A perilous policy; but one actuated, at least in its inception, by the most righteous of motives. The bee that stings deep, however, too often destroys itself in the loss of its own weapon; and so it may be with offended chastity. This young Countess, seeking about for an instrument with which to achieve her purpose, came near to her downfall in the choice which opportunity, not to speak of kinship, imposed on her. Mr. George Hamilton, her cousin-german, was its name.
Now see her as she sits affecting to work, with an occasional glance askance, half derisive, half wistful, at her husband’s pretended preoccupation, and admit that she is proposing to herself a very risky course in thus feigning to lease her charms to a tenant so unscrupulous as Master George. The young wit of her, the natural delicacy warring with passion, the emotions engendered of such a combat; and all housed in a form as pretty as that of a Dresden shepherdess, as pink and white, as endearing in its childish bloom—what could these all be but so many provocations to a man of Hamilton’s antecedents to play, by diverting to his own advantage the sensibilities so fondly entrusted to his sympathy, the part of Machiavellian seducer? He never hesitated, as a fact, but started at once to sort the hand which Fortune had so gratuitously thrust upon him. It was his good luck at the outset that his cousinship, aided and abetted by his close intimacy with the Earl, gave him the entrée at all times into those quarters at Whitehall which Chesterfield enjoyed in right of his position as Groom of the Stole to her Majesty; but, like the practised intrigant that he was, he used his privilege with discretion. He was really, to do him justice, very enamoured of the lady; and, according to his code, free of all moral responsibility in seeking to make a cuckold of a man who, though he was his personal friend and confidant, had chosen deliberately to invite such reprisals on the part of a faith he had grossly abused. At the same time, he did not under-estimate the delicacy of his task, or the strength of the instinctive prejudices he had to overcome; though sure enough such obstacles but added a zest to the pursuit. What as yet he did not guess was that his own eyes were not alone, nor even the most compelling, in having discovered and marked down for capture a tender prey which circumstances seemed to have made quite peculiarly attainable. In short, his Majesty’s brother, the Duke of York, was already suspected of a leaning in the same direction.
Poor little, abused Countess! But perhaps it would be better not to pity her prematurely.
She threw down her work, on a sudden uncontrollable impulse, and rising to her feet, looked across at the insensible bear opposite. Some emotion of love and forbearance was working, it seemed, in her; she hesitated an instant, gazing with full eyes, the knuckles of her little right hand held to her lips, then hurried across the room, and addressed her husband.
“Cannot we be friends, Philip, before it is—too late?”
He did not even stir, but just raised his lids indolently and offensively. He was, to do him justice, a personable man as to his upper half, with a fine head of mouse-coloured hair and a ready brain under it; but irresolution spoke in his legs, which were weedy, and so, inasmuch as the strength of a rope is its weakest part, affected the stability of the entire structure, physical and moral. He was, in fact, a waverer and unreliable, overbearing to others because uncertain of himself, much subject to moods and passions, and always, as is the case with those whose vanity is up in arms at the least suspicion of criticism, more disposed to force his way by rudeness than to win it by consideration. But he was skilled with his sword, and that, in a quarrelsome age, procured him a better title to respect than a hundred courtesies would have done.
“Too late for what?” he drawled languidly.
She made a little gesture of helplessness, then rallied to her task.
“Is this,” she said, “the natural fruit of the love you expressed for me, before—before I became your wife?”
“When you talk of Nature, madam,” he answered, stirring and yawning, then relapsing into his apathetic attitude, “you forget that with her a single season covers the whole contract of matrimony.”