Test Bank for MKTG 8 8th Edition Lamb Hair McDaniel

1285432622 9781285432625
Test Bank:

https://testbankpack.com/p/test-bank-for-mktg-8-8th-edition-lamb-hair-
mcdaniel-1285432622-9781285432625/

Solution Manual:

https://testbankpack.com/p/solution-manual-for-mktg-8-8th-edition-lamb-hair-
mcdaniel-1285432622-9781285432625/
1. The manufacturer of Macho brand martial arts products was implementing a strategic plan when it sponsored a
local karate tournament for teenagers.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: False
RATIONALE: Such a short-range decision is typically a tactical plan or operating decision, not a strategic
plan.
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.01 - 2-1
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level III Application

2. Berkshire Hathaway Inc., a large property insurance company, owns a large chain of jewelry stores and has
recently purchased Russell Corporation, a manufacturer of sporting goods. Berkshire Hathaway uses a market
penetration strategy.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: False
RATIONALE: Berkshire Hathaway uses a diversification strategy.
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.03 - 2-3
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level III Application

3. When the Internet auction company eBay opened a version of the company called eBay France for the French
market, it was an example of market penetration.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: False
RATIONALE: Market penetration is the strategy of selling more to the existing customers. This is an
example of a market development strategy, which is attracting new customers to existing
products.
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.03 - 2-3
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level III Application
4. A market penetration strategy entails the creation of new products for current customers.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: False
RATIONALE: This is an example of product development strategy. A market penetration strategy in one
that tries to increase market share among existing customers.
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.03 - 2-3
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level I Knowledge

5. The Home Depot’s purchase of Hughes Supply Company allows it to better meet the needs of its current business
customers. This is an example of product development.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.03 - 2-3
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level III Application

6. When a florist shop begins to sell burial caskets to its customers, it is engaged in product development.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: True
RATIONALE: Product development is the offering of new products to current markets.
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.03 - 2-3
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level III Application

7. A diversification strategy entails increasing sales by introducing new products into new markets.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.03 - 2-3
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level I Knowledge
 8. The portfolio matrix is a tool for allocating resources among products or strategic business units on the basis of
relative market share and degree of innovation.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: False
RATIONALE: The portfolio matrix is based on relative market share and market growth rate.
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.03 - 2-3
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level I Knowledge

9. The marketing plan is a written document that acts as a guidebook of marketing activities for the marketing
manager.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.03 - 2-3
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Marketing Plan
OTHER: BLOOMS Level I Knowledge

10. A firm’s mission statement should answer the question, “What products do we produce best?”
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: False
RATIONALE: Mission statements should not focus on specific product offerings but on the market or
markets served.
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.04 - 2-4
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level II Comprehension

11. A production costs analysis could be a part of a company’s SWOT analysis.

a. True
b. False

ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.05 - 2-5
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level IV Analysis
12. Environmental scanning entails the collection and analysis of information about factors that may affect the
organization as well as the identification of market opportunities and threats.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.05 - 2-5
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level II Comprehension

13. A competitive advantage is some unique aspect of a firm’s offering, or of the firm itself, that causes target
customers to patronize the firm rather than its competition.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.06 - 2-6
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level II Comprehension

14. Developing a cost competitive advantage can enable a firm to deliver superior customer value.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.06 - 2-6
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Strategy
OTHER: BLOOMS Level VI Evaluation

15. As marketers gain more experience in marketing a product, costs tend to decrease, which is an example of the
maturity effect.
a. True
b. False

ANSWER: False
RATIONALE: This is an example of the experience curve, which means costs decline at a predictable rate
as experience with a product increases.
POINTS: 1
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: MKTG.LAMB.15.02.06 - 2-6
TOPICS: AACSB Reflective Thinking
KEYWORDS: CB&E Model Product

