The livelong day Lady Standish had not beheld the light of her lord's countenance.
Upon their last meeting, his behaviour to the Bishop having roused in her gentle bosom a feeling as nearly akin to resentment as it was capable of harbouring, she would not be (she had resolved) the one to seek him first. She had, therefore, passed the day in her own apartment in writing to her mother, and in practising her last song to the harp—a piece of audacity and independence which she expected would have goaded Sir Jasper into an instant interview with herself.
When the dusk rose, however, and the candles were brought in by the round-eyed handmaid, whose ministrations replaced those of Megrim (the latter was still packing, and seemed like to take some weeks in the process), and the said round-eyed damsel immediately began to inform her mistress that Sir Jasper had set forth in his coach, Lady Standish's small flame of courage began to flicker woefully.
"Alone?" she asked in white dismay.
"Please, my lady, Mr. Bowles was driving, and there was Mr. Thomas behind, my lady."
"Pshaw, girl! Did Sir Jasper take any luggage?"
"Oh yes, my lady; there was his yellow bag, Mr. Toombs says, and a small wooden case."
"Heavens!" cried Lady Standish, with increasing alarm. "And whither went they?"
"Please, my lady, Mr. Toombs says they took the London Road."
Fain would the round-eyed maid have lingered and told more, but Lady Standish waved her hand faintly, and so dismissed her.
An hour later, Lydia, brisk with importance, and sparkling with conscious power, found the much-tried soul sunk in a sort of apathetic weariness of misery.
"Mistress Bellairs' love, my lady, and will you read this letter at once?"
Lady Standish took the letter from the black-mittened hand.
"Please my lady, 'tis of the utmost importance," said Lydia, "and I was to wait and see if I could not be of use to you."
Something magnetic in the girl's lively tone gave impetus to Lady Standish's suspended energies. She broke the seal.
"My sweet child," wrote Mistress Kitty. "If you want to know what has become of your husband, you will instantly take a chaise and start off for the Black Bear at Devizes.
"Your true friend,"K. B.
"Postscriptum.—Do not go alone. Get some old hag (if possible Lady Maria Prideaux) to accompany you. You will find her in the Assembly Rooms. She's as curious as our first mother—you can easily persuade her.This is good advice!"
"I am much too ill," cried Lady Standish, upon a moan. "Tell your mistress," said she, looking vaguely in Lydia's direction, "that indeed 'tis quite impossible I should do as she suggests."
"Very well, my lady," said Lydia cheerfully. "I'm sure I shouldn't trouble myself if I was you. Gentlemenmusthave their diversions, I always say. If ladies would but shut their eyes a little more, 'twould be for the peace of all parties. Indeed, my lady, though my mistress would be angry to hear me say so, I'd go to bed, for you look sorely tired, and Sir Jasper'll be glad enough to come home bye-and-bye."
"Wretched girl," cried Julia, and her eyes flashed, "what dost thou mean?"
"La, now!" said Lydia, all innocence, "how my tongue do run away with me, to be sure! Why, my lady, what can a poor servant-maid like me know of the goings on of gentles? 'Tis but a few words of gossip here and there."
"Oh, merciful heavens,whatgossip mean you?"
"My lady, have a sip ofvolatile, do! Oh, my mistress would be like to kill me if she knew what I've been saying! 'Poor Julia,' she cried when she got the news. 'Poor Julia, my poor confiding Julia! Oh, the villain, the monster!'"
"Good God, and whom did she refer to?"
"Lud, madam, how can I tell? 'It shall not be!' cries my mistress, and down she sits and writes off to you, as if for bare life."
Lady Standish, rising from her seat, rushed to the light, and with starting eyes and bristling hair began to read afresh her fond Kitty's missive.
"La, my lady," cried the guileless Lydia, "you're all of a shake! I'd never be that upset about Sir Jasper. Why, if your la'ship'll allow me to say so, all Bath knows how jealous he is of your la'ship; and, certain that shows a husband's affection."
"True," cried Julia, "that's true, girl!"
"And as for those who say, my lady, that some men are so artful that they put on a deal of jealousy to cover a deal of fickleness, I'd despise myself if I was to pay heed to such mean suspiciousness."
"My cloak!" cried Lady Standish. "Megrim, Susan!" She flew to the hall. "My cloak, let a post-chaise be ordered immediately!"
"If I may make so bold, my lady," said Lydia, retiring gracefully upon the conviction of a well-accomplished errand, "don't forget to take Lady Maria with you, if you can. The gentlemen have such a way of turning tables on us poor women—at least," said the damsel demurely, "so I've heard said. And 'tis a long lonely road, my lady!"
Mistress Bellairs took her departure early.
Attired in unusually sober colours, floating in an atmosphere of chastened, matronly dignity, she had shown herself this evening, thought Lord Verney, quite worthy to be his mother's daughter-in-law.
"Monstrous dull," Lady Flyte called the pretty widow's demeanour.
Beyond agavottewith Lord Verney, she had not danced, but sat for half-an-hour on the chair next to Lady Maria, who presented her with the vision of a shoulder-blade which had seen better days, and an impenetrability of hearing which baffled even Kitty's undaunted energy.
When Verney had tucked her up in her sedan she insisted upon the young peer allowing her to proceed home unescorted.
"Indeed," said she, "I pray you, nay, I order you. People talk so in this giddy place, and have you not your aged aunt to wait upon? I am sure," said Mistress Kitty piously, "that your dear mother would wish it thus."
He submitted. He had no doubt that his mother would indeed entirely concur with such sentiments, and blessed his Kitty for her sweet reasonableness.
"Good-night, then," she said, thrusting her pretty face out of the window with a very tender and gentle smile.
"Good-night," he replied, with his young, gracefully-awkward bow.
She fully expected to hear his footstep pursue the chairman, for she had not been able to refrain from throwing her utmost fascination into that parting look. But nothing broke the silence of the parade save the measured slouching tramp of the bearers.
At once disappointed and relieved, she threw herself back in her seat.
"What, not a spark left," said she, "of the fine flame 'twas so easy to kindle this morning! 'Tis the very type of the odious British husband. Let him be but sure of you, and the creature struts as confident of his mastery as the cock among his hens. Lord!" she shuddered, "what an escape I have had! We women are apt to fancy that very young men are like very young peas, the greener, the tenderer, the better; whereas," said the lady, with a sigh, "they are but like young wine, crude where we look for strength, all head and no body, and vastly poor upon the palate."
She sighed again, and closed her eyes, waiting for the moment of the impending catastrophe with a delicate composure.
In truth, Mr. O'Hara conducted the performance with so muchbrioas to convince Mistress Bellairs that he must have had previous experience of the kind.
At the dark appointed corner the two muffled individuals who, each selecting his own astonished chairman, enlaced him with overwhelming brotherly affection, seemed such thorough-paced ruffians in the dim light, that Mistress Kitty found it quite natural to scream—and even had some difficulty in keeping her distressful note down to the pitch of necessary discretion.
