And now Mrs. Slingsby, instead of seeking her couch—that couch which had been the scene of guilty pleasure, when Jacob Smith had lain concealed beneath it—seated herself in a large arm-chair, to wait until the house was quiet.
"I could wish that any thing rather than this was to take place!" she murmured two or three times. "Heaven only knows what will be the end of it! But Henry appears so confident of being able to appease her—so certain of reducing her even to the position of one who beseeches instead of menacing—that I am inclined to suppose he has well weighed all the difficulties of his task. At all events he has promised to spare me—to make me appear innocent! But will Rosamond be so deceived? No—no: she will view me with suspicion—her eyes will gradually open——And yet," thought Mrs. Slingsby, suddenly interrupting the current of her reflections, "she will be so completely in my power—at my mercy,—her honour will be in my hands—her reputation will depend on my secresy——Oh! how I wish this night was past!" she cried passionately: "for the deed which is to mark it, is horrible to contemplate!"
And the third person whose mind was so full of the image of Rosamond Torrens, at the time when she lay down—beauteous and chaste virgin as she was—to rest beneath the roof of one whom, in her ingenuous confidence, she believed to be a pattern of female excellence and virtue,—that third person was Sir Henry Courtenay.
The baronet, on quitting Mrs. Slingsby's house, had returned home in his carriage, which was at the door ready to convey him thither; and, on entering his abode, he had immediately repaired to his own chamber.
Dispensing with the services of his valet, he sate down to pass away in voluptuous reflections the hour that must elapse before he could set forth again, to return to the dwelling of his mistress in Old Burlington Street.
He was of that age when the physical powers somewhat require the stimulus of an ardent and excited imagination; and he now began to gloat in anticipation of the joys which he promised himself to experience in the ruin of the hapless Rosamond.
Remorse and compunction touched him not:—if he thought of the grief that was to ensue, it was merely because he re-arranged in his head all the details of the eloquent representations he must make to soothe that woe! Besides, his licentious imagination represented to him the beauteous Rosamond, more beauteous in her tears; and he had worked himself up to a pitch of such maddening desire, by the time it was necessary for him to sally forth, that he would not have resigned his expected prize—no, not if the ruin and disgrace of ten thousand families were to ensue.
Leaving his house stealthily, by a means of egress at the back, Sir Henry Courtenay hastened back to Old Burlington Street.
A few moments after he had reached the immediate vicinity of Mrs. Slingsby's residence, the clocks of the West-end churches proclaimed the hour of one.