The other men roused themselves, stuck their tongues in their cheeks, dug their thumbs into their own or their neighbours’ sides, and looked as if they expected something peculiarly interesting and enlivening, out of the course of regular business.
One of the elder men present took snuff, and whispered to his next neighbour that he remembered that woman as the handsomest jade in England.
“Zounds! a lady shall not demand protection and be refused it, you may depend upon that, Mrs. Die,” said a free-and-easy, out-spoken gentleman, who loved a row. “What does this rapscallion Cholmondely do to molest you?”
“He waylays me and my housekeeper; he drops me letters continually; he threatens to do both for me and himself, if I don’t pay him money to stop his vile tongue and pen,” answered Mrs. Die furiously.
“Mrs. Die Godwin,” interrupted the gentleman in the precise cut coat, speaking sternly, “permit me one question. Were you not at one time affianced to this William Cholmondely?”
“Yes; I was promised to him in marriage twenty years or more ago,” replied Mrs. Die disdainfully; “before this girl, my niece, was born;” and at the words, eye-glasses, which had already been roaming curiously over Lady Bell, were arrested and fixed upon her with keen criticism.
“And was not the marriage broken off,” Mrs. Die’s antagonist continued indignantly, “because your brother, Squire Godwin, engaged Cholmondely in a sporting transaction (I shall not stop to say of what nature), the brunt of which, falling on this wretched fellow, not only stripped him of every acre and guinea he possessed, but blackened his reputation beyond redemption, compelled him to flee the country for a season, and reduced him to associate with the very dregs of society on his return? Is not that a correct statement of facts, madam?”
“Perfectly correct, sir,” assented Mrs. Die promptly, making him a superb curtsey. “But you have given no reason why the hound should lie in wait to yelp and snarl at me.”
The result of the complaint was that the quarter sessions granted Mrs. Die Godwin the protection which she claimed, binding over William Cholmondely, late of Thornhurst, to keep the peace under a penalty of one thousand pounds.
Lady Bell’s bewildered, appalled young eyes read a few lines of a strange page of life.