“You are too malicious, my dearest Price,” said Lady Castlemaine, with more good humour than had been seen in her countenance that evening. “Buckhurst, will you take Mrs. Price to supper? There are cards in the gallery. Pray amuse yourselves.”
“But will your ladyship neither sup nor play?” asked Sedley.
“My ladyship has a raging headache. What devil! Did I not lose enough to some of you blackguards last night? Do you want to rook me again? Pray amuse yourselves, friends. No doubt his Majesty is being exquisitely entertained where he is; but I doubt if he will get as good a supper as you will find in the next room.”
The significant laugh which concluded her speech was too angry for mirth, and the blackness of her brow forbade questioning. All the town knew next day that she had contrived to get the royal supper intercepted and carried off, on its way from the King’s kitchen to Miss Stewart’s lodgings, and that his Majesty had a Barmecide feast at the table of beauty. It was a joke quite in the humour of the age.
The company melted out of the room; all but Fareham, who watched Lady Castlemaine as she stood by the hearth in an attitude of hopeless self-forgetfulness, leaning against the lofty sculptured chimney-piece, one slender foot in gold-embroidered slipper and transparent stocking poised on the brazen fender, and her proud eyelids lowered as if there was nothing in this world worth looking at but the pile of ship’s timber, burning with many-coloured flames upon the silver andirons.
In spite of that sullen downward gaze she was conscious of Fareham’s lingering.
“Why do you stay, my lord?” she asked, without looking up. “If your purse is heavy there are friends of mine yonder who will lighten it for you, fairly or foully. I have never made up my mind how far a gentleman may be a rogue with impunity. If you don’t love losing money you had best eat a good supper and begone.”
“I thank you, madam. I am more in the mood for cards than for feasting.”
She did not answer him, but clasped her hands suddenly before her face and gave a heart-breaking sigh. Fareham paused on the threshold of the gallery, watching her, and then went slowly back, bent down to take the hand that had dropped at her side, and pressed his lips upon it, silently, respectfully, with a kind of homage that had become strange of late years to Barbara Palmer. Adorers she had and to spare, toadeaters and flatterers, a regiment of mercenaries; but these all wanted something of her—kisses, smiles, influence, money. Disinterested respect was new.
“I thought you were a Puritan, Lord Fareham.”