OTHER: BLOOMS Level IV Analysis

Another document from Scribd.com that is
random and unrelated content:
pretty in her scarlet riding habit à la mode, with the long-skirted coat,
fashioned after a man’s, which was just then come into vogue, and the
little plumed hat tilted over one ear; and the picture she made went
straight down through his eyes to his heart. Her eyes opened a shade as
she turned to recognize him.
“Are you coming to offer to ride with me?” she said. “Because, if you
are——”
“Yes?” he asked.
She tossed her head suddenly, with a little shrug.
“O! no matter. What the world can see the world will not suspect.
Come, if you wish it.”
“Meaning by the world, I suppose, your husband. Then you have
thought better of my suggestion?”
“What suggestion?”
“That you should use me to stimulate his jealousy.”
“I have thought of you as my kinsman and his friend.”
“Is that a reproof, Kate Chesterfield?”
She ruffled a box border with her little pointed toe, looking down the
while.
“Why should you think it so, cousin? You are a man of honour, are
you not? And I have your own word for it your offer was a quite
disinterested one.”
“That may be; but to turn it to no better account than riding innocently
in company is not the way to make it effective.”
She did not reply for a moment, then looked him straight in the eyes.
“What would you have us do?”
“I could answer for one thing,” he said. His gaze was on a knot of
rosebuds fastened in her bosom. “These walls are argus-eyed. Grant me a
token from that sweet nest.”
“And earn,” she said, “a credit I do not deserve. Why should I go out
of my way so to damn myself?”
“He’ll hear of it.”
“The only one of all that would not care.” A sudden flush came to her
face. She leaned forward a little, and spoke three words: “Who is Kit?”
It fairly took him aback. He was so startled that for a moment he could
not answer.
“Kit!” he stammered then.
“You are my husband’s friend,” she said—“in his confidence; you
know and have shared, no doubt, the secrets of his past. Was it not
enough to force upon me the daily insult of this Davis creature’s
presence, but he must make a jest through her lips of other infamies in
which it seems they were both implicated? Who is this Kit, I say?”
Now, one thing, in his astonishment, was made clear to Hamilton.
Kate was as innocent of Kit as Kit of Kate. That reassurance was
consoling, though it left him more confounded than ever as to the
identity of the strange being.
“On my honour, cousin,” he said, “I have no idea.”
“You have not?”
“Not a shadow of one. But, whoever she is, if she she is, what reason
have you to connect Phil with her?”
She made a sound of scorn.
“What reason? Am I deaf and blind to all hints and innuendoes—to
their conspiracy to mock me with veiled references to the part she has
played in his life? O, reason, indeed!”
“I think, on my soul, you are letting your imagination master you. Has
he ever really confessed to this Kit?”
“You did not hear him? No, it was before you came. He did as much,
referring to her as the substance of happiness for which he had
exchanged its shadow—the shadow—the wife—O, I am in truth a
shadow of a wife!”
“Then, I say, if that be so, he deserves no mercy.”
“I intend to show him none.”
“Give me the rose, then.”
“Why do you want it? In reward of your disinterestedness?”
“Just that.”
She gazed at him a moment—a fathomless look; then—O, woman,
microcosm of all incomprehensibilities!—detached a bud from the group
and held it out to him. He received it in rapture, and dared to put it to his
lips. But at that she flushed pink, and turned from him.
“I will ride alone,” she murmured. “Nay, do not press me further.”
He forbore to. It suited his plans to remain behind, and he let her go
without protest. And the moment he was sure of her departure he went to
seek Mrs. Davis. His veins were hot; there was a glaze over his eyes.
“She hath put foot within the magic circle,” he thought, “and I have her.”
He went to find a servant, and to dispatch him in quest of Mrs. Moll.
The baggage came down to him presently into the great room, and, when
they were left alone together, danced gleefully up to him and dropped a
