"If the clerk lied not he was very good authority," said Philter. "But be sure of one thing, Jemmy: if Lady Judith has to lose all the world for love, she will lose it. I am a student of women's faces, Jemmy, and I know what hers means. I was at a ball with those two not long before they quarrelled. It was at Lady Skirmisham's—her ladyship always sends me a card—"
"She would be very ungrateful if she didn't," interrupted Jemmy Ludderly, with a somewhat sulky air, "seeing that her husband is about the stupidest man in London; one of those hereditary dolts whom family influence foists upon the country, and that you are always writing him up as an oracle."
"There are worse men than Lord Skirmisham in the Cabinet, Jemmy. Well, as I was saying, it was my luck to be in Lady Judith's train of admirers at the Skirmisham ball, and late in the evening I came by chance into a little boudoir sort of room between the ballroom and the garden, where those two were alone together. It was a room hung with Chinese figured stuff, and there was but a transparent silk curtain where there should have been a door. She was clasped to his heart, Jemmy, sobbing upon his breast; he was swearing to be true and loyal to her, blaspheming in his passion, like the impious profligate he is, and invoking curses on his head if he should ever deceive her. I stood behind the curtain for but a few seconds watching them, but there was a five-act tragedy in the passion of those moments. 'Be only faithful to me, dear love,' she said, looking up at him, with those violet eyes drowned in tears. 'There is no evil in this world or the next I would not dare for you; there is no good I would not sacrifice for you. Only be true; to a traitor I will grant nothing.'"
"Lucky dog," said Ludderly.
"Say rather swine, before whose cloven feet the richest pearl was cast in vain," sighed the sentimental Philter. "Then came talk of ways and means. His lordship was in low water financially, and had a diabolical reputation as a member of the famous Mohawk Club; Lord Bramber would not hear of him as a match for his daughter. But there was always accommodating Parson Keith, and the little chapel in Curzon Street. 'If the worst comes, we will marry in spite of them,' he said; and then came more vows, and sighs, and a farewell kiss or two, and I stole away before they parted, lest they should surprise me. It was less than a month from that night when everybody was talking of Lavendale's intrigue with the little French dancer Chichinette, and the house that he had furnished for her by the water at Battersea; and how they went there in a boat after the opera, with fiddles playing and torches flaring, and how his lordship entertained all his friends there, and had Chinese lanterns and fireworks after the fun was all over at Vauxhall. He made himself the talk of the town by his folly, as he had often done before; and I doubt he went near to break Lady Judith's heart."
"She would be a fool if she ever noticed him again after such treatment," said Ludderly.
"Ay, but a woman who loves blindly is a fool in all that concerns her love, be she never so wise in other matters; and to love like that once is to love for ever."
Lady Judith knew not how these scribblers discussed her, anatomising her old heart-wounds, speculating upon her future conduct. She knew not even that Lord Lavendale had returned from the East—where he had been following in the footsteps of an eccentric kinswoman, and where, if report lied not, he had acquired new notoriety by breaking into a harem, and running a narrow risk of his life in the daring adventure. Lady Judith's first knowledge of his lordship's return was when she met him face to face in the Ring one fine morning, both of them on foot: she with her customary wake of fops and flatterers; he lounging arm in arm with his friend and travelling companion Herrick Durnford, who was said to be a little worse as to morals and principles than my lord himself.
In spite of that grand self-possession, that unflinching courage, and glorious audacity, which were in her race, a heritage whereof no spendthrift father could rob her, Lady Judith blanched at the sight of her old lover. A look of pain, of anger, almost of terror, came into the beautiful eyes, so large, so lustrous, so exquisitely shadowed by those ebon fringes when she had a mind to veil them.