Blanche, with pink and blue, and feathers, and flowers, and trinkets
(that wondrous invention, a chatelaine, was not extant yet, or she
would have had one, we may be sure), and a shot silk dress, and a
wonderful mantle, and a charming parasol, presented a vision of
elegance and beauty such as bewildered the eyes of Mrs. Bolton, who
was scrubbing the lodge-floor of Shepherd's Inn, and caused
Betsy-Jane, and Ameliar-Ann to look with delight.
Blanche looked on them with a smile of ineffable sweetness and
protection; like Rowena going to see Ivanhoe; like Marie Antoinette
visiting the poor in the famine; like the Marchioness of Carabas
alighting from her carriage and four at a pauper-tenant's door, and
taking from John No. II., the packet of Epsom salts for the invalid's
benefit, carrying it with her own imperial hand into the sick
room--Blanche felt a queen stepping down from her throne to visit a
subject, and enjoyed all the bland consciousness of doing a
good action.
"My good woman! I want to see Fanny--Fanny Bolton; is she here?"
Mrs.
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