"And bid him do as I tell him," she cried sharply. "But he had better, or---- Still, tell him, tell him."
"Price," my lord said soberly, "the Countess is good enough to wish you to do an errand for her. Be good enough to consider yourself at her disposal, and go with the coach now. Be easy," he continued, nodding pleasantly--it was impossible for me to hide my apprehensions--"her ladyship needs you for a week only."
"Ay, sure!" she cried. "After that he may go to the devil for me!"
[CHAPTER XXXV]
Rightly has the Latin poet sung of the dura ilia of the Fates, who either resistless rout all human resolutions, or, where the mind has been hardened to meet the attack, turn the poor wretch's flank, and lo! while he squares his shield, and shortens his spear to meet the occasion, habet--he has it under the fifth rib.
So it was with me. While I dreamed of resistance, and would harden my heart and set fast my feet, fate cross-buttocked me; and I fell, not knowing. The Countess's coach bore me away, unresisting; and Smith, whom I hated as I never hated even Ferguson, gave me the word. From my plain clothes, to the long curled peruke, the cravat, ruffles, and fine suit in which I had once before paraded myself, was but a step; I took it perforce, and being conducted, when I was ready, into the Countess's chamber, to wait her pleasure, could have fancied the last six months a dream--could have fancied the conspirators still at work, Captain Barclay still pacing the Piazza, my lord still a stranger to me, the library a vision; in a word, I could have fancied all those events, which had filled half a year, to be no more than creatures of the imagination, so unchanged was the great silent room, where my lady, while I waited, played piquet with Monterey, amid the gorgeousness of her rose-and-silver suite.
The monkey gibbered as of old, and the parrot vied with the broidered parrots on the wall; and now, as then, the air was heavy with scent and musk, while the light, cunningly arranged, fell on the part where the Countess sat, now grumbling and now swearing, or now, while the cards were dealing, thumping the floor impatiently with her stick. She had so perfectly the grand air of a past generation, that when her eye turned in my direction I trembled, and thought no more of resistance; yet when she resumed the game, she gradually--and more and more completely, as I watched--sank into a querulous, feeble, fierce old woman, whose passion, where it did not terrify, moved to derision, and whose fads and fancies, as patent as the day, placed her at the mercy of all who cared to flatter or cozen her.
Madame was about it now; letting her win, and again gaining a slight advantage; mingling hints at old vanities and conquests (whereat my lady grew garrulous) with new scandals, coarse and spiteful; whining a little when my lady, in a fury caused by a bad hand, struck her across the face with a fan to teach her to be awkward, but cheering up at once when the Countess's mood changed with the cards. In a word, as she had betrayed me young, she cozened my lady old; but seeing her features grown hard with time, and her eyes grown lifeless, and the devil grinning more plainly from behind the mask, that once had been so fair, it was a wonder to me that even the Countess was deceived.
Presently my lady threw down her cards in a rage, and calling her opponent a cheating slut, proceeded to turn her anger on me.
"What is the gaby doing, standing there like a gawk?" she shrieked. "Why is he not about his business?"