"Indeed, Lady Standish," said Mr. Stafford, "a glass of punch will do you no harm."
"Punch?" echoed Lady Maria--then turning fiercely on her nephew: "What, my Lord!" said she, "would your mother say? Why you are positively reeking with the dissolute fumes!"
"My dear Lady Maria," interposed the urbane Stafford, "a mere cordial, a grateful fragrance to heighten the heart after fatigue and emotions, a sovereign thing, madam, against the night air--the warmest antidote! A sip of it, I assure you, would vastly restore you."
"I," she said, "I, drink with the profligate and the wanton! The deceiving husband and the treacherous friend!" She gave the fiercer refusal for that she felt so strongly in her old bones the charm of his description.
"Pooh, pooh! my dear ladies, if that is all," said Mr. Stafford, "then, by Heaven, let the glass circulate at once! Indeed, your La'ship," turning to Lady Standish, "so far from our good Jasper having anything to say to Mistress Bellairs's presence here to-night, let me assure you that he and I set out alone at an early hour this evening, with no other object but to be of service to your ladyship--whom your anxious husband had been led to believe was likely to come this way ... somewhat--ah--unsuitably protected, as he thought."
Then he bent down and whispered into Lady Standish's pretty ear (which she willingly enough lent to such consoling assurances): "As for your friend," he went on, "our delightful if volatile Bellairs--she came here with a vastly different person to Sir Jasper: poor O'Hara yonder--who's drinking all the punch! She will tell you herself how it happened.... But, gracious stars, my _dear_ Lady Maria, have you not yet been given a glass of the--of Mr. O'Hara's restorative!"
"Allow me," cried Kitty, who, having just settled Sir Jasper's business for him, had now freedom to place her energies elsewhere. "Dearest Lady Maria--how sweet of you to join us in our little reconciliation feast!" She took a brimming glass from O'Hara's hands and held it, with a winning smile, for Lady Maria's acceptance.
"Madam," responded the matron, scowled, drew her voluminous skirts together and became impenetrably deaf.
"Ah," cried the widow in her topmost notes, "Madam, how I should have revered such a relative as yourself! Next to the joy of calling my Lord Verney's mother, _my_ mother, would have been that of calling his aunt, _my_ aunt! But the dream is over. Lord Verney and I can never be more to each other than we are now."