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She took Angela with her; and De Malfort and Sir Denzil were generally in attendance upon them, Denzil's devotion stopping at nothing except a proposal of marriage, for which he had not mustered courage in a friendship that had lasted half a year.
One of the noisiest was the table at which De Malfort was the most conspicuous figure; his periwig the highest, his dress the most sumptuous, his breast glittering with orders.
Suddenly, timing his attack to the fraction of a second, Fareham dropped on his left knee, and planting his left hand upon the ground, sent a murderous thrust home under De Malfort's guard, whose blade passed harmlessly over his adversary's head as he crouched on the sward. De Malfort fell heavily in the arms of the two seconds, who both sprang to his assistance.
"Love in her sunny eyes doth basking play, Love walks the pleasant mazes of her hair, Love does on both her lips for ever stray, And sows and reaps a thousand kisses there; In all her outward parts love's always seen; But, oh, he never went within." It was a song of Cowley's, which De Malfort had lately set to music, and to a melody which Hyacinth especially admired. "A serenade!
Had her sister gone to Whitehall to see the new comedy, in direct disobedience to her husband, instead of to so accustomed an entertainment as Lady Sarah's basset-table? And was that the only mystery between Hyacinth and De Malfort?
They sat for hours twanging guitars, Hyacinth taking her music-lesson from De Malfort, whose exquisite taste and touch made a guitar seem a different instrument from that on which his pupil's delicate fingers nipped a wiry melody, more suggestive of finger-nails than music.
This was how a beautiful lady who had hunted in the forests of St. Germain and Fontainebleau understood sport; and such performances as this Angela found easy and agreeable. They had many cavaliers who came to talk with them for a few minutes, to tell them what was doing or not doing yonder where the hounds were hidden in thicket or coppice; but Henri de Malfort was their most constant attendant.
"'Tis the name you called him last week when his dirty shoes left marks on the stairs. He changes his shoes in my presence," added Papillon, disgustedly. "I saw a hole in his stocking. Monsieur de Malfort calls him Cut-Caper." A month later the Oxford Gazette brought Lady Fareham the welcomest news that she had read for ever so long.
"A deadly duel with a man who hated him. Is not that an attempt at murder on the part of him who deliberately provokes the quarrel? Well, it is past, and he is gone. For all the colour of the world I live in, there might never have been any such person as Henri de Malfort." Her airy laugh ended in a sob, which she tried to stifle, but could not.
Albeit younger by half a lifetime than Southampton and Clarendon, and the other ghosts of the troubles. Charles treated him with chill civility. "Why does the man come here without his wife?" he asked De Malfort. "There is a sister, too, fresher and fairer than her ladyship. Why are we to have the shadow without the sun?
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