Lady Sarah Tewkesbury had risen betimes, and, in her anxiety to secure a good place, had come out in her last night’s “head,” which somewhat damaged edifice of ginger-coloured ringlets and Roman pearls was now visible above the wooden partition of the King’s Bench to the eyes of the commonalty in the hall below, her ladyship being accommodated with a seat among the lawyers.
One of these was a young man in a shabby gown and rumpled wig, but with a fair complexion and tolerable features—a stranger to that court, and better known at Hicks’s Hall, and among city litigators, with whom he had already a certain repute for keen wits and a plausible tongue—about the youngest advocate at the English Bar, and by some people said to be no barrister at all, but to have put on wig and gown two years ago at Kingston Assizes and called himself to the Bar, and stayed there by sheer audacity. This young gentleman, Jeffreys by name, having deserted the city and possible briefs in order to hear the Fareham trial, was inclined to resent being ousted by an obsequious official to make room for Lady Sarah.
“Faith, one would suppose I was her ladyship’s footman and had been keeping her seat for her,” he grumbled, as he reluctantly rose at the Usher’s whispered request, and edged himself sulkily off to a corner where he found just standing-room.
It was a very hard seat which Mr. Jeffreys had vacated, and her ladyship, after sitting there over two hours, nodding asleep a good part of the time, began to feel internal sinkings and flutterings which presaged what she called a “swound,” and necessitated recourse to a crystal flask of strong waters which she had prudently brought in her muff. Other of Lady Fareham’s particular friends were expected—Sir Ralph Masaroon, Lady Lucretia Topham, and more of the same kidney; and even the volatile Rochester had deigned to express an interest in the case.
“The man was mistaken in his métier,” he had told Lady Sarah, when the scandal was discussed in her drawing-room. “The rôle of seducer was not within his means. Any one could see he was in love with the pale sister-in-law by the manner in which he scowled at her; but it is not every woman who can be subjugated by gloom and sullenness, though some of ’em like us tragical. My method has been to laugh away resistance, as my wife will acknowledge, who was the cruellest she I ever tackled, and had baffled all her other servants. Indeed she must have been in Butler’s eye when he wrote—
‘That old Pyg—what d’ye call him—malion
That cut his mistress out of stone,
Had not so hard a hearted one.’
Even Lady Rochester will admit I conquered without heroics,” upon which her ladyship, late mistress Mallett, a beauty and a fortune, smiled assent with all the complacency of a six-months’ bride. “To see a man tried for an attempted abduction is a sight worth a year’s income,” pursued Rochester. “I would travel a hundred miles to behold that rare monster who has failed in his pursuit of one of your obliging sex!”
“Do you think us all so easily won?” asked Lady Sarah, piqued.
“Dear lady, I can but judge by experience. If obdurate to others you have still been kind to me.”
Lady Sarah had nearly emptied her flask of Muscadine before Masaroon elbowed his way to a seat beside her, from which he audaciously dislodged a coffee-house acquaintance, an elderly lawyer upon whom fortune had not smiled, with a condescending civility that was more uncivil than absolute rudeness.