I went up-stairs with the beautiful woman, who gave a little laugh as she shut the door.
“Poor Mr Raymond!” said she; “I feel so sorry for the man. Nature meant him to be a Tory, and education has turned him into a Whig. He has the kindest of hearts, and the most unmanageable of consciences. He will help us to free a prisoner, but he would not call me anything but ‘Mistress’ to save his life.”
“And your Ladyship—?” said I, guessing in an instant what she ought to be called, and that she was the wife of a peer—not a Hanoverian peer.
“Oh, my Ladyship can put up with it very well,” said she, laughing, as she helped me off with my evening dress. “I wish I may never have anything worse. The man would not pain me for the world. It is only his awful Puritan conscience; Methodist, perhaps, Puritan was the word in my day. When one lives in exile, one almost loses one’s native tongue.”
And I thought I heard a light sigh. Her Ladyship, however, said no more, except what had reference to our business. When the process was over, I found myself in a printed linen gown, with a linen hood on my head, a long white apron made quite plain, and stout clumsy shoes.
“Now, be as vulgar as you possibly can,” said her Ladyship. “Try to forget all your proprieties, and do everything th’ wrong way. You are Betty Walkden, if you please, and Mr Hebblethwaite is Joel Walkden, and your brother. You are a washerwoman, and your mistress, Mrs Richardson, lives in Chelsea. Don’t forget your history. Oh! I am forgetting one thing myself. Colonel Keith, and therefore Lieutenant Drummond, as they are the same person for this evening, is Will Clowes, a young gardener at Wandsworth, who is your lover, of whom your brother Joel does not particularly approve. Now then, keep up your character. And remember,”—her Ladyship was very grave now—“to call any of them by his real name may be death to all of you.”
I turned round and faced her.
“Madam, what will become of Colonel Keith?”
I thought her Ladyship looked rather keenly at me.
“‘The sword devoureth one as well as another,’” was her reply. “You know whence that comes, Miss Courtenay.”