Читать книгу His Majesty's Well-Beloved - Baroness Orczy - Страница 19

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It was one day early in September—just something over a year ago, in fact—that my Lord Stour called at the house of Mr. Theophilus Baggs. I knew him at once for the Cavalier who was ever in attendance upon the Lady Barbara Wychwoode and whom rumour had assigned to her as her future Husband.

Frankly, I had never liked him from the first. I thought him overbearing and arrogant. His manner towards those who were inferior to him in station was always one of contempt. And I often wondered how Mr. Theophilus Baggs, who was an Attorney of some standing in the City of London, could endure the cool insolence wherewith young Gentlemen like my Lord Stour and others were wont to treat him. Not only that, but he seemed to derive a sort of gratification from it, and was wont to repeat—I was almost going to say that he would boast of—these acts of overbearance to which he was so often subjected.

“Another of the stiff-necked sort,” he would say after he had bowed one of these fine Gentlemen obsequiously out of his office. “An honest, God-fearing Man is as dirt beneath the feet of these Gallants.”

My Lord Stour, of a truth, was no exception to the rule. I have since been assured that he was quite kindly and gracious in himself, and that his faults were those of the Milieu in which he had been brought up, rather than of himself.

Of course, You, dear Mistress, were out of the house during the whole of that never-to-be-forgotten day of which I am about to speak, and therefore knew nothing of the terrible Event which then occurred and which, in my humble judgment, completely revolutionized Mr. Betterton’s character for the time being. But Fate had decreed that I should see it all. Every moment of that awful afternoon is indelibly graven upon my Memory. I had, however, neither the Chance nor the Opportunity to speak to You of it all. At first I did not think that it would be expedient. The humiliation which Mr. Betterton was made to endure on that day was such that I could not bear to speak of it, least of all to You, who still held him in such high esteem. And later on, I still thought it best to be silent. Mr. Betterton and You seemed to have drifted apart so completely, that I did not feel that it would do any good to rake up old hurts, and to submit them to the cruel light of day.

But now everything is changed. The Lady Barbara’s influence over Mr. Betterton has gone, never to return; whilst his Heart once more yearns for the only true Love which has ever gladdened it.