"With your tricks you made her think Harry was such as you are. And that wife you married came to Alison and told her that Harry was base-born."
"Rot the shrew! She must meddle must she? Egad, she was always a blunder, Madame Rachel." He swore at her fully. "Bah, what though? Why should jolly Alison heed her?"
"Alison knows everything now. I told her."
"Egad, you go beyond me, Kate. You that made me swear none should ever know the boy was yours. You go and blab it out! Damn you for a woman."
The woman looked at him strangely. "You have done that indeed," she said.
"No, that's too bad. I vow it is." For once Colonel Boyce was stung. He fell silent and fidgeted, and made a long arm for the herb water by his bed. Mrs. Weston gave it him. "Let be, can't you?" he cried, and drank all the same. "Eh, Kate that came over my guard…. She has made you suffer, the shrew. Egad, I could whip her through the town for it."
"Yes. Whip her."
"Oh, what would you have?" Colonel Boyce shifted under a rueful air, strange in him. "I am what I am. I have had no luck in women. She was a blunder. And you—you have paid to say of me what you will. Egad, you have the chance now."
"Are you in pain?"
"Be hanged to pain! Don't gloat, Kate. That's not like you, at least."