“Eh, now! really didn’t recollect I was in black,” was all the apology he made. Lady Clonbrony was particularly vexed that the appearance of the Statira canopy should be spoiled before the effect had been seen by Lady Pococke, and Lady Chatterton, and Lady G----, Lady P----, and the Duke of V----, and a party of superlative fashionables, who had promised _to look in upon her_, but who, late as it was, had not yet arrived. They came in at last. But Lady Clonbrony had no reason to regret for their sake the Statira couch. It would have been lost upon them, as was every thing else which she had prepared with so much pains and cost to excite their admiration. They came resolute not to admire. Skilled in the art of making others unhappy, they just looked round with an air of apathy.--“Ah! you’ve had Soho!--Soho has done wonders for you here!--Vastly well!--Vastly well!--Soho’s very clever in his way!”
Others of great importance came in, full of some slight accident that had happened to themselves, or their horses, or their carriages; and, with privileged selfishness, engrossed the attention of all within their sphere of conversation. Well, Lady Clonbrony got over all this; and got over the history of a letter about a chimney that was on fire, a week ago, at the Duke of V----‘s old house, in Brecknockshire. In gratitude for the smiling patience with which she listened to him, his Grace of V---- fixed his glass to look at the Alhambra, and had just pronounced it to be “Well!--very well!” when the Dowager Lady Chatterton made a terrible discovery--a discovery that filled Lady Clonbrony with astonishment and indignation--Mr. Soho had played her false! What was her mortification, when the dowager assured her that these identical Alhambra hangings had not only been shown by Mr. Soho to the Duchess of Torcaster, but that her grace had had the refusal of them, and had actually criticised them, in consequence of Sir Horace Grant, the great traveller’s objecting to some of the proportions of the pillars--Soho had engaged to make a new set, vastly improved, by Sir Horace’s suggestions, for her Grace of Torcaster.
Now Lady Chatterton was the greatest talker extant; and she went about the rooms telling every body of her acquaintance--and she was acquainted with every body--how shamefully Soho had imposed upon poor Lady Clonbrony, protesting she could not forgive the man. “For,” said she, “though the Duchess of Torcaster had been his constant customer for ages, and his patroness, and all that, yet this does not excuse him--and Lady Clonbrony’s being a stranger, and from Ireland, makes the thing worse.” From Ireland!--that was the unkindest cut of all--but there was no remedy.