The Heiress Part 9

_Enter MISS ALSCRIP and MRS. BLANDISH._

[_MISS ALSCRIP runs up to LADY EMILY and kisses her Forehead._

_Lady E._ I ask your pardon, madam, for being so awkward, but I confess I did not expect so elevated a salute.

_Miss Als._ Dear Lady Emily, I had no notion of its not being universal. In France, the touch of the lips, just between the eyebrows, has been adopted for years.

_Lady E._ I perfectly acknowledge the propriety of the custom. It is almost the only spot of the face where the touch would not risk a confusion of complexions.

_Miss Als._ He! he! he! what a pretty thought!

_Mrs. Blandish._ How I have longed for this day!--Come, let me put an end to ceremony, and join the hands of the sweetest pair that ever nature and fortune marked for connexion.

[_Joins their Hands._

_Miss Als._ Thank you, my good Blandish, though I was determined to break the ice, Lady Emily, in the first place I met you. But you were not at Lady Dovecourt's last night.

_Lady E._ [_Affectedly._] No, I went home directly from the Opera: projected the revival of a cap: read a page in the trials of Temper; went to bed and dreamed I was Belinda in the Rape of the Lock.

_Mrs. Blandish._ Elegant creature!

_Miss Als._ [_Aside._] I must have that air, if I die for it.

[_Imitating._] I too came home early; supped with my old gentleman; made him explain my marriage articles, dower, and heirs entail; read a page in a trial of divorce, and dreamed of a rose-colour equipage, with emblems, of Cupids issuing out of coronets.

_Mrs. Blandish._ Oh, you sweet twins of perfection----what equality in every thing! I have thought of a name for you--The Inseparable Inimitables.

_Miss Als._ I declare I shall like it exceedingly--one sees so few uncopied originals--the thing I cannot bear--

_Lady E._ Is vulgar imitation--I must catch the words from your mouth, to show you how we agree.

_Miss Als._ Exactly. Not that one wishes to be without affectation.

_Lady E._ Oh! mercy forbid!

_Miss Als._ But to catch a manner, and weave it, as I may say, into one's own originality.

_Mrs. Blandish._ Pretty! pretty!

_Lady E._ That's the art--Lord, if one lived entirely upon one's own whims, who would not be run out in a twelvemonth?

_Miss Als._ Dear Lady Emily, don't you dote upon folly?

_Lady E._ To ecstacy. I only despair of seeing it well kept up.

_Miss Als._ I flatter myself there is no great danger of that.

_Lady E._ You are mistaken. We have, 'tis true, some examples of the extravaganza in high life, that no other country can match; but withal, many a false sister, that starts as one would think, in the very heyday of the fantastic, yet comes to a stand-still in the midst of the course.

_Mrs. Blandish._ Poor, spiritless creatures!

_Lady E._ Do you know there is more than one d.u.c.h.ess who has been seen in the same carriage with her husband--like two doves in a basket, in the print of Conjugal Felicity; and another has been detected--I almost blush to name it--

_Mrs. Blandish._ Bless us! where? and how? and how?

_Lady E._ In nursing her own child!

_Miss Als._ Oh! barbarism!----For heaven's sake let us change the subject. You were mentioning a revived cap, Lady Emily; any thing of the Henry Quatre?

_Lady E._ Quite different. An English mob under the chin, and artless ringlets, in natural colour, that shall restore an admiration for Prior's Nut-brown Maid.

_Miss Als._ Horrid! shocking!

_Lady E._ Absolutely necessary. To be different from the rest of the world, we must now revert to nature: Make haste, or you have so much to undo, you will be left behind.

_Miss Als._ I dare say so. But who can vulgarize all at once? What will the French say?

_Lady E._ Oh, we shall have a new treaty for the interchange of fashions and follies, and then say, they will complain, as they do of other treaties, that we out manufactured them.

_Miss Als._ Fashions and follies! O what a charming contention!

_Lady E._ Yes, and one, thank Heaven, so perfectly well understood on both sides, that no counter declaration will be wanted to explain it.

_Miss Als._ [_With an affected drop of her Lip in her Laugh._] He! he!

he! he! he! he!

_Lady E._ My dear Miss Alscrip, what are you doing? I must correct you as I love you. Sure you must have observed the drop of the under lip is exploded since Lady Simpermode broke a tooth--[_Sets her Mouth affectedly._]--I am preparing the cast of the lips for the ensuing winter----thus--It is to be called the Paphian mimp.

_Miss Als._ [_Imitating._] I swear I think it pretty--I must try to get it.

_Lady E._ Nothing so easy. It is done by one cabalistical word, like a metamorphosis in the fairy tales. You have only, when before your gla.s.s, to keep p.r.o.nouncing to yourself nimini-pimini--the lips cannot fail taking their plie.

_Miss Als._ Nimini--pimini--imini, mimini--oh, it's delightfully infantine--and so innocent, to be kissing one's own lips.

_Lady E._ You have it to a charm--does it not become her infinitely, Mrs. Blandish?

_Mrs. Blandish._ Our friend's features must succeed in every grace! but never so much as in a quick change of extremes.

_Enter SERVANT._

_Serv._ Madam, Lord Gayville desires to know if you are at home?

_Miss Als._ A strange formality!

_Lady E._ [_Aside._] No brother ever came more opportunely to a sister's relief, "I have fooled it to the top of my bent."

_Miss Als._ Desire Miss Alton to come to me. [_Exit SERVANT._] Lady Emily, you must not blame me; I am supporting the cause of our s.e.x, and must punish a lover for some late inattentions--I shall not see him.

_Lady E._ Oh cruel!