He meditated, on the whole ill at ease. He must find some opportunity, of that he was decided, to question Mrs. Moll more particularly about this Kit, and, though he foresaw well enough an evasive response, he believed he would be able to extract from her some indication of the truth sufficiently illuminating to guide him in his further actions. He turned to his companion with the suggestion—
“Leave the matter to me, Phil, for the moment. I’ll question the slut, and, like the persuasive, artful dog I am, worm the truth out of her.”
“Will you, George? Zounds, if my suspicions should be verified, and there’s secret meetings between them! Though he be a Kit of nine lives, I’ll skewer them every one on my rapier like slivers of dog’s meat. When will you come?”
“When is it safe?”
“My lady rides abroad each day at noon.”
“To-morrow, then.” He put an impressive warning hand on the other’s sleeve. “This must not affect your behaviour to the visitor. Never, whatever you do, relax your attentions there, but rather emphasize them.”
“O! why?”
“Why—why?” He spoke with some impatient irritability. “Are you really so dense? Why, because—if you must be instructed—any slackness on your part might rouse your wife’s suspicions. We want, if it’s to be a question of taking her off her guard, to lull her into a sense of false security; and the more infatuated you appear, the more careless of precaution will she become. Strange that I should have to teach you sexual strategy.”
He would not dismiss the whole suggestion at once, you see, as incredible and preposterous; he was too well versed in the thousand duplicities of which woman is capable ever to accept her innocence at more than its face value. Nor is mere youth a guarantee with her of harmlessness. The little two-inch viper can bite to poisonous effect the moment it is hatched from the egg. No, it was judicious, for the sake of all concerned, to attempt to establish the identity of this hermaphroditic individual. And he thought he could do it.
He went to essay the experiment the next day. A little to his confusion he learned that his cousin, whom he had calculated upon finding out, was not yet departed, but was strolling, pending her horse’s arrival, in the garden. After a moment’s hesitation, he went to seek her there, and encountered her loitering about the paths which led down, among ordered parterres and hedged alleys, to the river-side. She looked very pretty in her scarlet riding habit à la mode, with the long-skirted coat, fashioned after a man’s, which was just then come into vogue, and the little plumed hat tilted over one ear; and the picture she made went straight down through his eyes to his heart. Her eyes opened a shade as she turned to recognize him.