“Why, then,” cried Milady, with an incredible tone of truthfulness, “you are not his accomplice; you do not know that he destines me to a disgrace which all the punishments of the world cannot equal in horror?”
“You are deceived, madame,” said Felton, blushing; “Lord de Winter is not capable of such a crime.”
“Good,” said Milady to herself; “without thinking what it is, he calls it a crime!” Then aloud, “The friend of that wretch is capable of everything.”
“Whom do you call that wretch?” asked Felton.
“Are there, then, in England two men to whom such an epithet can be applied?”
“You mean George Villiers?” asked Felton, whose looks became excited.
“Whom Pagans and unbelieving Gentiles call Duke of Buckingham,” replied Milady. “I could not have thought that there was an Englishman in all England who would have required so long an explanation to make him understand of whom I was speaking.”
“The hand of the Lord is stretched over him,” said Felton; “he will not escape the chastisement he deserves.”
Felton only expressed, with regard to the duke, the feeling of execration which all the English had declared toward him whom the Catholics themselves called the extortioner, the pillager, the debauchee, and whom the Puritans styled simply Satan.
“Oh, my God, my God!” cried Milady; “when I supplicate thee to pour upon this man the chastisement which is his due, thou knowest it is not my own vengeance I pursue, but the deliverance of a whole nation that I implore!”