And her heart fluttered with a sensation of fear, convincing enough to produce quite a delightful illusion, when she found herself bodily lifted out of her nest and rapidly carried through the darkness in an irresistibly close and strong embrace.
"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the lady, in a modulated sequence of little shrieks.
"Merciful heavens!" she thought to herself, with a great thump of the heart, astonished at her ravisher's silence, "what if it should be someone else after all?"
But the next instant the rich brogue of a tender whisper in her ear dispelled all doubt.
"You've forgotten the scratches, my darling," said O'Hara, as he laid her preciously upon the cushions of the chaise.
Here Mr. Mahoney and his comrade—which latter bore a curious resemblance in build and gait to one of the sporting Marquis's own celebrated gladiators—came running up to take their seats. In leaped O'Hara—the coachman lifted his whip, and the team that Phoebus might have envied started up the length of Milsom Street in style.
*****
The chairmen, drawing their breath with some difficulty after their spell of strangulation, stared in amazement at the clattering shadow as it retreated up the steep street; and then back, and in fresh amazement, at the yellow guinea which had been pressed, and now glinted, in the palm of their hands.
Presently a simultaneous smile overspread their honest countenances.
"A queer go," said the first, easing and readjusting his necklace. "Lud, the little madam did squeak!"
"I'd let them all squeak at the same price," said the other, pocketing his coin, and resuming his place in rear of the sedan. "But come, Bill, we must go report this 'orrible crime. Rabbit me!—what's that?"
A blood-curdling wail had risen out of the night, from his very elbow it seemed. It circled in frightful cadence, and died away in ghost-like fashion.
"'T—'tis but a sick cat, I hope," stammered the first chairman, and dived for the chair-poles in marked hurry.
"O—o—o—o," moaned the voice, "oh, my mistress!" There was a flutter, a patter, and: "Merciful heavens, you wretches!" cried Mistress Bellairs's devoted woman, emerging like a gust of wind from the blackest shadow of Bond Street and falling upon the nearest chairman with a well-aimed flap of her shawl, followed up by a couple of scratches. "Wretches, monsters, you've let my mistress be carried away! Oh heavens, my unhappy mistress!" cried Lydia, and rent the night with her cries.
*****
Mistress Kitty's chair had no sooner left the precincts of the Assembly Rooms when my Lady Standish's post-chaise came clattering round the corner.
Lord Verney, who was just about to go in again, arrested by curiosity, turned to wonder at a visitor who arrived in so unwonted a conveyance. Recognising Lady Standish he was somewhat abashed and somewhat disconcerted, but felt he could do no less than advance through the crowd of foot and chair men and offer his hand.
"O, pray, Lord Verney," said she in a strenuous whisper, "conduct me to your aunt, for I have great need of her help and counsel. Take me to her at once," said the poor lady, in ever-increasing agitation.
They passed through the elegant throng, she unconscious alike of recognition, comment, or titter, he feeling to his boy's marrow, the sensation created by her travelling gear and distraught appearance.
"Would I were back at Verney Hall," thought he, and found that this wish had been long gathering in his heart.
No need of an ear-trumpet for Lady Maria now. The dowager recovered her powers of hearing with almost miraculous celerity.
"Oh, Lady Maria!" said Lady Standish, holding out both her hands. And incontinently she burst into tears. "Oh, Lady Maria, Sir Jasper has left me, I am in sad trouble! I'm told he has gone to Devizes. I must follow him. You are my mother's oldest friend; will you give me the support of your company and protection?"
There was quite a buzz in the interested circle. Lady Maria nodded round, charmed with the situation; bristling with delighted curiosity, she was more like Mistress Kitty's cockatoo than ever.
"Poor young thing, poor young thing," she said, patting Lady Standish's hand; "your mother's oldest friend, quite so—quite right and proper to come to me. And so Sir Jasper's left you; so Sir Jasper's gone; and with whom, my dear?"
Lady Maria fondly believed that she spoke these last words in a gentle aside; but never had her sepulchral bass resounded more sonorously. Lady Standish's faint cry of shocked disclaimer was, however, completely drowned in the fresh rumour, lacerated by shrill feminine shrieks, which now arose in the vestibule of the Assembly Rooms and rapidly advanced.
"My Lord Verney! My mistress! Where is my Lord Verney?" wailed the distraught Lydia, who thoroughly enjoyed herrôle.
A hundred voices took up the cry; the astounding news passed from group to group: "The pretty widow has been carried off!" "Mistress Bellairs has been abducted!" And then, in counter clamour and antiphone: "and my Lady Standish is looking for Sir Jasper!"
Meanwhile, before Lord Verney, dumb and suffocating under a variety of emotions, Lydia wringing her hands and with the most thrilling notes of tragic woe (as nearly copied from Mistress Susanna Cibber as she could remember), narrated her tristful tale.
"He flung my unhappy mistress, swooning and shrieking, into the chaise. And 'Drive like the devil,' cries he in a voice of thunder to the coachman. 'I'll flay you with your own whip and hang you to your own shaft,' says he, 'if you're not in Devizes before midnight!'"
"Devizes!" cried Lady Standish with a scream. Hanging on Lydia's utterance, every word of which confirmed the awful suspicion that had entered her heart, she now could no longer doubt the real extent of her misfortune.
"Oh, Lord Verney, save my mistress!" Lydia's pipe dominated the universal chorus with piercing iteration.
And now Lady Maria's bass struck in again.
"What did I say?" cried she triumphantly. "Nevvy, you'd better go to bed! you're well out of her. Julia, my dear, don't faint, we can catch them at Devizes yet. Someone tell that wench to stop that screeching! Julia, come! You've got the chay, I understand. Fortunately, my house is near; we shall just call for Burrell and make him ride behind with his blunderbuss. Child, if you faint I wash my hands of the whole affair. We'll nip them, I tell you, if you'll only brisk up."
"I won't faint," said Lady Standish setting her teeth.
*****
Lord Verney suddenly awoke to the fact that he had been grievously injured, and that he was in a towering passion. Spluttering, he demanded vengeance of gods and men. Post-chaise, ho, and pistols, forthwith! "My sword!" cried he, feeling for the blade which, however, according to the regulations enforced by the immortal Master of the Bath Ceremonies, was absent from its natural post on his noble hip in this polite assembly.
"Come with me," cried Captain Spicer, clapping his patron on the shoulder in a burst of excitement. "I'll stand to you, of course, lad! You'll want a witness. Gad!" exclaimed the amiable Captain, "we'll have Sir Jasper's liver on the spit before crow of cock!"
The side-rays of the chaise-lamps played on the widow's soft, saucy face, threw beguiling shadows under her eyes, and fleeting dimples round those lips that seemed perpetually to invite kisses.
Cosily nestling in the corner of the carriage, her head in its black silk hood tilted back against the cushions, in the flickering uncertain gleam, there was something almost babyish in her whole appearance; something babyish, too, in her attitude of perfect confidence and enjoyment.
Denis O'Hara, with one arm extended above her head, his hand resting open on the panel, the other hand still clasping the handle of the door, gazed upon the woman who had placed herself so completely in his power, and felt smitten to the heart of him with a tenderness that was well-nigh pain. Hitherto his glib tongue had never faltered with a woman that his lips were not ready to fill the pause with a suitable caress. But not so to-day.
