"You may go to bed, Lydia," cried Mistress Bellairs, rising hastily; "you've half deafened me with your chatter."
Left alone the little lady sat down by the fire in a melancholy mood.
"The sort that would come to a fortune on Monday, and be sending to the pawnshop on Saturday.... I'm afraid it's true. Yet, I believe, he loves me, poor Denis! I vow," she said to herself, "'tis the only one of them all that I could endure. Yes, I could endure Denis, vastly well ... for a while at least. And now," said she, "what's to be done! Oh, I'd be loath to baulk him of the pleasure of running away with me! 'tis the only decent way indeed of breaking with my Lord Verney. And it certainly struck me that Master Stafford was mighty cool upon the matter. I've been too quiet of late, and that odious Bab Flyte thinks she can have everything her own way.... But, I'll be rescued," she said, "at Devizes—I shall have to be rescued at Devizes. My poor dear; he may be happy at least for an hour or two ... as far as Devizes!"
Her brow cleared; the dimples began to play.
"We shall see," she smiled more broadly, "if we cannot prod his Calfship into a night trot. 'Twill do his education a vastness of service.... But the poor creature," she reflected further, "is scarce to be depended on. Who knows whether his mother would approve of his breathing the night air.... I must," Mistress Kitty's pretty forehead became once more corrugated under the stress of profound thought—"I must," she murmured, "have another string to my bow, or my sweet O'Hara will marry me after all. Dear fellow, how happy we should be from Monday ... till Saturday! Who? Who, shall it be? ... My Lord Marquis might take the rôle in earnest and spoil my pretty fellow's beauty. Squire Juniper? He would sure be drunk. And Master Stafford? Oh, he may stay with the French milliner for me!"
Suddenly the lady's perplexed countenance became illumined. "Sir Jasper?" she said. "Sir Jasper—the very man! The good Julia—I owe it to her to bring matters to an éclaircissement. And, Sir Jasper—oh, he richly deserves a midnight jolt, for 'tis owing to his monstrous jealousy that I am put to all this trouble. 'Twill be a fine thing indeed," thought Mistress Bellairs with a burst of self-satisfied benevolence, "if I can demonstrate to Sir Jasper, once for all, the folly into which this evil passion may lead a man."
SCENE XVII
"If you please, my lady," said Mistress Megrim, "I should like to quit your ladyship's service."
"How?" cried Lady Standish, waking with a start out of the heavy sleep of trouble, and propping herself upon her elbow, to gaze in blinking astonishment at the irate pink countenance of her woman. Lady Standish looked very fair and young, poor little wife, with her half-powdered curls of hair escaping in disorder from the laces of her nightcap, and her soft blue eyes as full of uncomprehending grief as a frightened baby's.