'

The Countesses met with the lowest of curtseys, and apologies on the one
side for intrusion, on the other for _deshabille_, so they concluded with
an embrace really affectionate, though consideration for powder made it
necessarily somewhat theatrical in appearance.

These were the stiffest of days, just before formality had become
unbearable, and the reaction of simplicity had set in; and Estelle had
undone two desperate knots in the green and yellow silks before the
preliminary compliments were over, and Lady Nithsdale arrived at the
point.

'Madame is about to rejoin _Monsieur son Mari_.'

'I am about to have that happiness.'

'That is the reason I have been bold enough to derange her.'

'Do not mention it. It is always a delight to see _Madame la Comtesse_.'

'Ah! what will Madame say when she hears that it is to ask a great favour
of her.'

'Madame may reckon on me for whatever she would command.'

'If you can grant it--oh! Madame,' cried the Scottish Countess,
beginning to drop her formality in her eagerness, 'we shall be for ever
beholden to you, and you will make a wounded heart to sing, besides
perhaps saving a noble young spirit.'

'Madame makes me impatient to hear what she would have of me,' said the
French Countess, becoming a little on her guard, as the wife of a
diplomatist, recollecting, too, that peace with George I. might mean war
with the Jacobites.

'I know not whether a young kinsman of my Lord's has ever been presented
to Madame. His name is Arthur Maxwell Hope; but we call him usually by
his Christian name.'

'A tall, dark, handsome youth, almost like a Spaniard, or a picture by
Vandyke? It seems to me that I have seen him with M. le Comte.' (Madame
de Bourke could not venture on such a word as Nithsdale.)

'Madame is right. The mother of the boy is a Maxwell, a cousin not far
removed from my Lord, but he could not hinder her from being given in
marriage as second wife to Sir David Hope, already an old man. He was
good to her, but when he died, the sons by the first wife were harsh and
unkind to her and to her son, of whom they had always been jealous. The
eldest was a creature of my Lord Stair, and altogether a Whig; indeed, he
now holds an office at the Court of the Elector of Hanover, and has been
created one of _his_ peers. (The scorn with which the gentle Winifred
uttered those words was worth seeing, and the other noble lady gave a
little derisive laugh.) 'These h