Moll fairly whistled.
“Mercy on us!” she exclaimed. “Virtue! Do you mean his? And is that your way of putting it? So it’s sour grapes on my part, is it? But I never said, you know, that I had that effect on him that he has on me.”
“Who would expect you to say it, vain and heartless creature? But, whatever the truth—and I look to only distortion of it from your lips—these clandestine flittings, be their object what or whom they may, can no longer be suffered to impair the reputation of this house. They must either cease or you must go.”
Moll, her lip lifted, brought up her right hand with a slow flourish, and once, twice, thrice, snapped thumb and second finger together with great deliberation.
“Very well, my lady,” said she. “I will go, and leave the reputation of this house in your keeping. I have done my little best to purify it during my brief time here; but I am afraid the disease is too deep-seated for anything but a chirurgical operation. When you have been removed, perhaps, by his royal physicianship of York, the place may have a chance of recovery.”
And she dropped a little insolent curtsy, and without a tremor, her nose exalted, brushed by my lady and stalked out of the room.
At which Kate, having no word to say, nor courage to say it, fell against the wall, with a white face, and had a hard to-do to fight away an inclination to tears.
CHAPTER XVI
Mrs. Davis, conscious that her position was no longer a tenable one, and driven to naughty extremities by the three-sided investment which left her no alternative but to retreat—fighting—retired to her chamber to consider the course by which she could best inflict a Parthian stroke on the three enemies who, each from a different motive, were responsible for her coming ejectment. She contemplated nothing very terrible, it is true—only some exaggerated form of mischief in keeping with her little lawless, whimsical nature. She was not a tragic vengeance, and she nursed no very grievous resentment over a treatment which, she was perfectly aware, she had done much to deserve and little to be entitled to deprecate. She had taken advantage of a temptation to play, especially of late, a game of her own rather than that of Hamilton, her employer and confederate; and she had wasted her opportunities rather on personal enjoyment than in pursuance of any consistent effort to serve that gentleman’s designs. She knew all this, admitted her own shortcomings; and yet, though she had a physical liking for the rascal, she was not going to let him escape scot-free, without any endeavour to retaliate on him for his cool repudiation of her at the eleventh hour. She wished and intended him no great harm; only she felt it a moral obligation on herself to speak the last word in this comedy of misunderstandings. It was worth while to show him that his supposed easy command of women was subject to some little accidents of discomfiture and humiliation where he chose to presume too much in his dealings with the sharp-witted among them. After which she would be quite willing to call quits with him.
Now, Hamilton, for his part, in leaping to a certain conclusion as regarded Moll’s connection with the guitar incident, had shrewdly approximated, but only approximated, the truth. Mrs. Davis, as we know, had had nothing to do with the Duke’s visit; nevertheless the Duke’s visit came to have something to do with Mrs. Davis. His Highness—a singularly close observer, though with a congenital incapacity for profitable reflection—had not failed to take stock of the attractive little figure in the garden, nor to consider to what possible uses he might convert the fact of its offence in the eyes of the lady of whom he was enamoured. He might, for instance, by privately threatening that offence with punishment for its wrong-doing, terrify it into lending itself as an instrument to his own designs. It should be worth trying; only it was necessary first to secure an interview with the person of the offence. There was no difficulty to be foreseen in that, save the one difficulty of eluding scandal in the process; and, indeed, from the lady’s point of view, there was no difficulty at all. For in very truth, from the moment when, listening and peeping at the keyhole, Moll had realized the rank of the Countess’s visitor, that amazing young person had been actually busying her brain with speculations as to her own possible eligibility as a royal favourite, though in the regard of the “second best” only. It had been under the spur of that inspiration, indeed, that, deterred by no false modesty as to her personal qualifications in the way of looks and witcheries, she had appeared, singing, at the window, with the view that questions might be asked about her—a piece of effrontery which, seeing that it was ventured in the very face of the high-born rival to be supplanted, might fairly be considered unsurpassable. But diffidence was never one of Moll’s weaknesses.