“Your general sent you?”
“No, no; we were but passing, and came of our own accord.”
“Oh, a friendly visit, with no official significance? I pray you present each other,” and she courtesied at each name. “And now let us go into the parlour and see what can be done for your entertainment.”
And in the parlour she gave them the best chairs, and set herself with much graciousness of manner to entertain them, plying them with delicate compliments, singing her Tory ballads with such laughing abandon that in the same spirit of fun they applauded her, thinking not a moment of the songs, but of the singer. Later on she brewed them a cup of tea, telling them it was a love potion to win a fair one’s favour; and although they began by protesting vehemently, yet they ended by drinking it, for she first put her own lips to the cups, and then dared them with her eyes. After that they would scarcely have hesitated at hemlock. At the end of an hour she dismissed them, each with a red rose in his coat.
“The colour suits your handsome eyes,” she said softly to one, with a ravishing glance, as she fastened the flower in place. And to the other she murmured, with downcast lids and a sweet similitude of faltering, “This is for memory,” as though for them both this hour was to be a tryst for thought and tender recollection, and the rose its symbol.
Neither of them had the wish nor the will to tear the flower away; and so with a certain crestfallen exhilaration they took their leave, riding slowly down the street, swearing each other to silence. But the story got the rounds within the hour, for Mistress Strudwick, seeing them enter the house and fearing some danger or annoyance to Joscelyn, had followed quickly, and sat in the next room with the door ajar during the entire interview. And she was not slow in publishing it abroad, so that the young officers were twitted unmercifully at mess and headquarters; even General Gates, when told of it, forgot for a moment the humiliation of his late defeat, and laughed long and loud. Under the banter one of the men threw his rose away; but the other held stoutly to his, meeting the raillery with the assertion that it was a lady’s favour and not a king’s colour that he wore.
“It was not kindly of you to take such mean advantage of them, Joscelyn, seeing how irresistible you can make yourself, but it was just the cleverest thing you ever did,” Janet cried, squeezing Joscelyn’s waist. “Mistress Strudwick has near had apoplexy with laughter, and even Mistress Bryce—who hates you like a double dose of senna and was the first to call attention to your undecorated door—could not keep a straight face to hear how neatly you outwitted the young coxcombs. But really, my dear, you deserve no great credit for it; for in that gown you are fit to melt harder hearts than Providence gave our gallant young soldiers.”
“I do not flatter myself their hearts were touched; it was only their vanity that melted like wax in the flame of my flattery.”
“Well, they deserved what they got,—trying to teach you behaviour, indeed!”