As if it had needed but the sound of this voice to galvanize her into life, to assure her of the incarnate reality of the insult with which she had been threatened, the young wife started, and, advancing a few hurried paces, paused, recollected herself, and went on deliberately to a table, on which she proceeded to deposit the gloves which she stripped leisurely from her hands. She was just come in from riding, and, in her dove-grey habit, with the soft-plumed hat on her head—steeple-crowned, but coaxed into that picturesque shapelessness which only a woman can contrive—looked a figure sweet enough to set Mrs. Davis wondering over the criminal blindness of husbands. Mr. George Hamilton, you see, had let her into only so much of the truth; a half-knowledge which his lordship’s behaviour had certainly done nothing to rectify.
My lady, whose fingers had gripped a silvered riding-switch, put down that weapon, as if reluctantly, and drew off her gloves. If this woman was what she supposed, there could be no course for her to adopt more contemptuous than that of overlooking her as if she did not exist for her.
“Sure, it must have been a surprise for you,” said Moll, after waiting vainly for some response, “to find me come, unbeknown to you, on a visit to my kinsman. But la! we never know what’s going to happen next—now, do we?” (No answer.) “‘Look in any time you’re in the neighbourhood,’ he says to me, ‘and there’s always bed and board for you at Whitehall.’” (No answer.) “You’ve a pretty place here, my lady. We’ve got none such in the country, saving it’s the Manor House where Squire Bucksey lives; and him but half a gentleman, having lost a leg and an arm at Worcester fight.” (My lady takes up a book, which she affects to read in.) “Well,” said Moll, “if you’ve nothing to say, I think I’d better be following his lordship.”
She moved as if to go. The book slapped down. My lady turned upon her peremptorily, with crimson cheeks.
“Stay! Too intolerable an insolence! This affectation of rustic artlessness! I had thought to be silent, but it transcends my endurance. I had been warned of your coming, and I know who you are. Your name is Davis; deny it not.”
Impudence was not offended; but her sauce was up. She turned to counter, and the two faced one another.
“Deny it? Not I,” she said. “What if it is?”
“What? How dare you speak to me? Is not your presence here offence enough?”
“What have I done now?”
“Done? No wonder your right cheek flushes for its shame.”