He made a careful toilet, and went down the slippery oak stairs, leaning on his gold-headed cane, looking a very great personage indeed, delicately austere and nobly haughty.
Alas! Pamela never so much as lifted her radiant head when he came into the eating-room. She was seated beside her gallant at the end of the table in close conversation—that whispered, blushing, laughing, sighing conversation of lovers—and if the roof had fallen over them, Sir Everard thought, the two would scarce have noticed it, so absorbed were they in each other.
The young man had ordered champagne, and the girl’s glass was filled, but the bubbling wine had barely been touched. Another intoxication, more deadly and more sure, was working through her veins. The old philosopher, seeing her condition, resigned for the moment all thought of interference, and sat down to his bottle of claret and bowl of broth.
Hardly, however, had he broken his hot roll, than the room was invaded by fresh arrivals; a young woman, wrapped in furs, conducted by a gentleman who had not removed his travelling coat, and kept his hat pressed on his brows; a personage who entered with an intolerable arrogance as if the place belonged to him, who ordered champagne and supper for the lady, and fresh horses for his coach, in a voice which rang like the crack of a whip. He could not wait; the servers must bustle. A guinea each to the ostlers if they harnessed within ten minutes. “And, hark ye, sirrah, a bottle of your best Sillery, and——”
“Surely I know this autocratic fellow,” thought Sir Everard, and as the traveller drew his companion with an imperative sweep of his arm about her, to the end of the table opposite to that at which Mr. Bellairs and his Dulcinea were seated. “My Lord Sanquhar!” cried Sir Everard, “by all that’s outrageous! And who in the name of pity is his victim now?”
That the two were lovers, of a stage considerably more advanced than the poor milliner and her Beau, was obvious to the onlooker, and as my Lord Sanquhar now tore his hat from his head, to dash the snow that covered it into the fire, where it hissed and spluttered like a curse, the young woman who accompanied him let herself fall on to the settle and turned a look of darkling challenge, of brooding suspicion, into the room.
She was clad in the most sumptuous garments. There was a bloom of royal purple against the tawny clouds of her sables. There was a fire of ruby at her throat, caught up and repeated at each ear, as if deep gouts of a lover’s blood had taken to themselves flame for her adorning. But the countenance she turned upon the room was, Sir Everard thought, so striking, that all this splendour seemed its natural attribute; striking with a Spanish beauty, a richness and depth of colour, with flashing orbs, high nostrils, and scarlet lips.
“Good Heavens!” Sir Everard mused, “where has he picked the jade? Victim? Nay, ’tis the kind that keeps a knife in her stocking and will whip it out and under your rib, and make an end of you with less ado than another will shed a tear. My Lord Sanquhar will have to look out for himself. Illicit love is a dangerously charged atmosphere in which to handle live gunpowder.”
The “Dover High-Flyer” had only dropped two of its passengers at “The Rose,” and the landlord was free to attend to his imperious guest. He himself served my Lord Sanquhar’s champagne, and with bent back received his “pishs” and “pshaws” on the dearth of proper entertainment for the lady. She wanted fresh fruit, and there was none. She asked for chocolate, and pettishly refused to touch it. One sniff was enough. All her desires and denials she communicated in a guttural undertone to her companion, who translated them into oaths.
Sir Everard, who had had but a poor appetite, was now, his broth bowl pushed on one side, dipping bits of roll into his wine after a foreign fashion, and watching the while the two sets of lovers at the further end of the room. He noticed, not without some satisfaction, that constraint had fallen upon the ardent Bellairs and his fair milliner. The colour on the young man’s face fluctuated. He bit his lip and shot doubtful looks of question from the blatant couple to the downcast countenance of his companion, who had grown very pale, scarcely spoke, and seemed now and again as if she was struggling with tears.