"For admiring or detesting seemed quite the
same to some ladies, so they did but show their power of mischief
over any poor mortal man they found in their way!"
This strange attack, though uttered in perfect good humor by the
lively old lady, following so closely the information relative to
Lady Sara Ross, summoned a fervid color into the count's face; he
looked surprised, and rather confused, at the revered speaker, who
soon gayly related what she had been told that morning by her
milliner, of "Miss Euphemia Dundas being on the point of marriage
with a young Scotch nobleman in Berwickshire; and in proof, her
elegant informant, Madame de Maradon, was making the bridal
_trousseau._"
"So much the better for all straight-going people, _ma chere
tante_" cried Pembroke; "little Phemy was no contemptible
assailant either way. Besides," added he, turning airily to his own
gentle bride, "you, my young lady, may congratulate yourself on the
same good hope. I hear that an old turf-comrade of mine is going to
take her loving sister off my hands. Come, Lord Berrington, you must
verify my report, for I learned it from you."
His lordship smiled, and answered in the affirmative, adding that a
friend of his in Lincolnshire, had written to him as most amusing
news, "That the most worthy Orson, heir of all the lands, tenements,
stables, and kennels of the doughty Sir Helerand Shafto, of that ilk,
and twenty ilks besides north of the Humber, had been discovered by
the wonderful occult penetration possessed by the exceedingly blue
sorceress-lady Miss Diana Dundas (of as many ilks north of the
Tweed), to be no Orson at all; but her very veritable Valentine, to
whom she was now preparing to give her fair and golden-garnished hand
in the course of the forthcoming month; that is, when the season of
hunting and shooting is past and gone, and the chase-wearied pair may
turn themselves, with their blown horses and hounds, to a little
wholesome rustication in their homestead fields.
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