Even Pamela, kneeling beside her bandbox, flung a gaze of deep reproach upon the sinner. She knew something of the story: her aunt was one who liked to retail a bit of spicy gossip when it came her way.
The weight of this feminine condemnation was too much for the unhappy Denis, but his wrath was unabated.
“Vastly well, my Lady. Vastly well,” he cried, thrusting the crumpled note into his pocket. “I’ll off with myself, aye, and I’ll take this love token with me. I’ll not pollute your party, never fear; but whatever you hear of me, now, remember, you drove me to it.”
Denis Kilcroney fulfilled his dark threat by going straight to the confectioner’s shop, over which Mrs. Lafone had taken modest lodgings. He found her in company with her brother-in-law, Ned Stafford. That gentleman was lying, as much at his ease as he could in the only arm-chair, which was, however, hard and slippery, being covered with horsehair. His hands were joined by the finger-tips, his eyes were closed. With a resigned lift of eyebrow he was listening to the little lady’s shrill and voluble harangue.
Mistress Molly, in a white muslin morning wrapper tied round her slim waist by an azure blue ribbon, with silver fair hair, scarcely powdered, all unbound, save for where a knot of the same blue caught the curls at the nape of her neck, looked perhaps only the more attractive because her eyes and cheeks blazed with anger. And it was, my Lord Kilcroney saw with relief, a dry anger; for his Kitty, playing the victim while exercising such—yes! dash it, the only word was spite!—had added exasperation to his sense of injury.
“Come in, come in, my Lord,” Mistress Molly wheeled upon him with a laugh, if Denis could only have recognised the fact, more full of spite than his Lady’s utmost petulance. “Pray have you heard what I’ve been saying? Oh, you needn’t blink at me like that, Brother Stafford, I’ll say it all over again. I’ll say that my Lady Kilcroney is the most jealous cat in the whole of England. She has left me out of her royal ball, has she? I’m not virtuous enough! What, my Lord, you kissed my wrist on the parade—and if I say it was my wrist, Tom Stafford? I ought to know! and Kitty—oh, the virtuous Kitty!—and her old cross Royal thought to see the kind of shocking spectacle your virtuous people are fond of thinking they see. My Lady was always jealous of poor little me! I don’t care who hears me. I say—hold your tongue, Tom!—’tis a conspiracy, ’tis a scandal. I’ll make Mr. Lafone tell His Royal Highness all about it. I’ll go to law on it. There can’t be more scandal about me than there will be for being the only one of the ladies at Weymouth left out to-morrow night!”
Mr. Stafford, who had been glinting at Denis between his bored eyelids, now opened them a fraction wider.
“For Heaven’s sake, good lad,” said he, “get her a ticket.”
“Get her one yourself.”
“My good Kil, your Lady does not even know that I’m in Weymouth.”