Lady Bell, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

"Now, child, I sha'n't go any farther till her grace's chair come. In / the meantime I'll tell you who are the tops in the drawing-room, and you / may use your eyes for an honest purpose."

The speaker was old Lady Lucie Penruddock: the listener was her / grand-niece, young Lady Bell Etheredge. The occasion was a queen's / drawing-room, and the time was still that of bad country roads and dark / town streets, mobs and murders, wild ladies of quality and still wilder / sparks of fashion.

The old palace of St. James's was not less ugly in its brick mass than / it is to-day. The passages and stairs, in a nook of which Lady Lucie and / her grand-niece were ensconced, were thronged densely as usual. The / footmen, yeomen of the guard, grooms of the chamber, and stewards of / every degree, were very nearly the exact predecessors of their / successors in office. But the company, representing largely the same / historic names and aristocratic associations, were more strongly marked / as a class and sharply defined as individuals. The very court dress was / far statelier, and more splendid in its stiff gorgeousness. Who knows / now of tissues of gold and silver, of gold and silver lace by thousands / of yards, of diamond buttons, buckles, and clasps in every direction? / And the humanity which thus glowed and flashed in its outer trappings / was in proportion more potent in its inner qualities,-good or bad, / whether they shone with a chaste or a lurid light.

Lady Lucie, seventy years of age, wore a magnificent purple, green, and / gold-flowered brocade. Lady Bell, a lass of fourteen-no more, but in / those precocious days on the eve of her first presentation-wore a white / lutestring frosted with silver. Lady Lucie, a grand woman once in / proportions and traits, was still-withered, shrunk, and grey as she / showed-a striking wreck of a woman, like the ruin of a noble building or / the skeleton of a goodly tree. Lady Bell, a little girl, not a "fine / figure" any more than a "fine fortune," to her grand-aunt's open / mortification, was like a budding tuberose from the Chelsea gardens, / spangled with a finer kind of dew than falls to the lot of ordinary / roses, and invested with a rarer and more irresistible charm.

"Here comes Princess Emily to wait upon her royal niece. Be ready with / your curtsey, Bell; she has eyes for every hole and corner and every / new-comer. Perhaps she will stop and ask who you are. No, she has pushed / on to talk to Colonel Hammond of her horses, and engage him for her / loo-table to-night."

"She looks yellower in her court suit, Aunt Lucie, than when I saw her / before in a habit, with her little dog under her arm, and once in a / night-gown at Lady Campbell's, don't you remember? " said Lady Bell, not / so excited as to have lost her power of observation.

"Hush, you goose; plain daughters of handsome mothers are plentiful / enough. Your mother, Bell, was even too tall, verging on a may-pole, and / see what a small chit you are. There is the Attorney-General," said Lady / Lucie, indicating Thurlow with his shaggy eyebrows and his two gold / snuffboxes, one in each waistcoat pocket; "and yonder is his fellow / among the bishops," directing Lady Bell's attention to the burly / Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester.

"I think these men are wasted on the law and the church, Aunt Lucie," / pronounced Lady Bell, with her keen, shallow criticism.

"You think their thews and sinews are wasted, Bell. Bah! these are / wanted in all trades; but if you desire to see a son of Anak in his / right place, look at that sailor-no, I don't mean my Lord Howe, ‘Black / Dick' to his messmates, but the proper young fellow who has been at the / levée, doubtless on the strength of being appointed to a ship. He is / somewhat raw-boned and shock-headed, I own, being a Scotchman, but he / has mighty limbs, that Captain Duncan, as Lady Rothes called him."

"And is not Mr. Bruce, the great traveller, a Scotchman too? " asked Lady / Bell.

"What! the man who has drunk of the source of the Nile, and seen Tadmor / in the Wilderness? Ay, what could you expect but that he should be a / wandering Scot, deserting the barren soil at home? But I hope, for all / that, his drawings will turn out his own, for he claims to be the / descendant of a king, though a poor and rude one. And there he goes, six / feet four if he is an inch, and with the noble, handsome face of a / gallant, adventurous gentleman."

"I don't mind the gentlemen so much; their place is at the levée, ain't / it? But I am set on seeing some of the court and town beauties."

"Softly, all in good time, for here is the young duchess whom the whole / world is agog about-and bless us, she is a Scotchwoman also, with an / accent that would fright the French."

"Ah! her grace of Gordon," exclaimed Lady Bell, snapping her fan, and / getting chidden for being noisy in her excitement.

There came the young queen of quips and cranks, whose broad Scotch / accent contrasted so oddly to English ears with the extreme delicacy and / perfection of her beauty, the sole flaw in which is said to have been / the slight prominence of her square, white teeth.