"Madam," said Varney, overwhelmed in spite of his effrontery, "I entreat
you to believe yourself mistaken."
"As soon will I believe light darkness," said the enraged Countess.
"Have I drunk of oblivion? Do I not remember former passages, which,
known to Leicester, had given thee the preferment of a gallows, instead
of the honour of his intimacy. I would I were a man but for five
minutes! It were space enough to make a craven like thee confess his
villainy. But go--begone! Tell thy master that when I take the foul
course to which such scandalous deceits as thou hast recommended on
his behalf must necessarily lead me, I will give him a rival something
worthy of the name. He shall not be supplanted by an ignominious lackey,
whose best fortune is to catch a gift of his master's last suit
of clothes ere it is threadbare, and who is only fit to seduce a
suburb-wench by the bravery of new roses in his master's old pantoufles.
Go, begone, sir! I scorn thee so much that I am ashamed to have been
angry with thee."
Varney left the room with a mute expression of rage, and was followed by
Foster, whose apprehension, naturally slow, was overpowered by the eager
and abundant discharge of indignation which, for the first time, he had
heard burst from the lips of a being who had seemed, till that moment,
too languid and too gentle to nurse an angry thought or utter an
intemperate expression. Foster, therefore, pursued Varney from place to
place, persecuting him with interrogatories, to which the other replied
not, until they were in the opposite side of the quadrangle, and in the
old library, with which the reader has already been made acquainted.
Here he turned round on his persevering follower, and thus addressed
him, in a tone tolerably equal, that brief walk having been sufficient
to give one so habituated to command his temper time to rally and
recover his presence of mind.
"Tony," he said, with his usual sneering laugh, "it avails not to deny
it. The Woman and the Devil, who, as thine oracle Holdforth will
confirm to thee, cheated man at the beginning, have this day proved more
powerful than my discretion. Yon termagant looked so tempting, and had
the art to preserve her countenance so naturally, while I communicated
my lord's message, that, by my faith, I thought I might say some little
thing for myself. She thinks she hath my head under her girdle now, but
she is deceived. Where is Doctor Alasco?"