"
"All the town! Why, there is no one in London!"
"Indeed, you mistake. Travelling is so easy nowadays. People tear to and
fro between Tunbridge and St James's as often as they once circulated
betwixt London and Chelsea. Were it not for the highwaymen we should be
always on the road."
Angela and her niece were on the terrace in the evening coolness. The
atmosphere was less oppressive here by the flowing tide than anywhere
else in London; but even here there was a heaviness in the night air, and
Henriette sprawled her long thin legs wearily on the cushioned bench where
she lay, and vowed that it would be sheer folly for Priscilla to insist
upon her going to bed at her usual hour of nine, when everybody knew she
could not sleep.
"I scarce closed my eyes last night," she protested, "and I had half a
mind to put on a petticoat and come down to the terrace. I could have come
through the yellow drawing-room, where the men usually forget to close the
shutters. And I should have brought my theorbo and serenaded you. Should
you have taken me for a fairy, chere, if you had heard me singing?"
"I should have taken you for a very silly little person who wanted to
frighten her friends by catching an inflammation of the lungs.
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