“Your plan?” he asked.
“I know not—how should I? It’s Sunday, curse it! Where does Rich go Sundays? The playhouse is shut. ’Tis impossible to find a soul.”
“Whence then the rumour you heard?”
“My man brought it from Portugal Street.”
“Then we go there.”
In Portugal Street, the Sunday leisure set free groups of persons, slatternly women and half drunken men to talk over all the news of the day and of all the items the story of the last night was the most favoured. Under the stinking oil lamps, along the gutters, about the dirty cobble-stones the rumours, amplified now beyond recognition, flew to and fro.
Polly was muffled and forced into the chair. She had waved her hand for help. A man with his collar pulled up about his face was guessed to be Sir Charles Jermyn that had long loitered about her. So it raged on, and both men knew that ’twas all false and this but wasting precious time.
“Who shall say she did not go by her own choice?” mutters Baltimore at last—almost under his breath as if it was wrung out of him, as they stood by the corner to consider.
“If your Lordship had won her, yourself could answer that question,” said the Duke. “She is no wanton.”
“The Devil knows what a woman may be.” Again he fell silent. Bolton turned from him to a little group of women clustered at a door.