“The business must indeed be urgent that brings me here,” she answered scornfully.
“Where you come a self-invited guest,” Mistress Maddon replied quickly. “But of course your ladyship has been to Court, and doubtless you have been taught manners which less favoured persons cannot hope to imitate.”
“Including even a sense of shame,” my lady answered icily.
I saw the woman before her redden beneath her rouge.
“Indeed!” she retorted sneeringly. “But perhaps your ladyship needed to be instructed in the lesson. It does not come readily to every one of our sex.”
“To some, never,” my lady replied in the same icy tone, and I saw her eyes flash behind her mask. “But I have had so little experience of how to treat such women!”
“Oh,” Mistress Maddon cried, “you have a keen wit, madam, have you not? ’Tis a pleasure to converse with you. Will your ladyship condescend to be seated?”
“I prefer to stand,” my lady replied haughtily. She turned to the man, who still sat silent at the table.
“Sir Richard Danvers,” she cried, “I presume you have already heard from the lips of this gentleman a version of the story that brings me to Exeter?” and she shot a glance replete with scorn at where I stood. “I demand to know,” she continued proudly, “by what right do you arrest a guest residing in my house?”
Her words aroused my lord.