"What's come to me at all?" said he to himself, as, frightened by the very strength of his own passion, he could find no word at once ardent and respectful enough in which to speak it. And, indeed, "What had come to him?" was what Mistress Kitty was thinking about the same time. "And what may his arm be doing over my head?" she wondered.
"How beautiful you are!" babbled the Irishman at last.
Mistress Bellairs sat up with an angry start. It was as if she had been stung.
"Heavens!" cried she, thrusting her little forefingers into her ears. "Mr. O'Hara, if you say that again, I shall jump out of the chay."
Her eyes flashed; she looked capable of fulfilling her threat upon the spot.
"Me darling heart," said he, and had perforce to lay his hands upon her to keep her still. "Sure what else can I say to you, with my eyes upon your angel face?"
Apparently the lady's ears were not so completely stopped but that such words could penetrate.
"'Tis monstrous," said she in hot indignation, "that I should go to all this trouble to escape from the bleating of that everlasting refrain, and have it buzzed at me," she waxed incoherent under the sense of her injuries, "thus at the very outset!"
"My dear love," said he, humbly, capturing the angry, gesticulating hand, "sure me heart's so full that it's just choking me."
She felt him tremble beside her as he spoke.
Now the trembling lover was not of those that entered into Mistress Kitty's scheme of existence. She had, perhaps, reckoned, when planning her escapade, upon being made to tremble a little herself. She had certainly reckoned upon a journey this evening that should be among the most memorable in the annals of her impressions. O'Hara bashful! O'Hara tongue-tied! O'Hara with cold fingers that hardly dared to touch hers! O'Hara, the gay rattler, with constrained lips!
This was an O'Hara whose existence she had not dreamed of, and for whose acquaintance, to say the truth, she had small relish.
"What has come to you?" she cried aloud, with another burst of petulance.
"Faith," said he, "and I hardly know myself, Kitty darling. Oh, Kitty," said he, "'tis vastly well to laugh at love, and play at love; but when love comes in earnest it takes a man as it were by the throat, and it's no joke then."
"So I see," said she, with some dryness.
O'Hara clenched his hand and drew a laboured breath.
*****
Straining, slipping now and again, breaking into spurts of trot, to fall into enforced walking pace once more, the gallant team had dragged the chaise to the summit of the great rise at a speed quite unprecedented, yet comparatively slow.
Now the way lay down-hill. The coachman waved his whip. Bounding along the fair road the wheels hummed; the night-wind blowing in through the half-opened window, set Mistress Kitty's laces flapping on her bosom, and a stray curl of Mr. O'Hara's dancing on his pale forehead.
The exhilaration of the rapid flight, the crack of the whip, the mad rhythm of the hoofs, the witchery of the night hour, the risks of the situation, the very madness of the whole enterprise, all combined to set the widow's gay blood delightfully astir, mounting to her light brain like sparkling wine.
What! were all the accessories of the play to be so perfect, and was the chief character to prove such a lamentable failure in his part? What! was she, Kitty Bellairs, to be carried off by the most notorious rake in Bath, only to find him as awkward, as dumb, as embarrassed with the incomparable situation as the veriest greenhorn? "It shall not, and it cannot be," said she to herself. And thereupon she changed her tactics.
"Why," said she aloud, with the cooing note of her most melting mood, "I protest one would think, sir, that you were afraid of me."
"Aye, Kitty," said he, simply; "and so I am."
"Oh, fie!" she laughed. "And how have I alarmed you? Think of me," said she, and leaned her face towards him with a smile of archest wit, "not as a stranger, but as a sisther, as a dear, dear cousin."
His eye flamed back at her. Her merry mood was as incongruous to his sudden, storm-serious growth of passion as the gay lilt of a tambourine might be to a solemn chant.
"I think of you," he said, and there was a deep thrill in his voice, "as my wife that is to be."
And so saying he fell upon his knees in the narrow space, and tenderly kissed a fold of her lace, as one, from the knowledge of his own fire, afraid of a nearer touch.
The word "wife" had never a pleasing sound in the lovely widow's ears. From neither the past nor the future did it evoke for her an attractive picture.
Coming from those lips, by which it was the very last name she desired to hear herself called, it aroused in her as pretty a fit of fury as ever she had indulged in.
"Now, indeed, is the murder out!" she cried. "Oh, you men are all alike. As lovers—all fire, capsicums Indian suns! Bottles of Sillery always bursting! Torrents not to be stemmed.... But, lo you! let the lover once fancy himself the husband, let the vision of the coveted mistress but merge into the prospect of the secured wife.... Merciful heavens, what a change! For fire we have ice; for the red, biting capsicum, the green, cool cucumber; for joyous, foaming Sillery, the smallest ale; small ale—nay, toast and water!" cried Mistress Kitty, lashing herself to finer frenzy. "And if the mere sense of your security thus transforms the lover in you, what a pleasing prospect, indeed, lies before the wedded wife! No, thank you, sir," said the lady, and pushed the petrified O'Hara with an angry foot, "I have had one wintry, toast-and-water husband, and that shall be enough for my lifetime. Thank God, it is not too late yet!" she fumed. "I am not yet, sir, Mistress O'Hara."
And in the very midst of her indignation: "This will," she thought, "simplify the parting at Devizes." But no whit was her wrath thereby abated, that the fool should have spoiled her pretty ride.
For a moment, after the angry music of her voice had ceased to ring, there was a breathless silence, broken only by the straining progress of horses and chaise up the sides of another hill. Then O'Hara broke forth into a sort of roar of wounded tenderness, passion, and ire. Flinging himself back upon the seat, he seized her wrist in a grip, fierce, yet still gentle under its fierceness.
"How dare ye!" cried the man, "how dare ye doubt my love! Sure the flames of hell are cold compared to me this minute. May my tongue wither in my mouth, may it be cut out of my jaws and never speak a word of sense again, may I be struck dead at your feet, Kitty, for the rest of my life, if it's not gospel truth! Listen to my heart," he cried, with yet greater vehemence, pressing her captive hand against his breast, "isn't itKitty, Kitty, Kitty... that it's saying? Sure it's nothing but a bell, and your name is the clapper in it! ... And you to be railing at me because it's so much I have to say that never a word can I bring out! Oh," pursued Mr. O'Hara, waxing louder and more voluble still, "sure what could I say, with my heart in my mouth stopping the way? Look at it, you cruel woman; isn't it all yours, and aren't you sticking pins into it for sheer devilment, this minute? God forgive me, that I should say such a thing of an angel! Look at it, now, Kitty! Is that the heart of a cucumber? ... If you had said a love-apple itself.... Och, indeed, it's the real cool cucumber I am, and it's toast and water that's running through my veins like fire! ... Laugh, madam, laugh, it's a grand joke entirely! Make a pin-cushion of the cucumber! See, now, is that small ale that bursts from the wounds? Upon my soul," he cried, arrived at the height of his tempest, "I have a mind to show you the colour of it!"
