"A."
Mr. Waverton read with swelling eyes.
It was a little while before the meaning came home to him. He was never quick. Then (a sin to which he was not prone) he used oaths. The treacherous, besotted woman! She was still craving for her shabby lover, then. She offered a fair face to her too generous, too faithful Mr. Waverton, only to obtain his confidence and betray him again. Egad, she was too base. Rotten at the very heart of her. Why, some women must lust after a low, common fellow, as dogs after dirt. So she would have saved her Boyce from his master's punishment? Mr. Waverton laughed. She would have had him back in her arms again? Mr. Waverton continued to laugh.
But faith, she went too far when she tried to trick Mr. Waverton a second time. Much she had gained by her treachery. Her fine husband was out of her reach now. It would be a pleasure to advise her of his death. Nay, faith, a duty. The miserable creature had been saved from herself. She must be shown that—oh delicately, with something of a cold grandeur, a touch of irony maybe, but always in a lofty manner as became one who moved upon heights far above her grovelling soul. Mr. Waverton, for all his high irony, rode back home through the dregs of the storm very furiously.
CHAPTER XXXI
CAPTAIN McBEAN TAKES HORSE
Captain McBean, healthily red and brown, showed no sign of having been out of bed all night. From cold water and a razor in his own lodgings he came back at a round pace to St. Martin's Lane. He found his aide, Mr. Mackenzie, taking the air on the doorstep of the Blue House, and rebuked him. "I bade ye bide with the lad, Donald."
"The surgeon has him in hand, sir."
"Tiens. He's a brisk fellow, that Rolfe."
"I'm thinking Mr. Boyce will need him."