She endeavoured to summon a smile into her face to match the laughter he spoke of, and faintly succeeded. He knew what disgust and suffering lay behind it and respected her the more in his infidel fashion for her contempt of her husband, and her resolution to hide it from the world.
“ ’Tis a coarse, gross woman,”—he mused as he went along the corridor later,—“but the heart and brain and courage of a man. ’Tis she should have been King of England, and perhaps we had then matcht Elizabeth. The vicious fool she uses is a poor tool for such a hand. But where’s Berkeley?”
He talked with that gentleman for half an hour before seeking his own repose. He saw the importance of any matter that might entangle the Duchess, and indeed Miss Polly’s matters were almost become an affair of state into such high company were they got. The poor girl would never have believed her own consequences had she been told it.
As to Madam Diana—no one troubled over her at all. Dianas were not believed to haunt the playhouse in Portugal Street. ’Tis probable no one credited her existence but herself and one other. Let us charitably add the Duchess.
CHAPTER XIV
T was in the great white and gold withdrawing room of Queensbury House that her Grace discoursed that Sunday night to her friends and partisans on the insult received from the King.
“Lord!” says Lady Fanny, using her fan with as much energy as had it been a flail descending on his Majesty’s back.— “Was ever such treatment known to one of her Grace’s rank! These little Electoral Princes imagine they are to come over from their bear-garden in Hanover and insult the most ancient families of England. The Stuarts, who were at least gentlemen, whatever their shortcomings, had never attempted such insolence.”