He reached violently towards the back seat for his sword as he spoke, and Mistress Bellairs, suddenly arrested in her delighted paroxysm, was sufficiently convinced of the strength of his feelings to stop him with clinging hands and clamouring little notes of terror:
"O'Hara! madman!—for God's sake, Denis!"
"Ah!" cried he. "It's not hot enough I was for ye. It's the cold husband you're afraid of. Ah, Kitty, you've stirred the sleeping dog, you mustn't complain now if you can't put out the fire!"
So saying, he turned and clasped her in an embrace that left her scarcely breath to scream, had she so wished, and had indeed the kisses which he rained upon her lips allowed her space in which to place a protest.
Her light soul, her easy shallow nature, was carried as it were off its feet in the whirlwind of a passion the mere existence of which, with all her experience, she had never even guessed. To say the truth, so much as she had deemed him vastly too cold, so now she found him vastly too hot. She was a woman of niceties, an epicure in life and love, and nothing met with her favour but the delicate happy mean. This was a revelation, with a warning.
"Mr. O'Hara," she gasped, at length released, fluttering like a ruffled dove, all in anger and fear, "such treatment! For a gentleman, sir, you strangely forget yourself." She laid her hand on the window strap. "Not a word, sir, or I will instantly give the order to turn back."
"Oh," cried the unhappy lover, and tore at his hair with desperate fingers, filling the ambient air with flakes of powder which shone silvery in the moonlight. "You drove me to it. Ah, don't be frightened of me, my darling; that hurts me the worst of all! I'm quiet now, Kitty."
His labouring breath hissed between his words, and his satin coat creaked under each quivering muscle.
"I'm as quiet as a lamb," said he; "sure a baby might put its head in my jaws—the devil's gone out of me, Kitty."
"I'm glad to hear it, sir," said she, unappeased. She sat, swelling with ruffled plumes, looking out of the window and biting her lips.
"A moon, too," she thought, and the tears almost started to her eyes, for the vexation of the wasted opportunity and the complete failure of a scene so excellently staged. "How wise, oh, how wise I was, to have secured my exit at Devizes!"
"I frightened her," thought O'Hara; and in the manly heart of him he lamented his innate masculine brutality and formed the most delicate chivalrous plans for the right cherishing in the future of the dear lady who had confided herself to him.
In the white moonlight Sir Jasper Standish paced up and down the cobble-stoned yard with as monotonous a restlessness as if he had been hired this night to act the living sign at the Bear Inn, Devizes.
Each time he passed the low open window of the inn parlour, in which sat Mr. Stafford by the dim yellow light of two long-tongued tallow candles, the baronet would pause a moment to exchange from without a few dismal words with his friend. The latter, puffing at a long clay pipe, endeavoured in the intervals to while away the heavy minutes in the perusal of some tome out of mine host's library—a unique collection and celebrated on the Bath Road.
"Tom Stafford," said Sir Jasper, for the twentieth time, "how goes the hour?"
"Damned slowly, friend," said Stafford, consulting with a yawn the most exact of three watches at his fob. "To be precise, 'tis two minutes and one third since I told you that it wanted a quarter of midnight."
Sir Jasper fell once more to his ursine perambulation, and Stafford, yawning again, flicked over a page. He had not reached the bottom of it, however, before Sir Jasper's form returned between him and the moonlight.
"What," said the injured husband, "what if they should have taken another road?"
"Then," cried Stafford, closing his book with a snap between both his palms, tossing it on to the table and stretching himself desperately, "I shall only have to fight you myself for this most insufferably dull evening that you have made me spend, when I was due at more than one rendezvous, and had promised pretty Bellairs the first minuet."
"It shall be pistols," said Sir Jasper, following his own thoughts with a sort of gloomy lust, "pistols, Tom. For either he or I shall breathe our last to-night."
"Pistols with all my heart," said Stafford, stopping his pipe with his little finger. "Only do, like a good fellow, make up your mind—just for the sake of variety. I think the last time we considered the matter, we had decided for this"—describing a neat thrust at Sir Jasper's waistcoat through the window with the long stem of his churchwarden. "There's more blood about it, Jasper," he suggested critically.
"True," murmured the other, again all indecision. "But pistols at five paces——."
"Well—yes, there's a charm about five paces, I admit," returned the second with some weariness, dropping back again into his chair. "And we can reload, you know."
"If I fall," said Sir Jasper, with the emotion which generally overtakes a man who contemplates a tragic contingency to himself, "be gentle with her. She has sinned, but she was very dear to me."
"She'll make a deuced elegant widow," said Stafford, musingly, after a little pause, during which he had conjured up Lady Standish's especial points with the judgment of a true connoisseur.
"You must conduct her back to her home," gulped Sir Jasper, a minute later, slowly thrusting in his head again. "Alack, would that I had never fetched her thence.... Had you but seen her, when I wooed and won her, Tom! A country flower, all innocence, a wild rose.... And now, deceitful, double-faced!"
"'Tis the way of the wild rose," said Stafford, philosophically. "Let you but transplant it from the native hedgerow, and before next season it grows double."
Here the speaker, who was always ready with a generous appreciation of his own conceits, threw his head back and laughed consumedly, while Sir Jasper uttered some sounds between a growl and a groan.
The volatile second in waiting wiped his eyes.
"Go to, man," cried he, turning with sudden irascibility upon his friend, "for pity's sake take that lugubrious countenance of thine out of my sight. What the devil I ever saw in thee, Jasper, to make a friend of, passes my comprehension: for, of all things, I love a fellow with a spark of wit. And thou, lad, lackest the saving grace of humour so wofully, that, in truth, I fear—well—thou art in a parlous state: I fear damnation waits thee, for 'tis incurable. What! in God's name cannot a man lose a throw in the game of happiness and yet laugh? Cannot a husbandman detect a poacher on his land and yet laugh as he sets the gin? Why," cried Mr. Stafford, warming to his thesis, and clambering lightly out of the window to seat himself on the outer sill, "strike me ugly! shall not a gentleman be ever ready to meet his fate with a smile? I vow I've never yet seen Death's head grin at me, but I've given him the grin back—split me!"
"Hark—hark!" cried Sir Jasper, pricking his strained ear, "d'ye hear?"
"Pooh!" said Mr. Stafford, "only the wind in the tree."
"Nay," cried Sir Jasper; "hush man, listen!"
An unmistakable rumbling grew upon the still night air—a confused medley of sounds which gradually unravelled themselves upon their listening ears. It was the rhythmical striking of many hoofs, the roll of wheels, the crack of a merciless whip.
"Faith and faith," cried Stafford, pleasantly exhilarated, "I believe you're right, Jasper; here they come!"
The moonlight swam blood-red before Sir Jasper's flaming eye. "Pistols or swords?" questioned he again of himself, and grasped his hilt as the nearest relief, pending the decisive moment.
Out slouched a couple of sleepy ostlers, as Master Lawrence, mine host, rang the stable bell.
