“Ha!” he said; “there you speak. And stap me if I love you the less for it.” He took a turn or two, and came back grinning. “They’re damn clever, Di: there, I’ll admit they’re damn clever! But ’tis a perilous game you play, my girl; and you’ll do well to take care you play it to none but your own interests.” He went off again, and returned. “Harkee!” he said; “there’s Beltower’s whelp, and--and I don’t care a fig for your predilections. Work your oracle as you will; only be faithful to me, and you won’t suffer for’t in the end.” He finished in such spirits that he was moved to show me a letter he had received from his sister but a few days before. In it she upbraided him for his treachery,--of which she only recently had certain information--in converting his capture of me to such infamous account; and called upon him, as he valued his soul, to turn his Jezebel adrift again to her merited deserts. “_Enfin_,” I said, handing him back the effusion, “for a respectable lady she shows a vigorous vocabulary. She writes in London, I see.” He chuckled like a demon. “She writes in hell, and bites the more viciously for her roasting. ’Tis that fellow has led her here, dancing after some new fancy of his; and, by God, she’s paid for her stubbornness, and must vent her spite on someone.” “Well,” I said, “tell her so from me; and that, for my part, I’d rather be Jezebel than what came to lap her blood.” At which he neighed, vowing he’d take me at my word. XXII. I RUN ACROSS AN OLD FRIEND It has always been my fate to suffer most at the hands of my best friends; and now it was to be my dearest, my little sister, who was to shoot her arrow over the house and wound me. In innocence, Heaven forgive her; and, in forgiving, answer to itself for making me the unconscious instrument of its retribution. It was in the third year of my “minority,” and while in the full zest of my conspiracy with young Roper, that one night we made up a party for Vauxhall Gardens, and crossed from Whitehall Stairs--very merry with French horns and lanterns and a little Roman boy, Ugolino, who sang like an angel--to witness the new picture of a tempest in the cascade house. This we had seen, and were gone for supper into one of the boxes (which Bob called the loose boxes) in a retired corner of the grove, when occurred the _contretemps_ which was to change the whole face of my fortunes. I had observed, without marking them, a couple enter the adjoining booth, and was bawling my part in a catch, while waiting for the chickens and cheesecakes, when a fellow put his head round the partition, and, kissing his dirty hand with a leer, “Beg pardon, leddies,” says he, “but I can supplement that ’ere chaunt with a better”--and immediately, disappearing from sight, began to bang the table beyond and to roar out a filthy ballad. Roper leapt to his feet--there was a crowd lingering by, attracted by our merriment--and ran round to the front.