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If there were dregs left in her cup, she drank them alone. A woman who had no beauty was often a mere drudging or child-bearing wife, scapegoat for ill-humour and morning headaches; victim, slave, or unnoticed appendage. This the whilom toast Lady Wildairs had become, and there were many like her.
The life the child led, it would have broken a motherly woman's heart to hear about; but there was no good woman near her, her mother's relatives, and even Sir Jeoffry's own, having cut themselves off early from them Wildairs Hall and its master being no great credit to those having the misfortune to be connected with them.
"'Tis Mistress Clorinda Wildairs he speaks of," said Sir Christopher Crowell, who stood near, rubicund in crimson, and he said it with an uncourtly wink; "and, ecod! he's right though I am not 'a town man." "He is enamoured of her," he added in proud confidence later when he found himself alone for a moment by his Grace. "The youngsters are all so and men who are riper, too.
"I am a Wildairs built of iron and steel. If in a struggle I held aught in my hand and struck at a man " her arm fell at her side suddenly as if some horrid thought had swept across her soul, like a blighting blast. She turned white and sank upon her low seat, covering her face with her hands. Then she looked up with awed eyes.
"You are the bigger man of the two," he jeered, impudently, "but give me your lesson and shut my mouth on Clo Wildairs if you can." "I am the better man," says my lord Duke, "and I will shut it. But I will not kill you."
Then to Sir John, "Thou hadst but just left Clo Wildairs and I rode with thee to Essex. Lord, how I laughed to watch thee groping to find a place safe enough to put it in. 'I'm drunk, says thou, 'and I would have it safe till I am sober. 'Twill be safe here, and stuffed it in the broken plaster 'neath the window-sill.
Lord L'Estrange never cut any one, and it was quite enough to slight some worthy man because of his neckcloth or his birth to insure to the offender the pointed civilities of this eccentric successor to the Belforts and the Wildairs. But this wish was never realized. Suddenly, when the young idol of London still wanted some two or three years of his majority, a new whim appeared to seize him.
There is no hatred, to a mind like his, such as is wakened by the sight of another's gifts and triumphs all the more horrible is it if they are borne with nobleness. To have lost all to see another possess with dignity that thing one has squandered! And for this frenzy there was more than one cause. Clo Wildairs! He could have cursed aloud. My Lady Dunstanwolde! He could have raved like a madman.
There was, indeed, a stirring scene when this message was delivered by its bearer. The chaplain was an awkward, timid creature, who had heard stories enough of Wildairs Hall and its master to undertake his mission with a quaking soul.
"I will wait until she does," Roxholm answered, and his youthful face was as grave as the hero's own, though if triflers had heard their words, they would have taken their talk for idle persiflage and jest. "'Tis Clo Wildairs, Man All the County Knows the Vixen." A month later he went to Warwickshire at my Lord Dunstanwolde's invitation.
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