“It was a mistake,” he said, when Masaroon pressed him with home questions. “Every man is mad once in his life. Fareham’s madness took an angry turn against an old friend. Why, we slept under the same blanket in the trenches before Dunkirk; we rode shoulder to shoulder through the rain of bullets at Chitillon; and to pick a trumpery quarrel with a brother-in-arms!”
“I wonder the quarrel was not picked earlier,” Masaroon answered bluntly. “Your courtship of the gentleman’s wife has been notorious for the last five years.”
“Call it not courtship, Ralph. Lady Fareham and I are old playfellows. We were reared in the pays du tendre, Loveland—the kingdom of innocent attachments and pure penchants, that country of which Mademoiselle Scudéry has given us laws and a map. Your vulgar London lover cannot understand platonics—the affection which is satisfied with a smile or a madrigal. Fareham knows his wife and me better than to doubt us.”
“And yet he acted like a man who was madly jealous. His rudeness at the card-table was obvious malice afore-thought. He came resolved to quarrel.”
“Ay, he came to quarrel—but not about his wife.”
Pressed to explain this dubious phrase, De Malfort affected a fit of languor, and would talk no more.
The town was told that the Comte de Malfort was ill of a quartain fever, and much was said about his sufferings during the Fronde, his exposure to damp and cold in the sea-marshes by Dunkirk, his rough fare and hard riding through the war of the Princes. This fever, which hung about him so long, was an after-consequence of hardship suffered in his youth—privations faced with a boyish recklessness, and which he had paid for with an impaired constitution. Fine ladies in gilded chairs, and vizard-masks in hackney coaches, called frequently at his lodgings in St. James’s Street to inquire about his progress. Lady Fareham’s private messenger was at his door every morning, and brought a note, or a book, or a piece of new music from her ladyship, who had been sternly forbidden to visit her old friend in person.
“You grow every day a gloomier tyrant!” Hyacinth protested, with more passion in her voice and mien than ever her husband had known. “Why should I not go to him when he is ill—dangerously ill—dying perhaps? He is my old, old friend. I remember no joy in life that he did not share. Why should I not go to him in his sorrow?”
“Because you are my wife, and I forbid you. I cannot understand this passion. I thought you suffered the company of that empty-headed fop as you suffered your lap-dogs—the trivial appendage of a fine lady’s state. Had I supposed that there was anything serious in your liking—that you could think him worth anger or tears—should have ordered your life differently, and he would have had no place in it.”
“Tyrant! tyrant!”