‘The story will... unless—and quickly, too.’
I know, I know!’
Fleetwood had the clang of all the bells of London chiming Whitechapel at him in his head, and he betrayed the irritated tyrant ready to decree fire and sword, for the defence or solace of his tender sensibilities.
The black flash flew.
‘It ‘s a thing to mend as well as one can,’ Lady Arpington said. ‘I am not inquisitive: you had your reasons or chose to act without any. Get her away from that place. She won’t come to me unless it ‘s to meet her husband. Ah, well, temper does not solve your problem; husband you are, if you married her. We’ll leave the husband undiscussed: with this reserve, that it seems to me men are now beginning to play the misunderstood.’
‘I hope they know themselves better,’ said Fleetwood; and he begged for the name and number of the house in the Whitechapel street, where she who was discernibly his enemy, and the deadliest of enemies, had now her dwelling.
Her immediate rush to that place, the fixing of herself there for an assault on him, was a move worthy the daughter of the rascal Old Buccaneer; it compelled to urgent measures. He, as he felt horribly in pencilling her address, acted under compulsion; and a woman prodded the goad. Her mask of ingenuousness was flung away for a look of craft, which could be power; and with her changed aspect his tolerance changed to hatred.
‘A shop,’ Lady Arpington explained for his better direction: ‘potatoes, vegetable stuff. Honest people, I am to believe. She is indifferent to her food, she says. She works, helping one of their ministers—one of their denominations: heaven knows what they call themselves! Anything to escape from the Church! She’s likely to become a Methodist. With Lord Feltre proselytizing for his Papist creed, Lord Pitscrew a declared Mohammedan, we shall have a pretty English aristocracy in time. Well, she may claim to belong to it now. She would not be persuaded against visitations to pestiferous hovels. What else is there to do in such a place? She goes about catching diseases to avoid bilious melancholy in the dark back room of a small greengrocer’s shop in Whitechapel. There—you have the word for the Countess of Fleetwood’s present address.’
It drenched him with ridicule.
‘I am indebted to your ladyship for the information,’ he said, and maintained his rigidity.