It is certainly, perhaps, a misfortune in many respects for a woman to become the fashion, which was my case; for what second-rate man does not like to be in the fashion? Nay, there are few, very few, who would not affect pride in the possession of what their betters have coveted in vain! CHAPTER XXV "I beg you fifty thousand pardons," bawled Lord Petersham to me one morning from his or some other person's gay barouche, as I stood at my drawing-room balcony; "but, to save time, will you answer me one single question from your window? I only want a yes or a no as I am sure I can take your word." My house being half in the country, I begged his lordship to make as free as he pleased. "Did you," asked his lordship, forcing a little, mean-looking man, who was seated next to him, to stand up upon his two feet while I surveyed him, "did you ever see this man in your born days?" "Never, to my knowledge," was my reply. "Then you can declare, at all events, that you never made his acquaintance?" asked Petersham. "Certainly, I can: and your friend will unhesitatingly confirm the truth of what I assert." "_Tout au contraire,_" said Petersham, "he has been amusing us with an account of a former _petite affaire du coeur_ he had with you." "He does me honour," I rejoined, "although he knows I was never so completely blessed as to have been in his society." "That's quite enough," said Petersham, giving me a significant little wink with his left eye, kissing his hand, and driving off, all at the same moment. I must now return to Lord Worcester, or rather to my house in town, he having left Portsmouth to join his incensed papa and mamma at Badminton. "I have lost my parents," he wrote in one of his letters. "They refuse to acknowledge me as their son, and yet they attempt to keep me shut up here by force. This I should have resisted and have returned to you last week, but that my mother declares herself ill, and my father asserts that she is not likely ever to recover her late accouchement while her mind is so dreadfully agitated. For my part I can neither eat nor sleep, and both my father and uncle admit that they have tormented me till I am seriously ill. I implore you then, my adored, beloved, darling Harriette to come to me. I never close my eyes in sleep without awaking in the greatest fright and agony, having dreamed that you were taken away from me for ever."