“Hang you, Bob! What moral?”
“Why, sir, that a woman dreads exposure in nothing but her weakness to stand the test of it. If she’s a peculiar fineness anywhere, she’ll take some means to let you know.”
“Then, sir,” cried I, with a flaming face, “I pride myself on nothing so much as my hand!”—and I brought it down stingingly on his ear.
“But I don’t want your hand,” he cried, stamping about, while his father roared, “Didn’t I tell you as much?”
Nevertheless, we were fast comrades, and together in some captivating peccancies, of which I only learned to rue the publicity when they led to my undoing.
Mr. Roper, as I have said, found a particular delight in galling—on somebody’s instigation—the sides of the promoters of the new pro-Papish Bills. Well, I will ask you, what did I owe to that Church? Was it likely that my treatment at its hands had left any love between us, or that I should wish its disabilities removed, who had suffered so much from it muzzled? I had been educated, under its shadow, to a full understanding of its juggleries and impostures. Now was the time, the country being still in a ferment over its heir-apparent’s alleged marriage with the Fitzherbert, to relate my experiences.
There was at that date published in London a little fashionable scapegrace of a paper called the World, the property of a Major Topham, who made it the vehicle for such a chronique scandaleuse as the town had never yet known; and in this paper I began (by preconcert with my political ally) to disclose, over the signature “Angélique,” the true story and circumstances of a certain beautiful young lady, who had been practised upon, and in the very heart of Protestant England, by a worse than Spanish Inquisition. The series, cautiously as I began by handling it, made an immediate sensation, and was, you may be sure, deftly engineered in the House by Mr. Roper for the Opposition. Moreover, “Angélique”—which delighted me as much—gave her sweet and melancholy name to a mourning gauze, which was so pretty that I had to kill an aunt to give me a title to wear it. At the same time her instant popularity made me tremble for my incognito, which, nevertheless, I knew to be the major’s very best asset in a profitable bargain. Still, not even his tact could altogether explain away the association of ideas implied in Mr. Roper’s common friendship with me and with that poor persecuted anonymity; and that I had made myself by no means so secure as Junius was a fact disagreeably impressed upon me on a certain evening.
I had been entertaining late that night, when his lordship entered unexpected. He came from St. James’s and from playing backgammon with the king, and wore his orders on a pearl-silk coat and, for contrast, a mighty scowling face over. I took no heed of him as he walked up the room towards me, humping his shoulders, and acknowledging wintrily the salutations of my little court, but went on laughing and rallying a dear little ensign Percy, with whom I was in love just then, pour faire passer le temps. However, the boy could not stand the inquisition of the red eyes, and joked himself into other company, with a blush and a bow to the ogre; at which I laughed, lolling back in my chair.
“Well, madam,” said Hardrough, knuckling his snuff-box softly, “when you can vouchsafe me a moment of your attention.”
I recognised the compelling tone in his voice, and rose, with a little show of indolence.