Lady Kilrush would see no one after her illness, putting off all visitors with polite little notes of apology, protesting that she was not yet in health to receive visits, and must defer the pleasures of friendship till she was stronger. On this the rumour went about that the disease had disfigured her beyond recognition, and all the envious women of her acquaintance were loud in their compassion.
"'Tis vastly sad to think she is too ugly to let anybody see her," said one. "I'm told she wears a thick veil even in her own house, for fear of frightening her footmen."
"They say she offered a thousand pounds to any one who would invent a wash that would hide the spots," said another.
"Spots, my dear! 'Tis vastly fine to talk of spots. The poor wretch has holes in her face as deep as your thimble."
"And is as blind as Samson Agonistes," said a fourth.
"And oh, dear, we are all so sorry for her," said the chorus, with sighs and uplifted hands; and then the fiddles began a country dance, and everybody was curtseying and simpering and setting to partners, down the long perspective of fine clothes and powdered heads, and Lady Kilrush was forgotten.
Not by Lord Dunkeld, who started post-haste for London directly he heard of her illness, and being informed that she was out of danger, and sitting up in her dressing-room every afternoon, pleaded hard to be admitted, but was resolutely refused.
Sophy wrote to him at her mistress's dictation, assuring him of her lady's unchanging esteem, but adding that she was too much out of spirits to see even her most valued friends.
"Most valued! I wonder what value she sets upon me?" questioned Dunkeld, cruelly disappointed. "'Tis the parson-soldier, or the soldier-parson she values. Perhaps the loss of her beauty moves her most because she will be less fair in his eyes. I doubt that it is always of one man only that a woman thinks, when she rejoices in her beauty. It is for his sake; to please his eye! The fellow may be a Caliban, perhaps, and yet he is the shrine at which she offers her charms."