Betty, the maid, threw a couple of logs on the fire, while the dame in the bar, waking from her snooze, demanded the kettle, selected some lemons, and ordered candlesticks and dips with reckless prodigality.
*****
Mistress Kitty, peering out of the carriage window, her shoulder still turned upon the unhappy and unforgiven swain, hailed the twinkling lights of theBear Innwith lively eyes.
While the chaise described an irreproachable curve round the yard, her quick glance had embraced every element of the scene. Sir Jasper's bulky figure, with folded arms, was leaning against the post of the inn door, awaiting her approach—retribution personified—capriciously illumined by the orange rays of the landlord's lantern. Out in the moonlight, shining in his pearl gray satin and powdered head, all silver from crest to shoe-buckle, like the prince of fairy lore, sat Stafford on his window-ledge, as gallant a picture to a woman's eye, the widow had time to think, as one could wish to see on such a night.
"Oh," she thought, "how we are going to enjoy ourselves at last!"
And being too true an artist to consider her mere personal convenience upon a question of effect, she resolved to defer the crisis until the ripe moment, no matter at what cost. Accordingly, even as O'Hara cried out, in tones of surprise and disgust: "Thunder and turf! my darling, if there isn't now that blethering ox, Sir Jasper!" Mistress Kitty instantly covered her face with her lace and swooned away on the Irishman's breast.
Sir Jasper charged the coach door. "Blethering ox!" he bellowed. "I'll teach you, sir, what I am! I'll teach that woman—I'll, I'll——"
Here Stafford sprang lightly to the rescue.
"For Heaven's sake," said he, "think of our names as gentlemen; let it be swords or pistols, Jasper, or swords and pistols, if you like, but not fistycuffs and collaring. Be quiet, Jasper! And you, sir," said he to O'Hara, as sternly as he could for the tripping of his laughter, "having done your best to add that to a gentleman's head which shall make his hats sit awry for the remainder of his days, do you think it generous to give his condition so precise a name?"
"O hush," cried O'Hara, in too deep distress to pay attention either to abuse or banter, "give me room, gentlemen, for God's sake. Don't you see the lady has fainted?"
With infinite precaution and tenderness he emerged from the chay with his burden, elbowing from his path on one side the curious and officious landlord, on the other the struggling husband.
"Oh, what have I done at all!" cried the distracted lover, as the inertness of the weight in his arms began to fill him with apprehension for his dear. "Sure, alanna, there's nothing to be afraid of! Sure, am I not here? Och, me darling, if——"
But here Sir Jasper escaped from his friend's control. "I'll not stand it," cried he. "'Tis more than flesh and blood can endure. Give her up to me, sir. How dare you hold her?" He fell upon O'Hara in the rear and seized him, throttling, round the neck.
"I'll dare you in a minute, ye mad divil!" yelled O'Hara, in a fury no whit less violent than that of his assailant. Thus cried he, then choked.
In the scuffle they had reached the parlour.
"Oh, Jasper, Jasper, in the name of decency!" protested Stafford, vainly endeavouring to pluck the baronet from the Irishman's back. "And you, Denis lad, I entreat of you, cease to provoke him. Zooks, my boy, remember he has some prior claim—what shall I say? some little vested interest——"
"I'll stuff him with his own red hair!" asseverated Sir Jasper, foaming at the mouth as, under a savage push from O'Hara's elbow he fell back, staggering, into Stafford's power.
"Prior claims—vested interest is it! Some of you will have to swallow those words before I'll be got to swallow anything here," swore Denis O'Hara, almost gaily, in the exaltation of his Celtic rage. "Sure, 'tis mad, I know ye are, lepping mad, Sir Jasper, but ought you not to be ashamed of yourself before the lady? She's quivering with the fright.... Lie here, my angel," said he, vibrating from the loudest note of defiance to the tenderest cooing. "Lie here; there's not a ha'porth to frighten ye, were there fifty such twopenny old crazy weathercocks crowing at you!"
So saying, he deposited his burthen tenderly in the leather-winged arm-chair by the fire-place, and turned with a buoyant step towards Sir Jasper.
"Come out," said he, "come out, sir. Sure, leave him alone, Tom, 'tis the only way to quiet him at all. Sure, after our little game the other night, wasn't he that dove-like, poor fellow, a child might have milked him?"
The quivering form in the chair here emitted a scale of hysterical little notes that seemed wrung from her by the most irrepressible emotion. And:
"Oh, oh," exclaimed Mr. Stafford, unable, in the midst of his laughter, to retain any further grip upon his friend.
"My darling," once more began the solicitous O'Hara, turning his head round towards the arm-chair, but:
"Judas!" hissed Sir Jasper, and furiously interposed his bulk between the Irishman and his intention.
"Faith," cried Stafford, "can't you cover that head of yours, somehow, O'Hara? I vow the very sight of it is still the red rag to the bull.... The bull, aha!"
"Ha! ha! ha!" broke in, this time uncontrolled, the merriment from the chair.
The three men were struck into silence and immobility.
Then, on tip toe, Mr. Stafford approached and peeped round the wing of the arm-chair. He looked, and seemed blasted with astonishment; looked again and made the rafters ring with his sonorous laugh, till the apprehensive landlord in the passage and the trembling dame in the bar were comforted and reassured by the genial sound.
The high feminine trill of Mistress Kitty's musical mirth rang in sweetly with his.
"Oh, Kitty Bellairs, Kitty Bellairs!" gasped Mr. Stafford, shook his finger at her, felt blindly for a support, and rolled up against Sir Jasper.
The baronet straightway fell into an opportunely adjacent chair and there remained—his legs extended with compass stiffness, his eyes starting with truly bovine bewilderment—staring at the rosy visage, the plump little figure, that now emerged from the inglenook.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" faintly murmured Stafford. And with a fresh breath he was off again. "Aha ha ha! for an ox, my Jasper, thou hast started on a lovely wild goose chase—as friend O'Hara might say." While:
"Mercy on us!" rippled the lady. "I protest, 'tis the drollest scene. Oh, Sir Jasper, Sir Jasper, see what jealousy may bring a man to!"
"Musha, it's neither head nor tail I can make of the game," said O'Hara, "but sure it's like an angel choir to hear you laugh again, me darling."
The guileless gentleman approached his mistress as he spoke, and prepared to encircle her waist. But with a sudden sharpness she whisked herself from his touch.
"Pray, sir," she said, "remember how we stand to each other! If I laugh 'tis with relief to know myself safe."
"Safe?" he echoed with sudden awful misgiving.
"Aye," said she, and spoke more tartly for the remorseful smiting of her own heart, as she marked the change in his face. "You would seem to forget, sir, that you have carried me off by violence—treacherously seized me with your hired ruffians." Her voice grew ever shriller, as certain rumours, which her expectant ears had already caught approaching, now grew quite unmistakable without, and hasty steps resounded in the passage. "Oh, Mr. O'Hara, you have cruelly used me!" cried the lady. "Oh, Sir Jasper, oh, Mr. Stafford, from what a fate has your most unexpected presence here to-night thus opportunely saved me!"
