“But!” repeated Lady Bearcroft, “I grant you there may be a but to everything in life; still it might be said civilly, as you say it, Lady Cecilia, or looked civilly, as you look it, Miss Hanley: and if that had been done, instead of being affronted, I might after all have been well enough pleased to pocket my diamonds; but nobody can without compunction pocket an affront.” Lady Cecilia was sure her mother could not mean any affront. “Oh, I do not know what she could or could not mean; but I will tell you what she did--all but threw the diamonds in my face.” “Impossible!” cried Helen. “Possible--and I will show you how, Miss Hanley. This way: just shut down the case--snap!--and across the table she threw it, just as you would deal a card in a passion, only with a Mrs. Siddons’ air to boot. I beg your pardons, both ladies, for mimicking your friend and your parent, but flesh and blood could not stand that sort of style, you know, and a little wholesome mimicry breaks no bones, and is not very offensive, I hope?” The mimicry could not indeed be very offensive, for the imitation was so utterly unlike the reality, that Lady Cecilia and Helen with difficulty repressed their smiles. “Ladies may smile, but they would smile on the wrong sides of their pretty little mouths if they had been treated as I have been--so ignominiously. I am sure I wish I had taken your advice, Miss Hanley; but the fact was, last night I did not quite believe you: I thought you were only saying the best you could to set off a friend; for, since I have been among the great, and indeed even when I lived with the little, I have met with so many fair copies of false countenances, that I could not help suspecting there might be something of that sort with your Lady Davenant, but I am entirely convinced all you told me is true, for I peeped quite close at her, lifted up the hood, and found there were not two faces under it--only one very angry one for my pains. But I declare I would rather see that than a double one, like my Lady Masham’s, with her spermaceti smile. And after all, do you know,” continued Lady Bearcroft in a right vulgarly-cordial tone--“Do you know now, really, the first anger over, I like Lady Davenant--I protest and vow, even her pride I like--it well became her--birth and all, for I hear she is straight from Charlemagne! But I was going to mention, now my recollection is coming to me, that when I began talking to her ladyship of Sir Ben’s gratitude about that place she got for him, she cut me short with her queer look, and said she was sure that Lord Davenant (and if he had been the king himself, instead of only her husband, and your father, Lady Cecilia, she could not have pronounced his name with more distinction)--she was sure, she said, that Lord Davenant would not have been instrumental in obtaining that place for Sir Benjamin Bearcroft if he had known any man more worthy of it, which indeed I did not think at the time over and above