And when he was gone she sat awhile looking darkly in the fire, revolving matters that fell outside the knowledge she intended him. If my Lord Baltimore knew the girl unworthy—the self-chosen mistress of a man like Walker— Well, hearts have been caught on the rebound ere now,—and if the plot failed she could sell Macheath without mercy to his vengeance, and take the reward due to a guardian angel of injured innocence. If it succeeded ’twas very possible it might lead to Polly’s dismissal with her Macheath. Good it could not do her. But in either case Mrs. Bishop saw the road lie open before her to the playhouse. A woman does not play in the plotting comedies of Wycherley, Vanbrugh and their like without learning a little contrivance at a pinch.
When the time came, she went out and lurked about in the rain to see Polly’s departure after the play. She noted the Duchess’s fine chair draw up for her, the chairmen wiping their lips with their sleeves as they came from the neighbouring pot-house where they waited.
She saw my Lord Baltimore stand in the doorway, his hat slouched forward and his cloak thrown about him. She saw Polly pass him with head averted.
And each item that she saw, she fixed in a mind wax to receive and marble to retain.
CHAPTER XIII
HE greatest lady in England, Queen Caroline, sat in her apartment in Kensington Palace on Sunday night a week later, drinking her chocolate, with Lord Hervey and the Princess Emily in attendance, all three personages much at their ease in Zion and in a fine flow of gossip and reminiscence. Her Majesty could as little dispense with her dish of gossip as her dish of chocolate. ’Twas the relaxation of a truly powerful and commanding mind, and since ’twas a liking as common to her sovereign lord and master as to herself, she’s the less to be censured for what is called a feminine failing.
In mingling and seasoning this delicate dish and serving it to her Majesty’s liking, my Lord Hervey had no peer and was valued accordingly. There was scarce any hour of the day or night that the door was not open for him to the Presence, and he took the fullest advantage of his position. Nay, even in illness, he was not banished, having the honour to sit t’other side of the door that gave on the Queen’s bed and there entertain her with the tittle-tattle, political or social, of the day. ’Twas more than was allowed to the Peachum and Lockit of the court, Sir Robert Walpole and my Lord Townshend.