“Oh! I grant she knows a rogue by his scent. She served the tap to such, I believe; and ’twas right noble of you to bring her to draw the ale to your honour.”
“Madam, is it not shameful to speak thus of one who preserved you all by her wit?”
“Mercy on us! I meant no offence. I love her solicitude in sitting up for the wanderers all night, and closing the shutters on her friends the thieves when she saw them breaking out of the drive. But what was that to her taking the burden of your release on her shoulders? and I trust she hath not found herself conducting a forlorn hope.”
“Her conduct is and has been what any with nobility must applaud.”
“I thank you for including me amongst the elect.”
“My name, madam, should I choose to recover it—as I may—will rank with the oldest and stateliest. I regard it as the meanest bribe to the consideration of one that simple self-respect adorns beyond the favours of kings.”
“Ah, me! We poor worldlings! It is well, I see, to go to school to misfortune, and better to pull mugs of ale to country louts. I can congratulate Lady Linne, at least, upon a very knowing taste in liquors.”
Mr. Tuke stared in amazement. Here, he could have thought, spoke the bitterness and scorn of jealousy. What if, at his last meeting with her, she had thought fit to stultify her previous insolence by a show of condescension to him that for the moment conveyed its calculated charm? He had looked upon this, on reflection, as a mere move in her game of coquetry—a bait to the sulky lord who “drizzled.” He had hardly dreamed that anything personal to himself could weigh in her balance against broad acres and a title; and nothing she had then said had weaned him from his newly-indulged lust of liberty. Now, all at once it came to him that Mr. Tuke transmogrified might boast attractions to a semi-romantic nature that no titled idiotcy could rival; and at the thought a very rigour of fright seized all his limbs, and he spoke out in quite a tremor of hurry:
“I am my lord’s tailor, as you know, madam, and though Mrs. Pollack may not show the best of taste in condescending to me, she hath still done me that honour.”
The advantages, where vanity is to receive a blow, are all on the side of breeding. An irrepressible start and glance of astonishment—and Miss Royston found herself in a moment.