‘Does the Duchess of Dewlap dare to give me
the lie?’ said Mr. Beamish.
‘That’s not my title, and you know it,’
she retorted.
‘What’s this?’ the angry beau sang
out. ‘What stuff is this you wear?’
He towered and laid hand on a border of lace of her
morning dress, tore it furiously and swung a length
of it round him: and while the duchess panted
and trembled at an outrage that won for her the sympathy
of every lady present as well as the championship
of the gentlemen, he tossed the lace to the floor
and trampled on it, making his big voice intelligible
over the uproar: ’Hear what she does!
’Tis a felony! She wears the stuff with
Betty Worcester’s yellow starch on it for mock
antique! And let who else wears it strip it
off before the town shall say we are disgraced—
when I tell you that Betty Worcester was hanged at
Tyburn yesterday morning for murder!’
There were shrieks.
Hardly had he finished speaking before the assembly
began to melt; he stood in the centre like a pole
unwinding streamers, amid a confusion of hurrying
dresses, the sound and whirl and drift whereof was
as that of the autumnal strewn leaves on a wind rising
in November. The troops of ladies were off to
bereave themselves of their fashionable imitation old
lace adornment, which denounced them in some sort abettors
and associates of the sanguinary loathed wretch, Mrs.
Elizabeth Worcester, their benefactress of the previous
day, now hanged and dangling on the gallows-tree.
Those ladies who wore not imitation lace or any lace
in the morning, were scarcely displeased with the
beau for his exposure of them that did. The
gentlemen were confounded by his exhibition of audacious
power. The two gentlemen nighest upon violently
resenting his brutality to Duchess Susan, led her
from the room in company with Chloe.
‘The woman shall fear me to good purpose,’
Mr. Beamish said to himself.
Mr. Camwell was in the ante-room as Chloe passed out
behind the two incensed supporters of Duchess Susan.
‘I shall be by the fir-trees on the Mount at
eight this evening,’ she said.
‘I will be there,’ he replied.
’Drive Mr. Beamish into the country, that these
gentlemen may have time to cool.’
He promised her it should be done.
Close on the hour of her appointment, he stood under
the fir-trees, admiring the sunset along the western
line of hills, and when Chloe joined him he spoke
of the beauty of the scene.
‘Though nothing seems more eloquently to say
farewell,’ he added, with a sinking voice.
‘We could say it now, and be friends,’
she answered.
‘Later than now, you think it unlikely that
you could forgive me, Chloe.’
‘In truth, sir, you are making it hard for me.’
‘I have stayed here to keep watch; for no pleasure
of my own,’ said he.
