In the rear of this brilliant figure appeared a middle-aged person in a grey silk gown and hood, and a negro page in the Fareham livery, a waiting-woman, and a tall lackey, so many being the necessary adjuncts to the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel’s state when she went abroad. Angela ran to receive her niece with a cry of rapture, and the tall slip of a girl in the flame-coloured frock was clasped to her aunt’s heart with a ruthless disregard of the beaver hat and cataract of ostrich plumage. “Prends garde d’abimer mon chapeau, p’tite tante,” cried Henriette, “’tis one of Lewin’s Nell Gwyn hats, and cost twenty guineas, without the buckle, which I stole out of father’s shoe t’other day. His lordship is so careless about his clothes that he wore the shoes two days and never knew there was a buckle missing, and those lazy devils his servants never told him. I believe they meant to rook him of t’other buckle.” “Chatterer, chatterer, how happy I am to see thee! But is not your mother with you?” “Her ladyship is in London. Everybody of importance is scampering off to London; and no doubt will be rushing back to the country again if the Dutch take the Tower; but I don’t think they will while my father is able to raise a regiment.” “And mademoiselle”—with a curtsy to the lady in grey—“has brought you all this long way through the heat to see me?” “I have brought mademoiselle,” Henrietta answered contemptuously, before the Frenchwoman had finished the moue and the shrug which with her always preceded speech; “and a fine plague I had to make her come.” “Madame will conceive that, in miladi’s absence, it was a prodigious inconvenience to order two coaches, and travel so far. His lordship’s groom of the chambers is my witness that I protested against such an outrageous proceeding.” “Two coaches!” exclaimed Angela. “A coach-and-six for me and my dogs and my gouvernante, and a coach-and-four for my people,” explained Henriette, who had modelled her equipage and suite upon a reminiscence of the train which attended Lady Castlemaine’s visit to Chilton, as beheld from a nursery window. “Come, child, and rest, out of the sun; and you, mademoiselle, must need refreshment after so long a drive.” “Our progress through a perpetual cloud of dust and a succession of narrow lanes did indeed suggest the torments of purgatory; but the happiness of madame’s gracious welcome is an all-sufficient compensation for our fatigue,” mademoiselle replied, with a deep curtsey. “I was not tired in the least,” asserted Henriette. “We stopped at the Crown at Thame and had strawberries and milk.” “_You_ had strawberries and milk, mon enfant. I have a digestion which will not allow such liberties.”