"I should not mind if it were not for the child's jewels," her Grace muttered in a low tone.
"Pooh, the carriage might be robbed twenty times," the duke answered, "and they would not be found--where they are. Good-bye, Bet. Good-bye! Be a good girl, and say your prayers!"
"And mind you use the almond wash," her Grace cried.
Lady Betty cried "yes," to everything, and, amid a fire of similar advices, the two were shut into the chariot. From the window Lady Betty continued to wave her handkerchief, until, Watkyns and the woman having taken their seats outside, the postboys cracked their whips and the heavy vehicle moved forward. A moment, and the house and the kind wistful faces on the steps disappeared, the travellers swung right-handed into Sutton Street, and, rolling briskly through St. Giles's and Holborn, were presently on London Bridge, at that time the only link connecting London and Southwark.
Lady Betty was in a humour that matched the sparkle of the bright May morning. She was leaving the delights of town, but she had a journey before her, a thing exhilarating in youth; and at the end of that she had a vision of lordlings, knights, and country squires, waiting in troops to be reduced to despair by her charms. The dazzling surface of the stream, as the tide running up from the pool sparkled and glittered in the sun, was not brighter than her eyes--that now were here, now there, now everywhere. Now she stuck her head out of one window, now out of the other; now she flashed a smile at a passing apprentice, and left him gasping, now she cast a flower at an astonished teamster, or tilted her pretty nose at the odours that pervaded the Borough. The grooms rode more briskly for her presence, the postboys looked grinning over their shoulders; even the gibbet that marked the turn to Tooting failed to depress her airy spirits.
And Sophia? Sophia sat fighting for contentment. By turns the better and the worse mood possessed her. In the better, she thought with gratitude of her lot--a lot happy in comparison of the fate which she had so narrowly escaped; happy, even in comparison of that fate which would have been hers, if, after escaping from Hawkesworth, she had been forced to return to her sister's house. If it was good-bye to love, if the glow of passion could never be hers, she was not alone. She had a friend from whose kindness she had all to expect that any save a lover could give; a firm and true friend whose generosity and thoughtfulness touched her every hour, and must have touched her more deeply, but for that other mood which in its turn possessed her.
In that mood she lived the past again, she thirsted for that which had not been hers. She regretted, not her dear Irishman--for he had never existed save in her fancy, and she knew it now--but the delicious thrill, the warm emotion which the thought of him, the sight of him, the sound even of his voice, had been wont to arouse. In this mood she could not patiently give up love; she could not willingly resign the woman's dream. In this mood she cried out on the prudence that, to save her from the talk of a week, had deprived her of love for a life. She saw in her husband's kindness, calculation; in his thoughtfulness, the wisdom of the serpent. She shook with resentment, and burnt with shame.
And then, even while she thought of him most harshly, her conscience pricked her, and in a moment she was in the melting temper; while Lady Betty chattered by her side, and town changed to country, and, leaving Brixton Causey, they rattled by the busy inns of Streatham, with the church on their right and the hills rolling upward leftwise to the blue.
Four and a half miles to Croydon and then dinner. "Now let me see them," Lady Betty urged. "Do, that's a dear creature! Here we are quite safe!"
Sophia pleaded that it was too near town. "Wait until we are through Croydon," she said. "They say, you know, the nearer town, the greater the danger!"