“So you were wise and came away,” she said, still addressing the young man. “But milord was wiser. He would not help to inflame a popular prejudice. The majesty of the people must be respected—when it takes to singeing one’s coat-tails.”
“Well,” thought Ned, “I must be right. This is Madame Cocotte from the Palais Royal. Or else—I wonder if she is in the pay of a very neighbouring government?”
A thought or two—of madame’s manner of presenting her little sarcasms—quickened his curiosity. To countermine the supposed agencies of Pitt, the inflexible and reserved, the bottomless Pitt—was it unreasonable to suppose that France was employing some very engaging decoy-ducks to the corruption of an aristocracy that might be fifth-cousins to State secrets? True, Monseigneur the Viscount’s confidence was of little worth but to his valet; yet the first rung of the ladder may be used for the secondary purpose of scraping one’s boots on before climbing.
Madame was the only guest. She had brought her monkey with her, and the little brute was carried screeching to a chair by her side at the dinner-table, where it sat sucking its thumb like a vindictive baby and snatching at the dishes of fruit.
“Fi, donc! fi, donc! De Querchy!” she would cry to it. (She had named the beast, it presently appeared, after an enemy of hers, M. le Comte of that title.) “C’est ainsi que tu donnes une leçon de politesse à ces barbares, nos amis?”
My Lord Murk laughed at all her insolence—especially when her sallies were directed at his nephew. She spared the young man no more than she did her host’s wine, to which, Ned was confounded to observe, she resorted with a freedom that was entirely shameless. Indeed, she drank glass for glass with the elder of the gentlemen, and indulged herself with a corresponding licence of speech that quite confirmed the younger in his estimate of her character. But he was hardly prepared for the upshot of it all as directed against himself.
“Monsieur Edouard,” she once said (it was after the servants had left the room), “have I not your language in perfection?”
“Indeed, madame,” he answered stiffly, “even to a peculiar choice in words.”
She laughed arrogantly.
“I accept your insult!” she said—and flung the glass she was drinking from full at him.