“I must see her first.”
A lackey entered at the moment, bringing a summons from the Queen. My lord was wanted by her Majesty, and he might curse and “pish,” but he had to obey. He sniggered round, as he made for the door.
“More of this anon. Don’t go till I return. Jealousy it is, George.”
“Jealousy, Phil.”
Hamilton waved his hand, and turned, as the door shut on the departing figure. Then, with his fingers at his chin and a grin on his face, he stood to consider the game to which he had committed himself.
CHAPTER III
Men of pleasure, and of roguery to boot, were not, in King Charles’s time, much concerned as a rule over the logical consequences of their pranks. They took the day improvidently, like the grasshopper—“nicked the glad moments as they passed”—and gave little thought to the reckonings of the morrow. The “unities,” in any comedy they enacted, were of less moment to them than the general spirit of frolic, and so long as the situations afforded entertainment, they bestowed small thought on the dénouement. In the making or the marring of an intrigue the fun was in the process, and they seldom looked beyond to count the costs. So, when Hamilton conceived his plot, he had not, one must understand, foreseen any definite conclusion for it. It was enough that what he was proposing to himself served the immediate purpose of his amiable villainy.
As to that, his business was to make absolute the estrangement between these two; whence his crafty counsel to the Earl, who had not failed to rise to that insidious bait. He knew very well that, in spite of all that had happened, any genuinely contrite advances on the husband’s part would be sure to be met halfway by the wife, who was really a reasonable and forgiving little creature; wherefore it was necessary for him to convince her, timely and by ocular demonstration, of the vanity of any lingering hopes she might be entertaining of remorse and repentance on the part of a delinquent spouse. It was never to be supposed for a moment that she would answer to that test of jealousy in the manner he had professed to predict; it would be certain, on the contrary, to alienate the last of her consideration from one who could so wantonly and callously abuse it. She would turn from the heartless creature in a final disgust—to seek, according to all the rules of intrigue, consolation of the nearest sympathy; whereon it would remain only for him, her cousin and confidant, to reap the fruits of the emotional situation he had so cunningly engineered.
That was his hope and belief; but his plan yet lacked completeness. The deception he had contrived was but half a deception so long as it missed its counterpart. How to provide that must be his next consideration.
As he pondered, he heard a light step behind him, and turned to see the lady herself. She had come in very softly, and now stood before him, a rather piteous expression on her face. Her right arm, ostensibly the maltreated one, rested in a sling—black, that there might be no mistake about it—and, as long as she remembered, she winced when it was touched.