Her eyes half closed, her little nose wrinkled, stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, she went into a scream of laughter. But her mood soon changed. Panting, she rose to her feet and struck one little fist into the palm of the other.
“So I’m to go, am I!” she said. “Not before I’ve paid you for that insult, my lad. I don’t quite know how, yet, but somehow, the last word’s got to be with me.”
CHAPTER XIV
The tormented nobleman, craving for advice and sympathy, lost little time before he sought out his friend and kinsman, Mr. George Hamilton. He found that gentleman, who had just returned from a game of pell-mell with his Majesty, refreshing himself with a pot and sop in his own chambers, before committing himself and his mid-day toilet to the hands of his valet. Chesterfield drove out the man incontinent, and closed the door on him.
“I want a word with you, George,” said he, breathless and agitated—too disturbed and full of his subject to apologize or finesse. “It’s all out; I’ve discovered the truth; and, curse me, if ’twere the King himself, I’d bury my sword in his treacherous heart. As it is——”
Hamilton, his face half hidden by the quart pot, put up an expostulatory hand, and bubbled amphorically.
“As it is, let me finish my ale.”
“O, you can jest,” cried the other; “but I tell you ’tis no jesting matter. So he hath wronged me, I’ll have his life, were he twenty James Stuarts rolled into one.”
George set down the tankard, drained. His eyes gaped a little.
“The Duke of York?”