“Those secrets can be easily denied, wretch. However, I know you would not injure me with a husband so odious and tyrannical that I stood excused in advance for inconstancy when I stooped to wed country manners and stubborn ignorance. Indeed, mon ami, if you will but take pains to recover, I will never breathe a word about the duel; but if—if—” a sob indicated the tragic possibility which Lady Lucretia dared not put into words—“I will do all that a weak woman can do to get Fareham hanged for murder. There has never been a peer hanged in England, I believe. He should be the first.” “Dear soul, there need be no hanging! I have been on the mending hand for a week, or my doctors would not have let you upstairs. There, go, my pretty Lucrèce; but if your milliner or your shoemaker is pressing, there are a few jacobuses in the right-hand drawer of yonder escritoire, and you may as well take them as leave them for my valet to steal. He is one of those excellent old servants who make no distinctions, and he robs me as freely as he robbed my father before me.” “Mrs. Lewin is always pressing,” sighed Lady Lucretia. “She made me a gown like that of Lady Fareham’s, for which you were all eyes. I ordered the brocade to please you; and now I am wearing it when you are not at Whitehall. Well, as you are so kind, I will be your debtor for another trifling loan. It is wicked to leave money where it tempts a good servant to dishonesty. Ah, Henri”—she was pocketing the gold as she talked—“if ten years of my life could save you ten days of pain and fever, how gladly would I give them to you!” “Ah, douce, if there were a market for the exchange of such commodities, what a roaring trade would be done there! I never loved a woman yet but she offered me her life, or an instalment of it.” “I have emptied your drawer,” laughing coyly. “There is just enough to keep Lewin in good humour till you are well again, and we can be partners at basset.” “It will be very long before I play basset in London.” “Oh, but indeed you will soon be well.” “Well enough to change the scene, I hope. It needs change of places and persons to make life bearable. I long to be at the Louvre again, to see a play by Molière’s company, as only they can act, instead of the loathsome translations we get here, in which all that there is of wit and charm in the original is transmuted to coarseness and vulgarity. When I leave this bed, Lucrèce, it will be for Paris.” “Why, it will be ages before you are strong enough for such a journey.” “Oh, I will risk that. I hate London so badly, that to escape from it will work a miraculous cure for me.” An armed neutrality! Even the children felt the change in the atmosphere of home, and nestled closer to their aunt, who never changed to them.