“She will!” cries Lady Fanny— “O Kitty, tell me to dance on the tight-rope at the Fair, to grin through a horse-collar, to do anything in the wide world you bid me—and if your Grace does it, I’ll do it unflinching also. Let us court ridicule and worse in common!”
They kissed one another on it—the Duchess very tenderly. She knew the sore sting at her friend’s heart, for if not love in the highest, still, love is pain and hurt pride a bitter salve for it. She knew also the fine high-bred generosity that rings responsive when the steel of a high call is struck upon it, and in all London there would be no aid like Lady Fanny’s and her own for the poor lovers she would help.
“We will make them happy,” says she, “Bolton is singularly helpless where women are in hand;—Diana but a trembling girl as yet, but will be a fine woman. Come hither and see her soon, and be her judge—and her angel.”
They parted on this, my Lady Fanny carrying her hurt under a gay cover, as many of her ancestors had done a thrust through flesh and blood. Well—shall a woman fail in courage that heeds it a thousandfold more than any man—she that must oppose a tender unarmed bosom to the thrust? She knew not her own heart yet—’twas so sudden a downfall.
“When I see him I shall know. But he’ll avoid me. He has not even pity—
“I have asked grace at a graceless face
And there was none for my men and me.”
she said to her own heart. Words she often used since she knew my Lord Baltimore.
She took her pen when alone, and wrote thus to the cousin of her love:
“My Kitty, I have had a blow that leaves me bewildered. I scarce can tell whether I’m alive or dead. As a man falling from his horse picks himself up stunned and bruised and cannot say at first whether ’tis he or another—so am I. ’Tis either death or a cure, and for the life of me I know not which. When my eyes can see you shall hear. But pity me, my Kitty,—I would ask no pity but yours on whose faithful love I have reposed since I was a child. Love me also, for I am solitary. Fie, this soft self-pity—I loathe it. And I am embarked with Kitty Queensbury in an adventure so odd that sure ’tis one of her oddest, and I know not what your sedately married Ladyship would say to it or to me. Farewell, Kitty, for today. My little painted boat is run on the rocks, and I must try to drag her off and set my idle sail again and salve what I can of the wreck. She was called ‘The Hope’ and I know not whether my heart was the cargo or no. Again, when I know, I will be open with you.