He stood convicted, without a word.
"La! what a face!" she cried aloud now. "I protest you quite frighten me. And how is it you are not overjoyed, Sir Jasper? Here is your Julia proved whiter than the driven snow and more injured than Griselidis, and you not at her feet!"
"Where is she?" said Sir Jasper, half strangled by contending emotions.
"Why, there, in that arm-chair in the inglenook."
Mistress Kitty smoothed her restored treasures quite tenderly, folded them neatly and slipped them into the little brocade bag that hung at her waist.
*****
"Indeed, Lady Standish," said Mr. Stafford, "a glass of punch will do you no harm."
"Punch?" echoed Lady Maria—then turning fiercely on her nephew: "What, my Lord!" said she, "would your mother say? Why you are positively reeking with the dissolute fumes!"
"My dear Lady Maria," interposed the urbane Stafford, "a mere cordial, a grateful fragrance to heighten the heart after fatigue and emotions, a sovereign thing, madam, against the night air—the warmest antidote! A sip of it, I assure you, would vastly restore you."
"I," she said, "I, drink with the profligate and the wanton! The deceiving husband and the treacherous friend!" She gave the fiercer refusal for that she felt so strongly in her old bones the charm of his description.