Rafael Sabatini - The Ordeal

No one could deny that Lady Sutliffe was possessed of at least two devils. Both were devils who make feminine affairs their province, and neither was particularly malign. The first was the mischievous Imp of Coquetry, whose business it is slyly and playfully to clear the way for Satan himself, but who makes as many failures as successes in his undertakings; the second was the Demon of Perversity, one of the younger children of Pride, an insidious little fiend who keeps you amused by his drolleries what time he digs a pit for your destruction.

The first of these demons led her into encouraging the manifest admiration of the elegant and accomplished Mr. Gadsby; the second caused her to plunge further into that dangerous make-believe pastime when Sir George―her husband―remonstrated with her for want of circumspection.

Thus matters stood when one morning as Lady Sutliffe sat before the long mirror in her boudoir, and her maid was brushing from her ladyship's shimmering tresses some remains of last night's powder, Sir George intruded unannounced upon her toilet. He bore a letter in his hand; a frown sat between his brows.

It was in the mirror that her ladyship caught the first glimpse of his tall figure in its caped riding-coat.

"I did not hear you knock, sir," said she, very pertly, for there was a sort of feud between them on the subject of this Mr. Gadsby.

"I have to speak to you, madam," said he very quietly, disregarding her implied rebuke. "Will you be so good as to dismiss your maid?"

She regarded his reflection in the long glass wearily.

"Is so much necessary?" she drawled.

He laughed a little scornfully.

"Hardly, i' faith," said he, "considering the publicity which your affairs have gained already."

A delicate flush overspread the pretty face; a frown came to mar the smoothness of the perfect brow.

"Leave us, Francoise," she said. And the French maid went out―to glue her ear to the keyhole.

"The last insult which it remained for you to offer me, you have now offered," said she, when they were alone. "You have affronted me before my woman."

Again he ignored her challenge, and came straight to the matter that brought him.

"I regret to reopen the topic," said he, in deliberate, level tones that were habitual with him, for a more self-contained man than Sir George Sutliffe never lived, "but necessity is again thrust upon me of speaking to you concerning your friend Mr.―Gadfly."

"I assume," said she modelling her tones upon his own, "you mean Mr. Gadsby?"

"Oh, Madam," said he, "I could wish that you had the same care for your own name that you have for his!"

She flushed under the hit, then smiled disdainfully.

"Is this an example of the wit for which, I am told, you cultivate a reputation?"

"Was 'reputation' the word you uttered, ma'am?" quoth he. "It is very timely, for it reminds me that I came to talk to you upon the subject of your own, an echo of which, it seems, has reached to Gloucester."

She swung round on her seat with a swish of her flowered silken gown.

"What do you mean?" Anger quickened her voice.

"I have here a letter from Gloucester, from a Mrs. Gadsby―the wife, I understand, of this painter friend of yours. She appeals to me to rescue her husband from the wiles of my wife, to whose ways she applies certain epithets taught her, no doubt, by the lewd voice of common rumour. But read the letter for yourself, ma'am. It would be diverting, were it lm pathetic." And he held out the written sheet.

For a moment she looked into his calm face with its urbane, inscrutable smile. Herself she was a little out of countenance now; a little alarmed at learning the extent of the scandal to which her foolish conduct had given birth. At last, almost with hesitation, she took the letter. In reading it she composed herself, for all that there was a deal to wound her in what was written. Having read it carefully through:

"Why," she protested, "what a poor scrawl of pothooks is this! Is it a letter, did you say? I vow you're very clever to have guessed it. And is it English, or have they a language of their own in Gloucester?" With a pretty pout of regret she offered it to him again. "I protest I can make out no word of it," she ended.

Sir George took the epistle gravely.

"I have written to this lady," he said, "the comforting and reassuring letter that her state of mind appears to require. I have assured her that I profoundly agree with every word that she has written―"

"You have dared!" blazed her ladyship, breaking in upon his deliberate speech. "You have dared put such an affront upon me, to humiliate me by agreeing with such expressions as that creature uses!"

"To what expressions are you referring, madam? Is it possible that the letter was not as illegible to you as you protested?"

"Let us have done with pretence, Sir George!" she clamored angrily.

"With all my heart, ma'am," said he, and laughed.

"Did you write in such terms as you say to this woman?"

"Should I say so if I had not? And I added a promise, in earnest of my respect and sympathy for her, to take the burden of this matter upon my own shoulders. Since Mr. Gadsby's lingering in town appears to be due to the friendship which your ladyship honours him, I undertook to set a term to this friendship, so that here there might be nothing to keep Mr. Gadsby from returning to Gloucester."

He paused, and she rose and stood considering him. Her face was white, her beautiful eyes blazed, her bosom heaved rapidly under its flimsy silken garment. Then, quite suddenly, she sat down again and burst into tears.

"Madam," said he, "I am glad to see you penitent at last."

"Penitent!" she flared, her tears suddenly forgotten under the goad of that word. "Penitent!" she repeated, and swung with a furious swish, to face him anew.

"You have humiliated me as if I were a―a―" An adequate object of comparison failed to suggest itself.

"I think, madam, that you have humiliated yourself." And his grey eyes surveyed her with a wistful calm that was more exasperating than his words. "You have given your name to be the sport of this foul town."

"Leave my room, Sir!" she bade him, am arm outflung dramatically towards the door.

"As soon as you shall have promised me to comply with his wife's wishes and my own concerning Mr. Gadsby."

Her ladyship bit her lip, and considered the pattern of the French carpet, her daintily slippered foot tapping the floor the while.

"I shall promise nothing, sir," she said at length. Her voice was quite deliberate. The Demon of Perversity was in full possession of her now. "You have insulted and humiliated me."

He was the very incarnation of urbane patience.

"You shall promise me," he insisted, with a hint of insistence in his tone, "that you will dance no more Mr. Gadsby, nor saunter in the Ring with him, nor receive him here at your house, either alone or in the presence of others. In short, I desire that from this hour you shall not further pursue the acquaintance of Mr. Gadsby."

"And is that all?" quoth she, trilling, the faintest of ironical laughs.

"That is all," said he. "I will not have you the talk of the town."

She smiled scornfully. "And if I refuse?"

"It will be the worse for Mr. Gadsby."

The smile froze on her lips. She looked at him, and her eyes dilated.

"What do you mean?" And without waiting for an answer―for his meaning, after all, was plain enough―"That were indeed to cover my name with scandal!" she exclaimed.

"My only concern is for my promise to Mrs. Gadsby," he returned. "One way or the other it must be fulfilled. But you need fear no increase of scandal. Your name shall not be dragged into the affair."