In the midst of the excitement a woman of perhaps thirty years, arrayed in a peach-bloom gown and a head-dress of lace, quickly approached Esther. She was beautiful, of slender elegance, with eyes full of fire, and cheeks of a violent tint; she spoke in a high-pitched key, and altogether exhibited the assurance of a high-born lady. She promptly pounced upon the girl and dragged her away with her.
"Miss Woodville, dear Miss Woodville! I want to be your friend! Sit here, close to me."
And she murmured, with a singular mixture of affectation and passion,--
"How lovely she is! Do you know, little one, that we shall positively be obliged to institute a body-guard, like my friends, Lady Coventry and Lady Waldegrave, who go about everywhere escorted by two officers and a dozen halberdiers to keep the crowd of their admirers at a distance?"
Esther leaned towards her neighbor, a man of middle age, whose extraordinary plainness of feature rendered him in a way sympathetic and assuring. Of him she inquired the name of the lady who so burned to be her intimate friend. She learned that it was Lady Vereker, one of the most pronounced women of the world of the period. In her turn Lady Vereker hastened to inform Esther in a whisper that her neighbor was Mr. Gibbon, quite an obscure member of Parliament and a commissioner of trade.
"It is said that he has written a great work upon the Romans," added Lady Vereker maliciously, "but to my thinking he does not look capable of it."
In fact, Mr. Gibbon was paying his fair neighbor too assiduous court to please her ladyship.
As no introductions were offered at Reynolds's house, in order to avoid ceremonies of which fashionable persons were more weary than the rest of the world, Esther knew none of the guests, and would have continued in ignorance had not Mr. Gibbon named them; and he accompanied each name with some neat, incisive, mocking little phrase, the secret of which he had learned during his sojourn in France.
"That great solemn figure is Mr. Burke," he explained. "He is vastly eloquent; a huge merit in Parliament, but a sad fault at supper. He shares his solicitude between Miss Burney and his son Richard. He idolizes the boy and never loses sight of him; notice that at this moment his arm is about his neck. He makes it his constant boast that this boy will be a genius. For my part I doubt it. The Phoenix never repeats himself!"