Diana made for the door, the business being finished, but not before Mr. Rich said graciously, in an aside:
“You’ve won Gay’s heart, child. That suffices. Win no more hearts until the play is done. You’ll have your part tomorrow. Think but of that and of the business in hand and bid the fops flutter about other candles. Yet displease not his Lordship utterly. His word is law to the fine ladies and gentlemen that make or mar us.”
She curtseyed again with hot angry cheeks. That night a posy of red roses tied with blue and silver satin ribbons was left for her at Mrs. Scawen’s. But no name. She flung it atop of the fire and Mrs. Scawen had much ado to rescue the ribbons for her own wearing to Bartholomew Fair. Knowing the habits of the nobility and gentry she informed Mrs. Di that these colours were the livery of my Lord Baltimore. ’Tis certain that many ladies wore this livery not only on their persons but in their hearts—the more’s the pity!
CHAPTER VI
FORTNIGHT later, Catherine Duchess of Queensbury—a very imperious and beautiful lady, was seated in her own library, and her companion was his Grace of Bolton. But a few words must needs be said of this celebrated person, Mr. Gay’s patroness and (it must needs also be said) instigator in his attacks upon the court. Never was a lady more favoured by fortune. Born of the great Hyde family that had given two Queens to England—their Majesties Mary the Second and Queen Anne, she married as greatly as her birth demanded, becoming Duchess of Queensbury and Dover in her twentieth year, and paling all the beauties of her own rank by her radiant face. A wit, a termagant, with a tongue like a dagger, and the most wilful of her sex, she queened it right royally, and if the majestic Queen Caroline could daunt her Grace ’twas as much as she could, and that by no means always. Certainly no other person made the attempt. For Prior’s “Kitty beautiful and young,”—who by the way seemed but to grow in beauty as in years, considered herself the first lady in Europe by right divine, and for those who failed to bow before her sceptre ’twas apt to become a rod, and descend upon their backs with a resounding thwack. But sweet as a summer breeze to those who were fortunate enough to please her Divinity! Of these Mr. Gay had the happiness to be one of the chief, and at the present time his knife and fork was laid daily at her Grace’s table and a room kept at his disposal, his Grace the Duke, her husband, approving all that his consort decreed. It came as a consequence that Madam followed every event in the production of “The Beggar’s Opera” with as much interest as its author, hoping to launch it with all its sting at her deadly enemy Sir Robert Walpole, the famous minister.
Behold then the fair Kitty—whom her enemies described as a cat—in the full bloom of her charms, more lovely at twenty-eight than when she stole the car of love and set the world afire (to quote again her adorer, Prior) in her teens. A noble looking creature with large lucent eyes and long throat to set off her diamonds, and brown hair shot with gold dressed so as to add to her fine height. She might have been an Empress. Yet, will it be believed that this woman who moved and spoke a goddess confessed, could descend so far as to snatch off her brocaded apron in a fury when those dainty ornaments were forbid at Court, and fling it in the face of the Lord Chamberlain who strove to hinder her Grace’s invasion in the contraband garment? Not only did she so, but considered herself the aggrieved party and swept on into the Presence, darting such awful glances at him as must have withered the unfortunate but for the supporting anger of royalty on his side.
Such then was the lady with whom Bolton sat closeted now. They had played together as children and between them subsisted a strong and faithful friendship that admitted of truth on both sides with an unalterable kindness beneath, whatever little whiffs might disturb the surface.