'And that would take time,' said Kelly, handing her the crown.
'It would take an entire crown's worth,' said the maid, pocketing the coin.
Kelly slipped back into the room.
The lady seemed not to have noticed Mr. Kelly's absence, so fondly did she study the portrait; but none the less, no sooner had he closed the door than she cried out, not by any means to him but in a sort of ecstasy, 'Le Roi!' Then she hid the snuff-box suddenly and glanced with a shudder round the room. The panic was altogether misplaced, since there could be no other person in the room except the owner of the box, who, if her ladyship was guilty for admiring, was ten thousand times more so for possessing it.
She caught with her hand at her heart when she perceived Mr. Kelly, then her eyes smiled from out of her mask, as though in the extremity of her alarm she had forgotten who he was, and so fell back in her chair with an air of languor, breathing deep and quick.
'Upon my word, I fear, Mr. Johnson,' she said, 'that if I have escaped one danger by your help I have fallen into another. You seem to me to be a man of dangerous company.'
'Indeed I find it so when I am with you, madam, since you discover my secrets and show me nothing of your own,' replied Kelly.
The maid it appears, had no less perversity than her mistress, for precisely at this moment she rapped on the door, and without waiting for any answer sharply entered the room, bearing the wine and glasses on a salver. There was a distance of three yards between Kelly and her ladyship. The maid measured the distance with her eyes, and her face showed some disappointment. Her ladyship dismissed her, filled both the glasses and took one in her hand. Mr. Kelly drained the other, and the bumper carried off the remnant of his brains.
'You run no danger from my knowing your secret, Mr. Johnson,' said she, 'for--'
Breaking off her sentence, she turned her head aside, swiftly pushed up her mask and kissed the portrait in the box, stooping her fragrant hair over it. Mr. Kelly, speeded by the wine, was this time too quick for her ladyship. Before she could raise her face he had paid the same compliment to her lips as she to his Majesty. She lifted her head with a bewitching air of anger.