“But the person I should have liked to have been was my mother or yours when they were young—their portraits by Richmond hanging in the Academy with a special policeman and roped off from the crowd—and that in the days of the Jersey Lily, too! Oh, it would have been glorious to have been a beauty of the eighties.”
“Yes; but one might as well have gone the whole hog, you know—been the Prince of Wales’s mistress, and that sort of thing. Your mother, of course, didn’t make such a very bad match, but mine—a miserable younger son of a Scotch laird! I mean, I think they might have done a lot better for themselves.”
“Oh, Lord! Let’s start a conversation about _our_ relations, Teresa. Edward Lane, now ...” said Arnold.
But he could not down the shrill scream of Guy, once more taking up the tale: “Well, they weren’t, of course, so cinemaish as the Sisters Gunning, for instance ... but still, it was all rather amusing ... and all these queer Victorian stunts they invented....”
“Kicking off their shoes in the middle of a reel, and that sort of thing? Uncle Jimmy says there was quite a little war in Dublin as to which was the belle of the Royal Hospital Ball, then afterwards, too, in Scotland at the Northern Meeting....”
“I should have liked to have seen them driving with Ouida in Florence—the Italians saying, _bella, bella_, when they passed them, and Ouida graciously bowing and taking it as a tribute to herself.”
Then Concha strolled in, and Rory immediately broke off his sentence, jumped up eagerly, and cried, “Grant and Cockburn, please—four buttons, lilac.”
“Oh! I bet her a pair of spats last night that I’d be down to breakfast before her. Tea or coffee? I say, I suddenly remembered in the middle of the night the name of that priceless book I was telling you about; it’s _Strawberry Leaves_, by A. Leaf—I’ll try to get it for you.”
Evidently the “angel Intimacy” had been very busy last night after Teresa had gone to bed.
Then the Doña appeared—to the surprise of her daughters, as she generally breakfasted in her room.
Her appearance was a protest. Dick had decided (most unnecessarily, she considered) to have a cold and a day in bed.
Her eye immediately fell on Teresa, and in a swift, humorous glance from top to toe she took in all the details of her toilette.