Mayfair was powerfully and profoundly stirred: elegant gentlemen, having perused these extracts from _The Polite Monitor_ hurriedly to themselves, forthwith hasted to read them aloud, and with due deliberation, to all who would listen; they were the main topic of discussion in every fashionable club and coffee-house. Fine ladies, old and young, becked and nodded over their Bohea, etc., lifted censorious eyebrows, whispered behind their fans, and, learning my lady was in town, promptly ordered coach or chair and were borne incontinent to my lady’s house in St. James’s Square, each and every armed with a copy of _The Polite Monitor_, and all eager to pour oil on the flames as lovingly as possible. Meanwhile, Herminia, Lady Barrasdaile, that spoiled child of fortune, having sworn at her meek maid and snubbed her doting Aunt Lucinda into angry revolt, sat scowling at the reflection of her beauteous self in the mirror, with this same scandalous “hateful” journal crumpled in passionate fist. “O mem,” wailed the faithful Betty, “if you’d only took my advice——” “Hold your tongue, creature!” “Yes, my lady! But if you’d only not run away——” “Peace, devilish female!” “Yes, mem! But I told you how ’twould——” Here my lady launched a hairbrush, whereat Betty squealed and vanished. “Thou’rt so wild, Herminia!” exclaimed her diminutive aunt—“so woefully, wilfully wild! Such a masterful madcap like thy poor father before thee!” “Would he were alive this day to ... cram this hateful thing down somebody’s throat!” cried my lady, hurling _The Polite Monitor_ to the floor and stamping on it. “Aye, but whose throat, child? ’Tis what all the world will be asking—whose?” “Whose, indeed!” repeated my lady between white teeth. “Let me but find him—let me but be sure!” “Heavens, Herminia!—and what then?” “Then, if I could find no better champion, I’d ... thrash or fight him myself!” “Cease, child, cease! Remit thy ravings; ’tis merest madness! Horrors, Herminia, how——” “O Aunt Lucy, a Gad’s name cease gasping out alliterations on me—do!” “Fie, miss! And you with your profane oaths and vulgar swearing indeed! Look at ye, with your great, strong body and hugeous powerful limbs! I protest thou’rt positively——” “Aunt, dare to call me ‘strapping’ or ‘buxom’ and I’ll set you atop of the armoire yonder!” “Nothing so feminine, Herminia!” retorted her very small aunt, with the utmost courage. “Brawny’s the word! Thou’rt positively brawny, a brawn——” Here a pantherine leap, a muffled scream, and my lady’s aunt, clasped in my lady’s arms, was whirled to the top of a tall press in adjacent corner, there to dangle two very small and pretty feet helplessly, to clutch and cower and whimper to be taken down. “’Faith, aunt,” quoth my lady, “to see you so, none would ever believe you were a duchess and so great a lady.” “And I don’t feel like one!” wailed the Duchess miserably. “How can I? O Herminia ... child ... my dear, prithee take me down. If I fall——”