Estelle made her low reverence unnoticed, and watched with eager eyes as the slight figure entered, clad in the stately costume that was regarded as proper respect to her hostess; but the long loose sacque of blue silk was faded, the feuille-morte velvet petticoat frayed, the lace on the neck and sleeves washed and mended; there were no jewels on the sleeves, though the long gloves fitted exquisitely, no gems in the buckles of the high-heeled shoes, and the only ornament in the carefully rolled and powdered hair, a white rose.  Her face was thin and worn, with pleasant brown eyes.  Estelle could not think her as beautiful as Calypso inconsolable for Ulysses, or Antiope receiving the boar’s a head.  ‘I know she is better than either,’ thought the little maid; ‘but I wish she was more like Minerva.’

The Countesses met with the lowest of curtseys, and apologies on the one side for intrusion, on the other for deshabille, so they concluded with an embrace really affectionate, though consideration for powder made it necessarily somewhat theatrical in appearance.

These were the stiffest of days, just before formality had become unbearable, and the reaction of simplicity had set in; and Estelle had undone two desperate knots in the green and yellow silks before the preliminary compliments were over, and Lady Nithsdale arrived at the point.

‘Madame is about to rejoin Monsieur son Mari.’

‘I am about to have that happiness.’

‘That is the reason I have been bold enough to derange her.’

‘Do not mention it.  It is always a delight to see Madame la Comtesse’

’Ah! what will Madame say when she hears that it is to ask a great favour of her.’

‘Madame may reckon on me for whatever she would command.’

‘If you can grant it—­oh!  Madame,’ cried the Scottish Countess, beginning to drop her formality in her eagerness, ’we shall be for ever beholden to you, and you will make a wounded heart to sing, besides perhaps saving a noble young spirit.’

‘Madame makes me impatient to hear what she would have of me,’ said the French Countess, becoming a little on her guard, as the wife of a diplomatist, recollecting, too, that peace with George I. might mean war with the Jacobites.

’I know not whether a young kinsman of my Lord’s has ever been presented to Madame.  His name is Arthur Maxwell Hope; but we call him usually by his Christian name.’

’A tall, dark, handsome youth, almost like a Spaniard, or a picture by Vandyke?  It seems to me that I have seen him with M. le Comte.’  (Madame de Bourke could not venture on such a word as Nithsdale.)