CHAPTER VII. NINN Pride, of all others, the most dangerous fault, THE day fixed for the Limerick Assembly arrived. Lady Louisa's English maid, Mrs. Dillon, vied with her still more fashionable French attendant, Mrs. Le Mercier, in doing ample justice to the gifts Geraldine had so lavishly received from nature. Katherine Lawless, though nearly reduced to the rank of a supernumerary, still asserted her right to preside at the toilet of her darling, and maintained it by expressing her dissatisfaction at every thing that had been done, as soon as the other gentlewomen were withdrawn.— "Now, Miss, you fancy you look remarkably well; and, to my mind, you never was was so ill-dressed in your life: your hair all hanging down your neck, like a mermaid, and your petticoat all trimmed and frenchified, and like I don't-know-what myself. Twas not the way your mother dressed, that I promise you! no, Miss Geraldine, nor any of the family.” Whether from a mind ill at ease with itself, or some other cause, Lawless was subject to fits of ill-humour, which nothing but a temper so unalterably sweet as Geraldine's could have endured, and which formed the strongest contrast with the acquired polish of the other domestics. Our heroine always mentally balanced this defect against the faithful, tried, and enthusiastic attachment of this half-savage, but affectionate creature; and though she regretted the present fit as ill-timed, took no further notice of it than by trying to smile it away. Her toilet was now completed; and having just given the "deux coup d'œils au miroir," without which the French poet, Gresset, says, no female would quit the the task of dress, not even a nun descending to the parlour, Geraldine said to her attendant, in a flow of youthful gaiety— "Dear nurse Lawless, would you not like to see us this evening?" "What to do, ma'am? Is it to look on at the quality dancing? Why then, indeed, Miss, to tell you the rale truth, I would nat. You know, Miss Geraldine, as you made it a point with me, I went to the gallery with lady Vesey's folks, whin you was all at the concert at Limerick; but, in troth, and the music so bothered the singing, myself couldn't extinguish the voices from the pianas and fiddles. To be sure, you was very genteel, and took care I paid nothing for getting in gratis; but it soon grew so hot, and so crowded, I'd have given a golden guinea, if I had it, to get out gratis, that I promise you. Then, Miss, that comical great coat, the silk pelisse, you give me, didn't become me at all at all." ་ Say no more, nurse Lawless," exclaim ed ed Geraldine, hardly able to preserve her gravity; "another time I will not seek to force pleasure on you, that I promise you." As, with arch gaiety, she repeated the favourite phrase of her old follower, Lawless looked a little confused; and, as if desirous, yet fearful, of satisfying her curiosity, by asking a question, remained a moment meditating how to introduce the subject she wished. At length she said. "May I make bould, Miss, to know whether the Miss Pendennises is to be with my lady's party at the ball ?" On Geraldine's answering in the affirmative "Well," resumed Lawless, with more spirit, "if there's any thing in this wide world I do hate (and she had the art of giving to the word haate, as she pronounced it, a force and breadth of expres sion peculiar to her disposition and country), it is the whole kit of them upstart Pendennises." Geraldine had often observed her old favourite take unfounded and violent dis likes to persons who had no other fault than that of being strangers; she therefore did not stop to inquire into this; and Katherine, having vented her ill-humour, condescended to look with more complacency on Geraldine's decorations, and to say-"Well, to be sure, fashions may be altered since my day, and you are a lovely figure, Miss Geraldine, there's no denying that, and couldn't look more iligant if my lady-lieutenant was in it itself. You are going where you will be admired by plenty and plenty of fine gentlemen; but have a care, dear child, and rimimber all is not gold that glitters: and, oh, Miss Geraldine, dear! there is but one thing would be after entirely making me die of grief that you would marry a gentleman who couldn't keep you a coach! I look to your being an honour to the family yet, in spite of the saying" Here she stopped, and looked earnestly at Geraldine, who was surprised to observe tears fast coursing one another down her cheeks. |
