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"He is not like an angry man," she told Angela, "but like a wounded lion; and yet, since your goodness took all the blame of my unlucky escapade upon your shoulders, and he knows nothing of De Malfort's insolent attempt to carry me off, I see no reason why he should have become such a gloomy savage." She accepted her sister's sacrifice with an amiable lightness.
He had left the country without even bidding her farewell her faithful slave, upon whose devotion she counted as surely as upon the rising of the sun. Whatever her husband might do to separate her from this friend of her girlhood, she had feared no defection upon De Malfort's part.
Only with one person at Chilton Abbey had she ever conversed as seriously as with Fareham, and that person was Sir Denzil Warner, who at five and twenty was more serious in his way of looking at serious things than most men of fifty. "I cannot make a jest of life," he said once, in reply to some flippant speech of De Malfort's; "it is too painful a business for the majority."
Madame de Sevigne, in one of those budgets of Parisian scandal with which she cheered a kinsman's banishment, assured Bussy de Rabutin that Lady Fareham had paid her friend's debts more than once since her return to France; but constancy such as De Malfort's could hardly be expected were not the golden fetters of love riveted by the harder metal of self-interest.
No foreigner at the great King's court was more admired than the lovely Lady Fareham, whose separation from her black-browed husband occasioned no scandal in a society where the husbands of beautiful women were for the most part gentlemen who pursued their own vulgar amours abroad, and allowed a wide liberty to the Venus at home; nor was Henri de Malfort's constant attendance upon her ladyship a cause of evil-speaking, since there was scarce a woman of consequence who had not her cavaliere servante.
It was so unlike Hyacinth to be secret about anything; and her sister feared, therefore, that there was some plot of De Malfort's contriving De Malfort, whom she regarded with distrust and even repugnance; for she could recall no sentiment of his that did not make for evil.
She flung herself on her knees by De Malfort's bed, and wept and raved at the brutality which had deprived the world of his charming company and herself of the only man she had ever loved. De Malfort, fevered and vexed at her intrusion, and at this renewal of fires long burnt out, had yet discretion enough to threaten her with his dire displeasure if she betrayed the secret of his illness.
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.
You do not cog your dice, perhaps, but you bubble your friends with finesses, and are as much sharpers at heart as the lowest tat-mongers in Alsatia. You empty our purses, and cozen our women with twanging guitars and jingling rhymes, and laugh at us because we are honest and trust you. Seducers, tricksters, poltroons!" The footman was at De Malfort's elbow now.
Fareham and the Priest were playing chess at the other end of the long low room, by the light of a single candle. Papillon ran in at the door and ejaculated her disgust at De Malfort's desertion. "Was there ever such laziness? It's bad enough in Georgie to be so idle; but then, he has over-eaten himself." "And how do you know that I haven't over-eaten myself, mistress?" asked De Malfort.
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