“And judge of godliness by the length of the jowl. Poor people! No—that is not the elixir, the juice of crab-apples. Take her to the Mancini, that witch who turns dross into sunshine. The woman would wake the merry devil in a Quaker. She has old Rowley kissing her very slippers.”
“Hortense?”
“Who else, Nan? It is life, blood, mischief that the girl needs.”
My lady’s eyes flashed up at him mistrustfully for the moment. He caught the look and the significance thereof, and laughed.
“Oh, she is not my fortune, Nan! I am too old a moth for that candle. The woman is like a conduit of red wine let loose in the garden of White Hall. She makes all but the abstemious—drunk. And the marvel is that she is just as magical with women, is Hortense. Ask my Lord Sussex how he likes the transfiguration of his wife.”
“Castlemaine’s stupid brat!”
“Little whey face all turned into dimples, roguery, and mischief. She twinkles round the Mancini like a little Mercury with feathers at her heels. I will speak with Hortense; she has some sort of sisterly good-will to me, and a kind of pride in making sulky people merry. She’ll set the girl’s blood spinning, or I’m a fool.”
Anne Purcell leaned back in her chair as though tired.
“Anything to get rid of that sour face. But it’s her mawkishness, her squeamy, ‘pray-with-me-or-I-shall-die’ look, that makes me doubtful.”
The gentleman nodded understandingly.