At this point she looked up and gave a scream of most intense astonishment: for there, in the doorway, stood my Lord Verney; and, over his shoulder, peered the white face of Captain Spicer, all puckered up with curiosity.
O'Hare drew himself up. He had grown all at once exceedingly still.
Mr. Stafford, gradually recovering from his paroxysms, had begun to bestow some intelligent interest upon the scene. There was a mist of doubt in his eyes as he gazed from the victimised, but very lively, lady to her crestfallen "violent abductor," and thence to the gloomy countenance of the new-comer on the threshold. There seemed to be, it struck him, a prodigious deliberation in Mistress Kitty's cry and start of surprise.
"What is my pretty Bellairs up to now? Well, poor Irish Denis, with all his wits, is no match for her anyhow, and, faith, she knows it," thought he. Aloud he said, with great placidity: "Fie, fie, this is shocking to hear!" and sat, the good-humoured Chorus to the Comedy, on the edge of the table, waiting for the development of the next scene. Sir Jasper, wiping a beaded brow and still staring, as if by the sheer fixing of his bloodshot eye he could turn these disappointing puppets into the proper objects of his vengeance, was quite unable to follow any current but the muddy whirl of his own thoughts.
Lord Verney alone it was, therefore, who rose at all to Mistress Kitty's situation.
"Areyouthe scoundrel, then," said he, marching upon O'Hara, "who dared to lay hands upon an unprotected lady in the very streets of Bath?"
"Monstrous!" remarked Captain Spicer behind him. Then jogging his patron's elbow, "'Twas well spoke, Verney, man. At him again, there's blood in this."
Mr. O'Hara looked steadily at Lord Verney, glancing contemptuously at Captain Spicer, and then gazed with long, full searching at the beguiling widow.
She thought to scent danger to herself in the air; and, womanlike, she seized unscrupulously upon the sharpest weapon in her armoury.
"Perhaps," she said, with an angry, scornful laugh, "Mr. O'Hara will now deny that he and his servants attacked my chairmen in the dark, threw me, screaming with terror, into his carriage, and that his intention was avowedly to wed me by force in London to-morrow."
All eyes were fixed on the Irishman, and silence waited upon his reply. He had grown so pale that his red head seemed to flame by contrast. He made a low bow.
"No, Kitty," said he, in a very gentle voice, "I deny nothing." Then sweeping the company with a haughty glance. "This lady," said he, "has spoken truth; as for me, I am ready to meet the consequences of my conduct."
His eye finally rested once more on Lord Verney. The latter grew white and then scarlet; while Spicer whispered and again jogged.
"Of course," blustered the youth, and wished that he had the curious digestion of his contemporaries, that his stomach did not so squeamishly rebel at the prospect of a dose of steel, "of course, sir, you must be aware——"
"It shall be swords," interrupted the irrepressible Spicer; "and gad, sir, what my noble friend will have left of your body I will myself make mince of this night! Aye, sir," said the Captain, beginning to squint as was his wont under excitement, and slapping his bony chest; "I will fight you myself, sir."
"Fightyou!" exclaimed O'Hara, suddenly stung into magnificent contempt. "Fight you, sir?" he ran a withering eye over the grasshopper anatomy of the toady as he spoke, "you, sir, you, the writer of that dirty note this morning, bidding me apologise—apologise!" cried Denis, with his most luscious brogue, "to the man, Sir Jasper there, for having insulted you on the subject of your miserable mealy head—fight you, sir? Sure, rather than fight you," said Mr. O'Hara, searching for the most emphatic asseveration conceivable, "I'd never fight again for the rest of my life! But I'll tell you what I'll do for you: next time you thrust that ugly face of yours within the reach of me arm Oi'll pull your nose till it's as long as your tongue, and as slender as your courage, damme!"
"Oh, gad! what a low scoundrel," murmured Captain Spicer, withdrawing quickly several paces, and with an intensified cast in his eye; "'tis positive unfit for a gentleman to speak to him!"
"Now, my lord?" said O'Hara, resuming his easy dignity.
But that her comedy should drift into tragedy was none of Mistress Kitty's intentions. Briskly stepping between the laboriously pugnacious Verney and the poor Irishman, whose eye (for all his present composure) shone with the lust of the fray, she thus addressed them collectively and in turn:
"Shame, shame, gentlemen, I protest! Is it not enough that a poor woman's heart should be set a-fluttering by over-much love, must it now go pit-a-pat again for over-much hate? My Lord Verney, think of your mother. Think of her, of whose declining years you are the sole prop and joy; recall to mind those principles of high morality, of noble Christian duty, which that paragon of women so sedulously inculcated in you!" Her voice quivered on the faintest note of mockery. "Oh, what would that worthy lady's feelings be, were you to be brought home to her—a corse! What, ah what indeed! wouldyourfeelings be if, by some accident," here she shot involuntarily what was almost the suspicion of a wink in the direction of O'Hara, "you had to answer for the life of a fellow-creature before to-morrow's dawn? Why, you could never open your Bible again without feeling in your bosom the throbbing heart of a Cain!" She stopped to draw breath.
Mr. Stafford, one delighted grin, slid the whole length of the table on which he sat with dangling legs, to get a fuller view of the saucy face: "Incomparable Bellairs," he murmured to himself with keen appreciation, And: "So, ho, my noble friend," thought he, as he shot a glance at the solemn Verney, "now do I know what has closed to you for ever the gates of Paradise."
"And you, Mr. O'Hara," resumed the lady, turning her eye, full of indefinable and entrancing subtleties upon the honest gentleman, "would you have me forgive you this night's work? Do not, then, do not force this impetuous young man to an unnecessary quarrel. Allow him to withdraw his challenge. Do that inatonement, sir," said she, with much severity of accent; but her eye said sweetly enough, "Do that for me" and gave further promise of unutterable reward.
"Madam," said O'Hara, glancing away as if the sight of her beauty were now more pain than pleasure to him, "'tis for my Lord Verney to speak; I am entirely at his orders. I understand," and here, for all his chivalrousness, he could not refrain him from a point of satire, "I understand, ma'am, that you have given him the right to espouse your quarrels."
"Most certainly," said the crimson Verney, who had been monstrously uneasy during his lady's sermon, not only because every word of it hit some tender point of his abnormally developed conscience, but also because of an indefinable sensation that he was being held up to ridicule, "most certainly, sir, it is as Mistress Bellairs's future husband that I find it incumbent—that I find myself forced, reluctantly—no, I mean——" here he floundered and looked round for Spicer, who, however, was ostentatiously turning his back upon the proceedings and gazing at the moon. "In fact," resumed the poor youth, falling back on his own unguided wits, "I have no alternative but to demand satisfaction for an attempt on the honour of the future Lady Verney."
"Mercy on us!" cried Mistress Kitty, with a shrill indignant little scream. "Oh fie, my lord, who would have deemed you so bloodthirsty? Before heaven," she cried piously, glancing at the raftered ceiling, "before heaven, it would be the death of me, were there to be quarrelling, strife, contention for me—forme! Who am I," she said with the most angelic humility, "that two such gallant gentlemen should stake their lives for me? Rather," said she, "will I give you back your word, my lord. Indeed," this with a noble air of sacrifice, "I feel Providence has but too clearly shown me my duty. Hush, hush, Verney, bethink yourself! How could I ever face your mother (were you indeed to survive the encounter) with the knowledge that I had exposed you to danger; that for me you had loaded your soul with blood-guiltiness!"
