"Who are these little girls?" asked she, in a giggling whisper.
"Little Waylands? Then it is true," she cried, with a peal of shrill
laughter. "There are three of them, only Lady Belamour shuts them up
like kittens--I wonder she did not. Oh, what sport! Won't I tease
her now that I know her secret!"
"Your ladyship!" intreated Loveday in distress in an audible aside,
"you will undo me." Then coming forward, she said, "You did not
expect me at this hour, madam; but if your French copy be finished,
my Lady would like to have it at once."
"I have written it out once as well as I could," said Aurelia, "but I
have not translated it; I will find the copy."
She rose and found the stranger full before her in the doorway, gazing
at her with an enormous pair of sloe-black eyes, under heavy inky brows,
set in a hard, red-complexioned face. She burst into a loud, hoydenish
laugh as Loveday tried to stammer something about a friend of her own.
"Never mind, the murder's out, good Mrs. Abigail," she cried, "it is
me. I was determined to see the wench that has made such a fool of
young Belamour. I vow I can't guess what he means by it. Why, you
are a poor pale tallow-candle, without a bit of colour in your face.
Look at me! Shall you ever have such a complexion as mine, with ever
so much rouge?"
"I think not," said Aurelia, with one look at the peony face.
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