He sat with his mouth wide open—of course, I refer to Lord Wretchingham—all the time yours truly was on the stage, and I will say no gentleman could have a more delicate regard for a young lady’s feelings than his lordship did in sending a perfect haystack of the most expensive hothouse flowers addressed to Miss Tossie Trilbina, with a diamond and turquoise muff-chain twined round the moss handle of the basket, and not a speck of address on the card for my poor dear mother to return the jewelry to, her being over and above particular, I have often thought, in discouraging attentions that only sprang from gentlemen’s appreciation of the performance, and masked nothing the smallest objections could be taken to.
She quite warmed to Lord Wretchingham, I will say, when him being respectfully presented by the Syndicate, and me being recommended fresh country air by the doctors when suffering from tonsils in the throat, his lordship placed his motor-car at my disposal. With poor dear mother invariably in the glass compartment behind, the tongue of scandal could not possibly find a handle, and her astonishment when she discovered that Hildebrand regarded me with a warmer feeling than that of mere admiration gave her quite a turn.
We were formally engaged—me and Lord Wretchingham. We kept the thing so dark I cannot think how the newspapers managed to get hold of it. But a public favorite must pay the price of popularity in having her private affairs discussed by the crowd. My poor dear mother felt it, but there! what can you do? With interviewers calling same time as the milk, and Press snap-shotters lurking behind the laurel bushes in the front garden, is it to be wondered at that Hildebrand’s family were apprised of our betrothal not only by pars., but by the publication of our photographs, taken hand-in-hand on my poor dear mother’s doorstep, with a vine climbing up behind us, Hildebrand’s motor car, an 18.26 h. p. “Gadabout,” at the bottom of the doorsteps, with the French _chofore parley-vousing_ away a good one to the three Japanese pugs, and poor dear mother, looking a perfect lady, at her fancy-work, in the front parlor window. How the negative was obtained, and how it found its way into all the Illustrated Papers, and particularly how it got upon the postcards, I don’t pretend to guess. It’s one of those regular mysteries you come across in real life.