“Why, you poor little bird,” quoth he, tenderly compassionate. “Could anyone be cruel to you?”
“Oh, indeed, they are, my Lord, and I can’t think how I have offended them! Oh, the slights, the unkindnesses! And my Lady Kilcroney, your own dear lovely lady, my Lord, what hath she against me.... Oh, I do assure you,” cried Mrs. Lafone, raising her voice piteously, as the measured trot of royal horses beat upon her ear. “I’ve cried myself to sleep, night after night. And when I saw your face, ‘here’s one,’ I said to myself, ‘who will be a little kind to me!’”
The wind—it certainly was a naughty wind, as if it, too, were a rebel against the decorum imposed by the presence of Royalty—came rushing up from the wide ocean and caught Mistress Lafone in a positive whirl, seizing her with a great beat of invisible pennons as if about to fly away with her.
“Oh! oh!” she cried. Her light figure swayed and seemed to lift. She flung out her arms. What could my Lord do but catch her? And holding her, what could he do, but kiss her? For there were tears on her delicate face which melted him, and sparkles behind them which dared him; and what’s a kiss when all is said and done?
The Royal carriage wheeled by them, and Kitty, sitting bolt upright opposite the Queen, had a good view of her erring spouse and his infamous companion for the whole length of the parade. It can scarcely be credited: the culprits, as they gazed back at her, were laughing.
The matrimonial course of the Kilcroneys had been fond, but as anyone who knew my Lady might guess, it had been variegated. She had a quick temper, an impatient spirit, and a detestation of monotony; withal the soundest heart in the world. So that never did couple so often fall out, or so fervently make it up, as they. My Lord, who was of an easy-going temperament, who loved and admired his Kitty in all her moods, rather enjoyed these connubial storms.
“Begad,” he would say, “there never was anything to equal a dash of red pepper for making a man enjoy the taste of the wine afterwards.”
But now my Lady’s wrath took an unpleasant form; one which, in its turn, aroused his resentment. It drove him even to a certain bitterness, as he sat in the bow-window of the County Club, pulling at his long clay. It drove the complacent memory of Molly Lafone’s smooth, pert cheek from his mind as with a sting.
“’Pon me word,” he said, swinging his leg. “A man would think it was the leper I’d made of myself! Split me, Verney, if me Lady doesn’t whisk away her skirts as she crosses me path! And never a word out of her since she first had at me—Bejabers! I’m not like to forget that in a hurry! But it’s pinched lips and dropped eyes and turn away with her till I’m crazy.”
Squire Day and my Lord Verney gazed with compassion on the sinner, the compassion that is the worst kind of condemnation. Then Squire Day said, a little drily: