The day was hot, and my Lady’s big bed-chamber a delicious cave of coolness after the highly-elevated atmosphere of Lydia’s own parlour. The amber curtains were drawn before the big windows; there was a shining sea of parquet floor on which delicate French furniture made here and there an attractive island. An immense bunch of roses on the spindle-legged dressing-table just caught the breeze from the wide-open window, and wafted fragrance. My Lady herself, extended in a vapour of white muslin on an amber satin couch, lazily fanning herself, was as agreeable a spectacle as any heated young woman with refined tastes could hope to gaze upon. “Sit down, Miss Pounce,” said Kitty affably. “(Lydia, get out the bandbox with the saffron head.) Now, my dear, good, kind creature, look at it. Yes! I know. ’Tis the sweetest thing I’ve laid eyes on this season, but conceive my horror, Miss Pounce, when I heard anon that Her Majesty was to be present at the Duchess of Portland’s to-night. Conceive my horror! I saw myself with the Queen’s eyes! I tell you, Miss Pounce, my days at Court would have been counted.” Here Lydia was heard to murmur, with the familiarity of long service, and a backward scratch at her niece that she was tired telling her Ladyship that the last year’s head from Madame Eglantine, which her Ladyship had never worn but the once, would be the very thing for her to wear to-night, “and a genteel, tasty, Frenchy confection it was,” which her Ladyship wouldn’t better not if she ransacked Bond Street. “I tell you, you perverse piece,” cried her mistress, fanning herself with an energy calculated to make even the spectator feel hot, “that turn myself into a frump with a last year’s mode, I’ll not do, even to please the Queen. Pamela, child, I’ve set my heart on the saffron head. I vow and protest those gold ospreys with the cluster of saffron roses and the little wreath of green leaves between, I vow and protest ’tis the very dream to go with my India gold-embroidered gown. ’Tis there on the bed, my dear, as fine as a cobweb! There’ll not be another like it in the room. And there’s never anything so elegant as white and gold of a hot night. With my dark eyes, Pamela, and the gold ospreys--oh, but the gold ospreys, so airy, so fly-away! And Her Majesty who will not even tolerate feathers! I’d have worn my high band of diamonds--pshaw! it grieves me to the very soul! What can you suggest?”