But she went on, undaunted, joying to deal a wound to the pride of this man who had lacerated her own pride so terribly.
“ ... and there’s a way to deal wi’ rogues. You think that, perhaps because I am a woman, I am soft and tender; and so perhaps I am with them as deserves it. But I think I know your sort, Colonel Holles—if so be that you be a colonel. You’re not new to a house like mine; but I’ve never yet been bested by any out-at-elbow ruffler, and I’ll see to it as how you don’t best me now. I’ll say no more, though I could. I could say a deal. But I’ll say only this: if you gives me trouble I’ll ha’ the constable to you, and maybe there’ll be more than a matter of this score to settle then. You know what I mean, my man. You know what I could say an’ I would. So my advice to you is that you pay your bill without whimperings that won’t move me no more than they’ll move that wooden table.”
Scorched with shame, he stood before her, curbing himself with difficulty, for he could be very violent when provoked, though thanks to an indolent disposition he did not permit himself to be provoked very easily. He suppressed his fury now, realizing that to loose it would be to have it recoil upon him and precipitate his ruin.
“Mrs. Quinn,” he answered as steadily as he could, “I have sold my gear that I might pay my debt to you. Yet even so this debt exceeds the amount of my resources.”
“Sold your gear, have you?” She uttered a laugh that was like a cough. “Sold the fine clothes you’d bought to impose upon them at Whitehall, you mean. But you’ve not sold everything. There’s that jewel a-flaunting in your ear that alone would pay my score twice over.”
He started, and put a hand to the ear-ring—that ruby given to him as a keepsake by the lovely, unknown royalist boy whose life he had saved on the night after Worcester fight some fifteen years ago. The old superstitions that his fancy had woven about it had placed it outside his realizable assets. Even now, in this desperate pass, when reminded of its value, the notion of selling it was repugnant to him. And yet perhaps it was against this very dreadful need, perhaps it was that he might save his neck—for she made it clear to him that nothing less was now at stake—that in all these years he had hugged that jewel against every blow of fortune.
His head drooped. “I had forgot,” he said.
“Forgot?” she echoed in tones that plainly called him a liar and a cheat. “Ah, well, ye’re reminded of it now.”
“I thank you for the reminder. It ... it shall be sold at once. Your score shall be paid to-day. I ... I am sorry that, that.... Oh, no matter.”