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His companions were Sir Ralph Masaroon, Colonel Dangerfield, an old Malignant, who had hibernated during the Protectorate, and had never left his own country, and Lady Lucretia Topham, a visiting acquaintance of Hyacinth's. "Come here, Fareham," cried De Malfort; "there is plenty of room for you. I'll wager Lady Lucretia will pass you her hand, and thank you for taking it."
"And one can never tell whether the money they squeeze out of us goes to build a new ship, or to pay Lady Castlemaine's gambling debts," said Lady Sarah. "Oh, no doubt the lady, as Hyde calls her, has her tithes," said De Malfort. "I have observed she always flames in new jewels after a subsidy." "Royal accounts should be kept so that every tax-payer could look into them," said Masaroon.
He sank into Dangerfield's arms, swooning from loss of blood, as Masaroon came back at a run, bringing a surgeon, an elderly man of that Alsatian class which is to be found out of bed in the small hours. He brought styptics and bandages, and at once set about staunching the wound.
"You are a Republican, Sir Denzil, fostered by an arrant demagogue!" exclaimed Masaroon, with a contemptuous shake of his shoulder ribbons. "You hate the King because he is a King." "No, sir, I despise him because he is so much less than a King. Nobody could hate Charles the Second. He is not big enough."
"Is it fatal?" asked Fareham, standing motionless as stone, while the other men knelt on either side of De Malfort. "I'll run for a surgeon," said Masaroon. "There's a fellow I know of this side the Abbey mends bloody noses and paints black eyes," and he was off, running across the grass to the nearest gate.
Lady Sarah had nearly emptied her flask of Muscadine before Masaroon elbowed his way to a seat beside her, from which he audaciously dislodged a coffee-house acquaintance, an elderly lawyer upon whom fortune had not smiled, with a condescending civility that was more uncivil than absolute rudeness.
"And if the generality of his female characters conduct themselves badly there is always one heroine of irreproachable morals," said Lady Sarah. "Who talks like a moral dragoon," said Fareham. "Oh, dem, we must have the play-houses!" cried Masaroon. "Consider how dull town is without them. They are the only assemblies that please quality and riffraff alike.
I have a husband who would never forgive me if it were said you fought for my sake." "We will see you safely disposed of, madam, before we begin our business," said Colonel Dangerfield, bluntly. "Fareham, you can take the lady to her chair, while Masaroon and I discuss particulars." "There is no need of a discussion," interrupted Fareham, hotly. "We have nothing to arrange nothing to wait for.
Dubbin was released from his lady's sotto voce lecture at this instant, and Lord Rochester continued his communication in a whisper, the Honourable Jeremiah assenting with nods and chucklings, while Masaroon whistled for a fresh tankard, and plied the honest merchant with a glass which he never allowed to be empty.
"I have sworn Dangerfield and Masaroon to silence," he said. "Except servants, who have been paid to keep mute, you are the only other witness of our quarrel; and if the story becomes town talk, I shall know whose busy tongue set it going and then well, there are things I might tell that your ladyship would hardly like the world to know." "Traitor!
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