'Oh, and in what battle was Mr. Johnson's secretary wounded?' she said, taking him up on the instant.
'In a struggle with the Preventive men,' replied Wogan hurriedly, and he too broke off with a wry face, for Mr. Johnson was warning him and with no less vigour. Before he knew what he was doing Wogan had stooped down and begun to rub his leg. Lady Oxford's smile became a laugh.
'To be sure,' said she, 'and I think Mr. Johnson must have been wounded too, in just that same way, and in just that same encounter.'
'Faith, madam,' said Kelly, 'the smuggling trade is a hard one. No man engages in it but sooner or later he gets a knock that leaves its mark.'
Lady Oxford expressed the profoundest sympathy with a great deal of disbelief; and when her ladyship left her guests to their wine, they looked at one another across the table.
'Well,' said Wogan cheerfully, 'if my Lady Oxford is in Mr. Walpole's interest we have not made the best beginning in the world,' and in a little he went off to smoke a pipe in the stables.
Kelly withdrew to the great library, and had not been there many minutes before Lady Oxford came in. It seemed she did not see him at the first, although he sat bent up over the fire and his shadow huge upon the walls. Mr. Kelly certainly did not remark her entrance. For one thing, he was absorbed in his book; for another, the carpet was thick and the lady's step of the lightest. She went first to the bookcase, then she crossed the room and shuffled some papers on a table, then she knocked against a chair, the chair knocked against the table, and at the noise Kelly looked up. He rose to his feet. Lady Oxford turned round, started, and uttered a sharp little cry.
'My lady,' began Mr. Kelly.
'Oh, it is you, Mr. Johnson,' she broke in with a hand to her heart, and dropped into the chair. 'I believe,' she said with a broken laugh, 'I was foolish enough to be frightened. I fancied you had gone with your friend to the stables,' which was as much as to say that she knew he had not. Kelly commenced an apology for so disordering her, but she would not listen to it.
'No,' she said, 'it is I that am to be blamed. Indeed, such stupid fears need chiding. But in a house so lonely and silent they grow on one insensibly. Indeed, I have known the mere creak of the stairs keep me awake in terror half the night.'