“Ha!” he breathed, “your father!”
“Sir, they will imprison him; and when they do they will imprison this very heart of mine. Perhaps, sir, you never knew a father, perhaps you never loved a father, perhaps you never saw a father’s honourable silver hairs. Sir, they will imprison him; and when they do, life will be all empty to me.” The lady fell into a sudden weeping. The sobs shook her as a reed. And though she fought with all her handkerchief against the slow but certain tears they crept down to her powder, and so gravely furrowed it that afterwards she shrank the farther in the shade.
But through a convenient interval of cambric this distressed daughter intently marked the Captain’s face. The good man had been long apprenticed to the sword and to the world, but sure the lady’s agonies did move him.
“Tell me,” he said, “what I can do? What is my power? I am but a servant of the King. Madam, do you think it is my pleasure to put you in such pain? Madam, I am but a menial, a tool. I am not the law by which you suffer, and if I were, do you suppose I would not let it spare you?” There was a fine indignant sternness in the man that made the lady tremble. Yet she exulted, too, for Captain Grantley was steadily ripening to the deed exacted of him. In confidence, however, I had better tell you that this incorrigible Bab Gossiter, like the naughty child she was, was playing with a fire, and in the sequel which she is pledged to presently set forth, you shall be told how badly that fire burnt the lovely, heedless fool.
CHAPTER XII.
I DEFY DEAR LADY GRIMSTONE.
It was a late hour when the lady apparently exposed her soul. She had not one to expose, it is true, but the Captain was deluded into thinking that she had, and persuasion is more powerful than fact. Her father was her blood, her breath; his honour was her own. The Captain gave her the humble admiration of a soldier. Daughters of this mould, who could worship a parent in this manner, must always command the tender reverence of one whose dream was to be the diligent servant of his country. He was also touched. Men of the sword are very human, he informed her. It was a relief, she replied, to have that on such eminent authority, because, to avenge the joyous escapade of an innocent girl, a soldier had proposed to treat her venerable sire with a brutality that was incredible. She did not refine her language to his delicate ear. How could she, being moved so deeply? Did not her lips twitch with feeling, her eyes flash with passion? Alas the Captain! He might have seen “the drums and tramplings of three conquests,” but, being human, could he resist her generous anguish, her lovely indignation? Nay, he swore it, he was pained for her as deeply as ever she was for her father. But the word “avenge” he resented sternly.
“Madam, I say again, I am not the law. I am merely the puppet who obeys it.”
“Must he obey it then?” Madam tapped a satin shoe quite loud upon the hearth-tiles.
“I hold a commission; I am but a puppet,” groaned the Captain, with cheeks of the colour of the damask at his side.
“A puppet!” She rose a queen, and cast the phrase upon him. “A puppet! Then, sir,” demanded she, “do you suppose I can afford to lavish my precious hours upon a puppet?”