” she said, returning, “perhaps the old son of a—”—something unmannerly—“is not so great a fool. As for me, I mean to make a fine marriage and be a great lady, and I know of none hereabouts to suit me but the old Earl of Dunstanwolde, and ’tis said he rates at all but modest women, and, in faith, he might not find breeches mannerly. I will not hunt in them again.”

      She did not, though once or twice when she was in a wild mood, and her father entertained at dinner those of his companions whom she was the most inclined to, she swaggered in among them in her daintiest suits of male attire, and caused their wine-shot eyes to gloat over her boyish-maiden charms and jaunty airs and graces.

      On the night of her fifteenth birthday Sir Jeoffry gave a great dinner to his boon companions and hers. She had herself commanded that there should be no ladies at the feast; for she chose to announce that she should appear at no more such, having the wit to see that she was too tall a young lady for childish follies, and that she had now arrived at an age when her market must be made.

      “I shall have women enough henceforth to be dull with,” she said. “Thou art but a poor match-maker, Dad, or wouldst have thought of it for me. But not once has it come into thy pate that I have no mother to angle in my cause and teach me how to cast sheep’s eyes at bachelors. Long-tailed petticoats from this time for me, and hoops and patches, and ogling over fans—until at last, if I play my cards well, some great lord will look my way and be taken by my shape and my manners.”

      “With thy shape, Clo, God knows every man will,” laughed Sir Jeoffry, “but I fear me not with thy manners. Thou hast the manners of a baggage, and they are second nature to thee.”

      “They are what I was born with,” answered Mistress Clorinda. “They came from him that begot me, and he has not since improved them. But now”—making a great sweeping curtsey, her impudent bright beauty almost dazzling his eyes—“now, after my birth-night, they will be bettered; but this one night I will have my last fling.”

      When the men trooped into the black oak wainscotted dining-hall on the eventful night, they found their audacious young hostess awaiting them in greater and more daring beauty than they had ever before beheld. She wore knee-breeches of white satin, a pink satin coat embroidered with silver roses, white silk stockings, and shoes with great buckles of brilliants, revealing a leg so round and strong and delicately moulded, and a foot so arched and slender, as surely never before, they swore one and all, woman had had to display. She met them standing jauntily astride upon the hearth, her back to the fire, and she greeted each one as he came with some pretty impudence. Her hair was tied back and powdered, her black eyes were like lodestars, drawing all men, and her colour was that of a ripe pomegranate. She had a fine, haughty little Roman nose, a mouth like a scarlet bow, a wonderful long throat, and round cleft chin. A dazzling mien indeed she possessed, and ready enough she was to shine before them. Sir Jeoffry was now elderly, having been a man of forty when united to his conjugal companion. Most of his friends were of his own age, so that it had not been with unripe youth Mistress Clorinda had been in the habit of consorting. But upon this night a newcomer was among the guests. He was a young relation of one of the older men, and having come to his kinsman’s house upon a visit, and having proved himself, in spite of his youth, to be a young fellow of humour, high courage in the hunting-field, and by no means averse either to entering upon or discussing intrigue and gallant adventure, had made himself something of a favourite. His youthful beauty for a man almost equalled that of Mistress Clorinda herself. He had an elegant, fine shape, of great strength and vigour, his countenance was delicately ruddy and handsomely featured, his curling fair hair flowed loose upon his shoulders, and, though masculine in mould, his ankle was as slender and his buckled shoe as arched as her own.

      He was, it is true, twenty-four years of age and a man, while she was but fifteen and a woman, but being so tall and built with such unusual vigour of symmetry, she was a beauteous match for him, and both being attired in fashionable masculine habit, these two pretty young fellows standing smiling saucily at each other were a charming, though singular, spectacle.

      This young man was already well known in the modish world of town for his beauty and adventurous spirit. He was indeed already a beau and conqueror of female hearts. It was suspected that he cherished a private ambition to set the modes in beauties and embroidered waistcoats himself in time, and be as renowned abroad and as much the town talk as certain other celebrated beaux had been before him. The art of ogling tenderly and of uttering soft nothings he had learned during his first season in town, and as he had a great melting blue eye, the figure of an Adonis, and a white and shapely hand for a ring, he was well equipped for conquest. He had darted many an inflaming glance at Mistress Clorinda before the first meats were removed. Even in London he had heard a vague rumour of this handsome young woman, bred among her father’s dogs, horses, and boon companions, and ripening into a beauty likely to make town faces pale. He had almost fallen into the spleen on hearing that she had left her boy’s clothes