to acknowledge a wife whose very name will have become a byword for every gossip to peck at, and whose virtue hath already been the toy of an adventurer as unscrupulous as he was daring. Not the Catholic Church, not the law of England, nor the decree of the Pope would enforce the original marriage vows after that. I give you my word, gentlemen, that my lord of Stowmaries will be granted leave by every high tribunal, spiritual or temporal, to repudiate the wench who had thus disgraced his name."
Sir John Ayloffe had long finished speaking and silence still reigned all around him. Even the noise in the next room seemed for the moment unaccountably to have ceased. Folk say that when such silences occur in merry company, angels fly across the room, and the flutter of their wings can distinctly be heard. What angels then were these who haunted the private room of the "Three Bears" now? What record of ignominy and dishonour did they mark upon the tablets of infinity when with gentle flutter of wings they passed silently by? To the credit of all these gentlemen here present be it said, that their first feeling was one of shame, when they fully understood the dastardly suggestion which Sir John was making to one of themselves; but the shame was not acute enough to produce horrified repudiation.
Sir Anthony Wykeham certainly still held aloof, but Stowmaries had not winced. That he understood the suggestion to the full, there could be no doubt. His face had flushed to the roots of his hair, his fingers were fidgeting nervously against one another and excitement verging on intoxication caused his eyes to glow with an unnatural inward fire. His thoughts had flown straight back to the prettily furnished parlour in Holborn Row, to Mistress Julia Peyton's violet eyes and the exquisite scent of her white hands when he had pressed them to his lips. His love for her—call it passion or desire an you will—had grown in intensity as the obstacle which separated him from her had seemed more and more insurmountable. In the past few hours that same passion had reached a stage of fever heat, impatient at control, chafing at impotence and longing for satisfaction with all the strength of thwarted desire.
Rupert Kestyon, Earl of Stowmaries and Riveaulx, had been brought up in the hard school of colonial life; in his boyhood he had been denied every kind of pleasure and luxury in which the sense of youth revels, through what he called an unjust Fate; then suddenly he had seen himself thrown in the very lap of Fortune, his every desire satisfied and his every whim made law. The change was sudden enough to throw off its balance a more firm character than that of the son of Captain Kestyon—spendthrift, profligate, a rogue from temperament. Like his father's, Rupert's was essentially a weak nature. He had never attempted to fight Fate, when Fate was against him. When Fortune smiled, he took everything she offered him without attempt at restraint;—and the jade had become very lavish with her gifts to the young outcast who awhile ago had often enough been obliged to tighten his belt against the gnawing pangs of hunger.
He had found friends, followers, sycophants; had been favoured by royalty and smiled on by beauty, but Mistress Peyton was the first passion in his life. He had flirted with her for months, made easy love to her for weeks, but he had not realised that he loved her until twenty-four hours ago when he knew that she was lost to him.
The knowledge that here was the chief desire of his heart, and that this desire he could not gratify, despite his position, his personality and his wealth, almost unhinged his mind. It was two years now since he had exercised any self-denial. He had lost all knowledge of that useful art, and was determined not to learn it again.
The day on which he heard that through an appalling catastrophe, which had swept his kindred into the sea and broken the heart of an old man, he, Rupert Kestyon, the penniless son of a spendthrift father, had become rich, influential, one of the greatest gentlemen in the kingdom, he had said with a sigh of genuine satisfaction: "Now I mean to live!" and with him living meant solely the gratification of his every wish. Now he saw his greatest wish in all the world born only to be thwarted.
It was monstrous, unthinkable! But from that wholesome fear of ecclesiastical authority peculiar in those days to men of his creed, he would have rebelled. Respect for the Church to which he belonged, dread of a scandal which might tarnish the great name he bore, and undermine his pleasant position alone caused him to be submissive.
He was not clever enough to find out a means of freeing himself from irksome bonds, and had drained the cup of despair to its bitter dregs without thinking or even hoping for an issue out of his misery.
But now a man spoke—a man whom in his saner moments he heartily despised, whom he knew to be shiftless, unscrupulous, a born gambler—but yet a man who showed him a way out of the quagmire of despair into a possible haven of hope.
He had not been long in catching Ayloffe's meaning. Whilst the others doubted he had already seen the possibilities of success. His bride had never seen him since consciousness grew into her brain; her parents' only recollections of himself dated back eighteen years! Why indeed should not some other man impersonate the bridegroom, carry the bride away and thus forever after leave on her fair maiden name a stain which would render her unfit to be acknowledged as the wife of any honourable gentleman?
How simple it all seemed!
Unlike his friends here present, Stowmaries saw no shame in the scheme—no shame, let us say to himself! Disgrace to the woman—yes! but he did not know her, and he hated the very thought of her! Disgrace perhaps to the scoundrel who would undertake the ignoble treachery! but to the Earl of Stowmaries who would sit quietly at home whilst the roguery was being carried on by others?—'Sblood! who would suggest such a ridiculous idea?
His eyes wandered round the table. Sir Anthony Wykeham was no longer frowning and Lord Rochester had laughed—a little nervously perhaps—but no one had actually protested.
There was no gainsaying the fact that Ayloffe was a rogue to suggest so profligate a scheme, but profligacy was all the rage now and vastly pleased the King.
"By Gad, a mad notion!—But a right merry one!" quoth Sir Knaith Bullock, himself a rogue and as full of dare-devil schemes as an egg is full of meat.
The remark loudly spoken and accompanied by a blasphemous oath and the loud banging of a clenched fist against the table, eased the tension finally. Even Wykeham began to laugh. Not one of these young men here had wanted to feel ashamed, rather did each one desire to seem a vast deal worse than his neighbour. It was no good allowing the recollections of early lessons in chivalry to mar the enjoyment of the present merry life; not even if those lessons had been taught by a father who had died fighting for King and cause.
Let the ball of pleasure be set rolling; that ball partly made up of love of devilry, partly of ennui seeking for amusement and of contempt for woman's virtue.
"'Twere rare sport!" said Rochester.
Sport! The word acted like magic and shame was completely vanquished by the pleasing sense of excitement.
Bah! what was the virtue, the fair name, the happiness of a tailor's daughter worth, in the face of the vastly pleasing entertainment she herself would provide for her betters.
"An ignoble trick to play on a woman," murmured Wykeham.
But his protest had become very feeble. He saw nothing in the suggestion that shocked his religious scruples, for the rest he cared but little. The victim was only a tailor's daughter after all, and Stowmaries—his friend—would not be the one to repudiate his marriage vows.
"Bah! a tailor's daughter!" was the gist of the argument in favour of the scheme.
"She shall have full compensation," quoth my lord Stowmaries somewhat tonelessly, for his throat felt parched and his tongue seemed to be several sizes too large for his mouth.
He drank down a large bumper full of sherry into which Ayloffe had unobtrusively thrown a dash of raw brandy.
"Have you forgotten, gentlemen," now said gallant Sir John lustily, "that my lord of Stowmaries will give seventy thousand pounds to the friend who will help him in his need. A fortune methinks, which should tempt any young gallant in search of romantic adventure and a pretty wife."
"But the details, man! the details!" came from every side, "surely you have thought of them!"
"And of the