Pamela then perceived, standing in the doorway of the coffee-room chewing a gold toothpick, no less a personage than that dashing widower. He was surveying his whilom betrothed and her illicit cavalier with a bantering, swaggering, insolent air in which there was more than a glint of jealous anger. As Lady Selina hailed him, he tripped forward. “Good heavens,” reflected the milliner, “I’d slap any man’s face, gentleman or no, who dared to look at me like that!” Colonel Endacott, biting his full under lip, and blackly scowling, seemed very much of this opinion; but the Mad Brat extended both hands: “Sir Jasper!--well met! ’Tis a vast of pleasure for me to greet an old friend. Why, here am I, on my road to London--pray, Colonel Endacott, do you know Sir Jasper Standish? Gentlemen, let me introduce you: Colonel Endacott--Sir Jasper Standish. Hearing that I was about to post to London, Colonel Endacott kindly offered me a seat in his curricle. My husband’s Colonel, Sir Jasper. The wife of a poor Lieutenant, it was no offer to decline! Colonel Endacott, who is really all condescension and good nature, Sir Jasper, had further been so obliging as to offer me his escort for the whole way. But the mischief is in it, we must part at the first stage! Colonel Endacott will have it he must lie at Blandford, and I am equally determined to push on!” Colonel Endacott ground his high-booted foot on the flags of the hall, as though he would pulverise the volatile lady who was so obviously making a mock of him. “Why, my dear Lady Selina,” cried Sir Jasper, in a rich voice of victory, “let me then be your escort! Fie, fie, you cannot think of travelling alone with a mere post-boy for protection, and the roads so unsafe. I could not think of allowing it! So old a friend as I am may surely be permitted the privilege, the honour, the duty----” “Pray, sir,” interrupted Colonel Endacott, his tones were husky with rage, “you misunderstand, I think. Lady Selina Simpson is under my protection. It was entirely for her sake----” Here he cast a glance of mingled ardour and fury upon the Mad Brat who tossed her head till her ringlets danced and hunched a shoulder on him in its military cloak, with a taunting glance. “’Twas but for her sake,” the harsh accents grew raucous, “that I suggested the night’s rest here. Lady Selina knows that she had but to speak the word, and I am ready----”