She shuddered and looked delicious.
"Child," said she meltingly, as Lord Verney faintly protested, "it must be so. I have felt it more than once; you are too young." There was a conviction in her voice that gave no hope of reprieve, and Lord Verney, who had already found out that Mistress Bellairs was too dangerous a delight to pursue with comfort, accepted his sentence with a Christian resignation that did justice to his mother's training.
"All, all must now be over between us," said Kitty pathetically, "save a gentle friendship! Your hand, my Lord."
She reached for his clumsy paw with her determined little fingers.
"Mr. O'Hara," said she, turning round. "I forgive you. Your hand also, sir."
If the clasp she extended to Verney was purely official, that with which she now seized O Hara's cold right hand was eloquent enough with quick and secret pressure. But, for the first time in his life, perhaps, O'Hara was slow in returning a woman's token.
"Shake hands," ordered Mistress Bellairs decisively, and joined the belligerents' palms.
Here Stafford sprang jovially to the assistance of the pretty peacemaker.
"Right, right," cried he. "Shake hands on it like good fellows. Fie! who could keep up a feud under those beaming eyes?—Never be downcast, Verney, lad! What did I tell thee, only yesterday, in the Pump Room, about thy halo?—Denis, my boy, I've always loved thee, but now I'll love thee more than ever, if only thou wilt mix us a bowl of punch in right good Irish fashion, so that in it we may drown all enmity and drink good friendship—and above all toast the divine Kitty Bellairs!"
"Hurroosh," cried O'Hara, and with a valiant gulp determined to swallow his own bitter disappointment and flood in a tide of warm gaiety the cold ache in his heart. "By all means," cried he, wrung Verney's hand with feverish cordiality, and gave one last sadly-longing look at Kitty and his lovely delusive dream.
Then spinning round upon himself he demanded loudly of the willing landlord, lemons and "the craythur—a couple of bottles, my friend—a bowl of sugar and a trifle of wather—the smaller the kittle the better it boils." And: "Wake up, man," cried he, slapping Sir Jasper on the back so that the powder flew from that baronet's queue. "Sure we're all happy, now."
"Where's my wife, sir?" said the gloomy husband, springing to his feet fiercely. "I've been made a fool of between you, but all this does not tell me where my wife is! Stafford, man, I see it now: this has been a blind." He struck his forehead. "Ha, yes I have it now, it was a false scent—the villain, the fox is off with her on another road, with his tongue in his cheek, grinning to think of me sitting and waiting for them at Devizes!—Tom, the chaise, the horses! There's not a moment to be lost!"
"Devil a horse or chay for me, sir," cried his friend. And nodding at Kitty: "I know when I'm in good company," he pursued, "if you don't.—Sit down, man, there's punch brewing. Your vengeance will keep hot enough, ha, ha, but the punch won't."
"Glory be to God," cried O'Hara, staring at Sir Jasper as if he were a natural curiosity, "I've known many a madman, but I never knew one mad enough yet to run away from a punch-bowl!"
With lace ruffles neatly turned back from his deft hands, O'Hara began to peel the lemons.
"Do you," now said Captain Spicer with an ingratiating chirp. "Do you really care forquiteso much peel in the bowl ... ahem?"
The speaker stopped suddenly and seemed to wither quite away under a sudden look from the punch-brewer (who had made a movement as though to put his knife and lemons down and employ his fingers differently) and the next instant found him whispering in Stafford's ear:
"You're a man of the world, I know, friend Stafford," said he. "No doubt you will laugh at my over-nice sense of delicacy, but just now, in his ravings, poor O'Hara made a kind of threat, I believe, about pulling my nose. What wouldyouadvise me to do in the matter? Look over it, eh?"
"Certainly," cried the spark, with a glance of the most airy contempt. "Look over it,as straight as you can. Look over it, by all means, but as you value the symmetry of that ornament to your countenance, Captain Spicer—if I were you I should keep it well-buttered."
*****
With an art of which he alone was master, Captain Spicer hereupon vanished from the company, without being missed.
"'Tis an orgy!" exclaimed Lady Maria.
"Oh, Jasper!" sobbed Lady Standish.
"'Twould be interesting to know," further trumpeted Lady Maria, "which of these gentlemen is supposed to have run away with the widow Bellairs?"
"Oh, Kitty!" sobbed Lady Standish.
"My God!" said Sir Jasper, laying down his reeking glass and hardly believing his eyes.
Mistress Kitty (seated between O'Hara and Stafford at the end of the table, while Lord Verney and Sir Jasper faced each other), continued, unmoved, to sip her fragrant brew and cocked her wicked eye at the newcomers, enjoying the situation prodigiously. She laid an arresting hand upon the cuffs of her neighbours, who, all polite amazement, were about to spring to their feet. "Keep still," said she, "keep still and let Sir Jasper and his lady first have their little explanation undisturbed. Never intermeddle between husband and wife," she added demurely: "it has always been one of my guiding axioms!"
"Well, Sir Jasper Standish, these are pretty goings on!" cried Lady Maria, "for a three months' husband.... (Hold up, my poor dear Julia!) Profligate!" snorted the old lady, boring the baronet through with one gimlet eye. "Dissolute wretch! highwayman!"
"I demand," fluted Lady Standish's plaintive treble (in her gentle obstinate heart she had come to the fixed resolution of never allowing Sir Jasper out of her sight again), "I demand to be taken back to my mother, and to have an immediate separation."
"Running away with women out of the streets of Bath!—A lady," (sniff) "supposed to be engaged to my nevvy! Poor deluded boy——"
"And my dearest friend!—oh, Jasper!How could you?"
Sir Jasper broke in upon his wife's treble with the anguished roar of the goaded: "The devil take me," cried he, "if I don't think the whole world's going mad!Ielope with the widow Bellairs, Lady Maria, ma'am?Itreacherous, my Lady? Ha!" He positively capered with fury and wounded feeling and general distraction, as he drew the incriminating documents from his breast, and flourished them, one in each hand, under the very nose of his accusers. "What ofRed Curl, madam? What of the man who kissed the dimple, madam? What of your lover, madam!"
In his confusion he hurled the last two demands straight in Lady Maria's face, who, with all the indignation of outraged virtue, exclaimed in her deepest note:
"Vile slanderer, I deny it!"
Here Mistress Bellairs deemed the moment ripe for her delicate interference.
"My lovely Standish," she cried, "you look sadly. Indeed I fear you will swoon if you do not sit. Pray Mr. Stafford, conduct my Lady Standish to the arm-chair and make her sip a glass of cordial from the bowl yonder."
"Oh, Kitty!" cried Lady Standish, and devoured the widow's face with eager eyes to see whether friend or enemy was heralded there.
