"No, I was brooding; brooding over my joy. Should a man not sit and nurse his happiness as well as his grief?"
"You have had a swooning fit, Jack. You are as pale as death."
"Well, I was near swooning with excess of joy; but 'tis over, and now I am ready for a riotous night. I will play you as deep, drink you as deep as in our wickedest days. There shall be no mirth too wild for me."
He went to the saloon, where his mistress was sitting at the harpsichord playing to Lady Bolingbroke, while the statesman stood with his back to the fireplace in a thoughtful attitude. There were no signs of levity here, at any rate.
Judith sprang up at his entrance, and went over to him.
"Why have you abandoned us so long?" she asked complainingly. "It was cruel of you to leave me to myself all this time."
"Could I leave you in sweeter company? But indeed, dearest, I have not stayed away for pleasure. I was busy."
"You have no right to be busy when I am in your house. All labours should cease but the labour of pleasing me," this with the spoiled beauty's air; and then, becoming all at once earnest and womanly as she saw the change in his countenance, "but you have not been busy. You have been ill, fainting. You are as white as chalk. O Lavendale, what has happened?"
"Nothing in this world, sweet, to vex you. I rode too hard t'other day for the pleasure of keeping near you, and I am no Nimrod, like Walpole and his great rival yonder. The hunting tired me."
"You must be in bad health to be so easily tired."