“Really very handsome, Lady Bearcroft must have been! Yes, as you say, Lady Cecilia, she is not out of blow yet certainly, only too full blown rather for some tastes--fortunately not for Sir Benjamin; he married her, you know, long ago, for her beauty; she is a very correct person--always was; but they do repeat the strangest things she says--so very odd! and they tell such curious stories, too, of the things she does.” Lady Masham then detailed a variety of anecdotes, which related chiefly to Lady Bearcroft’s household cares, which never could she with haste despatch; then came stories of her cheap magnificence and extraordinary toilette expedients. “I own,” continued Lady Masham, “that I always thought the descriptions I heard must be exaggerated; but one is compelled to acknowledge that there is here in reality a terrible want of tact. Poor Sir Benjamin! I quite pity him, he must so see it! Though not of the first water himself, yet still he must feel, when he sees Lady Bearcroft with other people! He has feeling, though nobody would guess it from his look, and he shows it too, I am told; sadly annoyed he is sometimes by her _malapropoisms_. One day, she at one end of the table and he at the other, her ladyship, in her loud voice called out to him, ‘Sir Benjamin! Sir Benjamin! this is our wedding-day!’ He, poor man, did not hear; she called out again louder, ‘Sir Benjamin, my dear, this day fifteen years ago you and I were married!’ ‘Well, my dear,’ he answered, ‘well, my dear, how can I possibly help that now!’” Pleased with the success of this anecdote, which raised a general smile, Lady Masham vouched for its perfect correctness, “she had it from one, who heard it from a person who was actually present at the time it happened.” Lady Davenant had not the least doubt of the correctness of the story, but she believed the names of the parties were different; she had heard it years ago of another person. It often happens, as she observed, to those who make themselves notoriously ridiculous, as to those who become famous for wit, that all good things in their kinds are attributed to them; though the one may have no claim to half the witticisms, and the other may not be responsible for half the absurdities for which they have the reputation. It required all Lady Masham’s politeness to look pleased, and all her candour to be quite happy to be set right as to that last anecdote. But many she had heard of Lady Bearcroft were really incredible. “Yet one would almost believe anything of her.” While she was yet speaking, Lady Bearcroft returned, and her malicious enemy, leaning back in her chair as if in expectation of the piece beginning, waited for her puppet to play or be played off.