"My dear," whispered Kitty, "nothing could be going better. Sit down, I tell you, and I promise you that in ten minutes you will have Sir Jasper on his knees."
Then running up to Sir Jasper and speaking with the most childlike and deliberate candour:
"Pray, Sir Jasper," said she, "and what might you be prating of letters and red curls? Strange now," she looked round the company with dewy, guileless eyes, "Ilost a letter only a day or two ago at your house—a," she dropped her lids with a most entrancing little simper, "a rather private letter. I believe I must have lost it in dear Julia's parlour, near the sofa, for I remember I pulled out my handkerchief——"
"Good God!" said Sir Jasper, hoarsely, and glared at her, all doubt, and crushed the letters in his hand.
"Could you—couldyouhavefoundit, Sir Jasper, I wonder? Mercy on me! And then this morning ... 'tis the strangest thing ... I get another letter, another rather private letter, and after despatching a few notes to my friends, for the life of me, I could not find the letter any more! And I vow I wanted it, for I had scarce glanced at it."
"Oh, Mistress Bellairs!" cried Sir Jasper. "Tell me," cried he panting, "what did these letters contain?"
"La!" said she, "what a question to put to a lady!"
"For God's sake, madam!" said he, and in truth he looked piteous.
"Then, step apart," said she, "and for dear Julia's sake I will confide in you, as a gentleman."
She led him to the moonlit window, while all followed them with curious eyes—except Verney, who surreptitiously drank his punch, and slid away from the table, with the fear of his aunt in his heart. And now Mistress Kitty hung her head, looked exceedingly bashful and exceedingly coy. She took up a corner of her dainty flowered gown and plaited it in her fingers.
"Was there," she asked, "was there anything of the description of a—of a trifling lock of hair, in the first letter—'twas somewhat of an auburn hue?"
"Confusion!" exclaimed the baronet, thrust the fateful letters into her hand, and turning on his heel, stamped his foot, muttering furiously: "Curse the fool that wrote them, and the feather-head that dropped them!"
"And what of the fool that picked them up and read them?" whispered Mistress Kitty's voice in his ears, sharp as a slender stiletto.
She looked him up and down with a fine disdainful mockery.
"Why will you men write?" said she meaningly. "Letters are dangerous things!"
He stood convicted, without a word.
"La! what a face!" she cried aloud now. "I protest you quite frighten me. And how is it you are not overjoyed, Sir Jasper? Here is your Julia proved whiter than the driven snow and more injured than Griselidis, and you not at her feet!"
"Where is she?" said Sir Jasper, half strangled by contending emotions.
"Why, there, in that arm-chair in the inglenook."
Mistress Kitty smoothed her restored treasures quite tenderly, folded them neatly and slipped them into the little brocade bag that hung at her waist.
*****
"Indeed, Lady Standish," said Mr. Stafford, "a glass of punch will do you no harm."
"Punch?" echoed Lady Maria—then turning fiercely on her nephew: "What, my Lord!" said she, "would your mother say? Why you are positively reeking with the dissolute fumes!"
"My dear Lady Maria," interposed the urbane Stafford, "a mere cordial, a grateful fragrance to heighten the heart after fatigue and emotions, a sovereign thing, madam, against the night air—the warmest antidote! A sip of it, I assure you, would vastly restore you."
"I," she said, "I, drink with the profligate and the wanton! The deceiving husband and the treacherous friend!" She gave the fiercer refusal for that she felt so strongly in her old bones the charm of his description.
"Pooh, pooh! my dear ladies, if that is all," said Mr. Stafford, "then, by Heaven, let the glass circulate at once! Indeed, your La'ship," turning to Lady Standish, "so far from our good Jasper having anything to say to Mistress Bellairs's presence here to-night, let me assure you that he and I set out alone at an early hour this evening, with no other object but to be of service to your ladyship—whom your anxious husband had been led to believe was likely to come this way ... somewhat—ah—unsuitably protected, as he thought."
Then he bent down and whispered into Lady Standish's pretty ear (which she willingly enough lent to such consoling assurances): "As for your friend," he went on, "our delightful if volatile Bellairs—she came here with a vastly different person to Sir Jasper: poor O'Hara yonder—who's drinking all the punch! She will tell you herself how it happened.... But, gracious stars, mydearLady Maria, have you not yet been given a glass of the—of Mr. O'Hara's restorative!"
"Allow me," cried Kitty, who, having just settled Sir Jasper's business for him, had now freedom to place her energies elsewhere. "Dearest Lady Maria—how sweet of you to join us in our little reconciliation feast!" She took a brimming glass from O'Hara's hands and held it, with a winning smile, for Lady Maria's acceptance.
"Madam," responded the matron, scowled, drew her voluminous skirts together and became impenetrably deaf.
"Ah," cried the widow in her topmost notes, "Madam, how I should have revered such a relative as yourself! Next to the joy of calling my Lord Verney's mother,mymother, would have been that of calling his aunt,myaunt! But the dream is over. Lord Verney and I can never be more to each other than we are now."
"Eh?" and the Dowager recovered her hearing. "What's that, what's that, nevvy?"
"'Tis, alas, true," said Lord Verney, with great demureness. "Mistress Bellairs has given me back my word."
"Forgive me, dear Lady Maria," trilled the widow.
"Mercy on us!" ejaculated the old lady; then, as if unconsciously, groped for the glass in Mistress Kitty's hand.
"Sit down, sit down all!" cried Mistress Bellairs. Stafford echoed with a jovial shout. There was a call for a fresh bowl. O'Hara's eyes began to dance, his tongue to resume its glibness. And Lady Maria was surprised to find how long her tumbler took to empty, but, curiously, never failed to be looking the other way when Mistress Bellairs with tenderest solicitude plied the silver ladle in her direction.
"I hope," said the ancient lady, now wreathed in smiles, "I hope that Mr. O'Hara's cordial is not really stronger than Madeira wine—which my physician, that charming Sir George, says is all I ought to drink."
"Madeira?" cried Mr. O'Hara, "Madeira wine is a very fair drink ... it is a fine stirring dhrink. But 'tis apt, I'm afraid, to heat the blood overmuch. Now Claret," he went on, pursuing the thesis, "Claret's the wine for gentlemen—only for the divil of a way it has of lying cold upon the stomach ... after four or five bottles.... Do I hear you say: 'Port,' over there, Tom, me boy? I'll not deny but that Port has qualities. It's strong, it's mellow—but it's heavy. It sends a fellow to sleep, and that's a tirrible bad mark against it; for 'tis near as bad for a man to sleep when he has a bottle going, as when he has a lady coming. Then there's Champagne for you: there's exhilaration in Champagne, 'tis the real tipple for a gentleman when he's alone—in atête-à-tête—but 'tis not the wine for great company. Now, my dear friends," said O'Hara, stirring his new brew with the touch of a past master, "if you want to know a wine that combines the fire of the Madeira with the elegance of the Claret, the power and mellowness of the Port with the exhilaration of the Champagne—there's nothing in the world can compare to a fine screeching bowl of Brandy Punch!"