'And here he is,' she took me up gaily, as Pascoe appeared in the doorway. 'Is dinner ready?'
'To be served at once, my lady.'
'Then will you lead me to my seat, Captain Medhope? Yours is beside me, on the right; yes, close there. My husband, at his end, can enjoy the fire.'
We took our seats. I was hungry, and the dinner good. I ate of everything, but can only recall an excellent grill of salmon and a roast haunch of venison: the reason being that Lady Glynn kept me in continued talk. Poor lady!—I had almost said, poor child!—for her desperate artlessness became the more apparent to me the more she persisted. Even I, who, as the reader has been told, have the smallest skill in the ways of women, could see that here was one, of high breeding but untutored, playing at a game at once above and beneath her; almost as far above her achieving as it lay beneath her true contempt. She knew that women can inveigle men; but in the practice of it I am very sure that her dairymaid could have given her lessons.
But what am I saying? Her poor coquetries did not deceive me, but she never meant them to deceive me. They accomplished, after all, just that for which she intended them. They deceived and maddened her half-drunken lout of a husband. Her dress, too, was something shameless. She wore above her scarlet skirt (which I verily believe was the same she had ridden in) a bodice of the same bright colour, low as a maid-of-honour's, that displayed her young neck and bust. About her neck she had fastened a string of garnets. She had loaded her fingers with old-fashioned rings, of which the very dullness made me wince to see them employed in this sorry service. And I guessed that before my entrance this unusual finery had provoked her husband to fury.
A length of table lay between us and him. He sat silent, regarding us under lowered brows, eating little, draining glass after glass. Angry though he was, her voice seemed to lay a spell on him. She talked of a thousand things, but especially of the Parliament campaign, plying me with question after question—of our numbers, our discipline, our hardships during the past three weeks, of our general's plan of escape, and, in particular, of the part I had borne in it. And when I answered she listened with smiles, as though King and Parliament lay balanced in her affections. And this was the termagant that a few hours ago had ridden us down and trampled across poor Hutson's body!
All this I took at its true value, answering her with steady politeness, telling myself that as her purpose was to goad her husband, so no word of mine should give him an excuse for an outbreak. It takes two to make a quarrel, they say. But when three are mixed up in it (and one a woman), the third cannot always count on remaining passive.
I had managed to tide over the meal with fair success. We had reached the dessert, and Pascoe (whose presence may have laid some restraint upon his master) had withdrawn. A dish of pears lay before Lady Glynn, and she asked me to peel one for her. I know not if this simple request laid the last straw on Sir Luke's endurance, but he filled his glass again and said with brutal insolence,—
'You are fortunate, Captain Medhope, in exciting my wife's interest. I assure you that until your gallantry bewitched her, she had been used to speak of all rebels as cowards in grain.'
'I hope, Sir Luke,' said I, 'you, with experience of us, have tried to teach her better.'