“I doubt if his Majesty frets for the want of an heir,” remarked De Malfort. “He is not a family man.”
“He is not a one family man, Count,” answered Fareham.
Fareham and De Malfort were both away on this January evening. Papillon was taking a dancing lesson from a wizened old Frenchman, who brought himself and his fiddle from Oxford twice a week for the damsel’s instruction. Mrs. Priscilla, nurse and gouvernante, attended these lessons, at which the Honourable Henrietta Maria Revel gave herself prodigious airs, and was indeed so rude to the poor old professor that her aunt had declined to assist at any more performances.
“Has his lordship gone to Oxford?” Angela asked, after a silence broken only by her sister’s yawns.
“I doubt he is anywhere rather than in such good company,” Hyacinth answered, carelessly. “He hates the King, and would like to preach at him, as John Knox did at his great-grandmother. Fareham is riding, or roving with his dogs, I dare say. He has a gloomy taste for solitude.”
“Hyacinth, do you not see that he is unhappy?” Angela asked, suddenly, and the pain in her voice startled her sister from the contemplation of the sublime Mandane.
“Unhappy, child! What reason has he to be unhappy?”
“Ah, dearest, it is that I would have you discover. ’Tis a wife’s business to know what grieves her husband.”
“Unless it be Mrs. Lewin’s bill—who is an inexorable harpy—I know of no act of mine that can afflict him.”
“I did not mean that his gloom was caused by any act of yours, sister. I only urge you to discover why he is so sad.”