“Chi lo sa? One has fancies! But my dearest sister has been wise in good time, and you will be the happiest wife in England; for I believe your Puritan is a saintly person, the very opposite of our Court sparks, who are the most incorrigible villains. Ah, sweet, if you heard the stories Lewin tells me—even of that young Rochester—scarce out of his teens. And the Duke—not a jot better than the King—and with so much less grace in his iniquity. Well, you will be married at the Chapel Royal, and spend your wedding night at Fareham House. We will have a great supper. His Majesty will come, of course. He owes us that much civility.”
“Hyacinth, if you would make me happy, let me be married in our dear mother’s oratory, by your chaplain. Sure, dearest, you know I have never taken kindly to Court splendours.”
“Have you not? Why, you shone and sparkled like a star, that last night you were ever at Whitehall, Henri sitting close beside you. ’Twas the night he took ill of a fever. Was it a fever? I have wondered sometimes whether there was not a mystery of attempted murder behind that long sickness.”
“Murder!”
“A deadly duel with a man who hated him. Is not that an attempt at murder on the part of him who deliberately provokes the quarrel? Well, it is past, and he is gone. For all the colour of the world I live in, there might never have been any such person as Henri de Malfort.”
Her airy laugh ended in a sob, which she tried to stifle, but could not.
“Hyacinth, Hyacinth, why will you persist in being miserable when you have so little cause for sadness?”
“Have I not cause? Am I not growing old, and robbed of the only friend who brought gaiety into my life; who understood my thoughts and valued me? A traitor, I know—like the rest of them. They are all traitors. But he would have been true had I been kinder, and trusted him.”
“Hyacinth, you are mad! Would you have had him more your friend? He was too near as it was. Every thought you gave him was an offence against your husband. Would you have sunk as low as those shameless women the King admires?”
“Sunk—low? Why, those women are on a pinnacle of fame—courted—flattered—poetised—painted. They will be famous for centuries after you and I are forgotten. There is no such thing as shame nowadays, except that it is shameful to have done nothing to be ashamed of. I have wasted my life, Angela. There was not a woman at the Louvre who had my complexion, nor one who could walk a coranto with more grace. Yet I have consented to be a nobody at two Courts. And now I am growing old, and my poor painted face shocks me when I chance on my reflection by daylight; and there is nothing left for me—nothing.”