curtsey.
“Is not that to the manner?” she said. “Or is it the bong tong to offer
you my cheek?”
 “Come,” he said, with a shadow of impatience. “I want to have a
serious talk with you.”
“Lud! What mischief have I been up to?”
“Not mischief enough—that is my complaint.”
“Well, that’s easy remedied.”
“Is it? I’m beginning to doubt.”
“Ah! You don’t know me.”
“You are enjoying yourself here, are you not?”
“Passably. ’Tis dull sometimes—too much confinement, and not
enough fresh air.”
“You’d like to be released, perhaps, from your duties?”
“Should I? What makes you think so?”
“It has occurred to me. Supposing I were to tell you you might go?”
“Supposing? Well, I shouldn’t go, that’s all.”
“You wouldn’t? Do you mean to say you’d defy me?”
“Yes, I do mean to say it.” She came close before him, put her little
fists behind her back, and tilted her chin at him. “What’s all this about?
Aren’t I wanted any more, or have you changed your mind? That ’ud be
a pity, because I’m not the sort, you know, to be taken or left just as it
suits a man’s convenience.” She laughed—not pleasantly. “Has it never
occurred to you, George, that you happen to be just a little bit in my
power?”
“The devil I am!”
“So am I—on occasion. You might find that out if you provoked me.”
“Why, what could you do?”
“I could blab, couldn’t I—make havoc of your little plot?”
He was a trifle staggered. Here was something overlooked in his
calculations. He had only designed, in fact, to stimulate her efforts; this
threatened rebellion revealed some mistake in his methods.
“And lose for ever your chance of promotion,” said he. “Well, if you
wish to make me your enemy——”
She nodded her head once or twice.
“I don’t. But I’d lose twenty kings sooner than sit quiet under a dirty
trick like that.”
“Do you propose staying on, then, till this imposture is discovered, as
every day makes more probable? As well betray me at once.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that. But I like the fun and I like the life, and
I see no more risk of discovery now than when I came. Why do you want
me to go?”
 “I never said I did. I don’t, as a matter of fact, if you will only not like
these things so well as half to forget your purpose in them.”
“My purpose? That’s to make the lord creature in love with me. Well,
haven’t I?”
“I miss the conclusive evidence—the proof of the pudding that’s in the
eating.”
“That wasn’t in the bargain. Be fair, George. I’m doing all that was
asked of me, and doing it faithful.”
She was, in fact; yet he had actually hoped for more. She was so
excessively alluring that he could not believe Chesterfield capable, in
spite of his apparent insensibility, of ultimately resisting her charms,
were she fully resolved he should not.
“And is that,” he said, “suggesting the little piece too much? You’ve
grown very fastidious of a sudden. I told you I was beginning to doubt.”
She looked at him queerly a moment.
“Isn’t it going as well with you as you expected?” she asked.
“Your finishing him could do my cause no harm, at least,” said he, and
bit his lip.
“Well, I vow I’m sometimes a’most sorry for her,” she said. “She’s but
my own age, and—and the man’s in love with her all the time, and at a
word she’d be with him. Don’t I know that? What a brace of blackguards
we are, George!”
“Speak for yourself, Mrs. Moll,” said Hamilton, a little hotly. “Love
absolves all sinners. It knows no villainy but incompetence.”
“Sure, you must be a saint, then. But betwixt this and that, and your
doubt’s despite, it wasn’t in the bargain and I won’t do it.”
“Then that settles it, and we must manage without.”
“As you like.” She brought her hands to the front, and, linking them in
the most decorous of love-knots, stiffened her neck and tossed her head
backwards and a little askew. “Besides,” she said, “you seem to forget
that I’ve got a husband myself.”
He burst into a laugh, vexed but uncontrollable, and immediately
checked himself.
“I had forgot—I confess it,” he said. “Kit, is it not?”
“Kit!” she ejaculated, in deep scorn. And then she, too, laughed
derisively.
“Not Kit?” said he.
“If you knew Kit you wouldn’t ask such a silly question,” she
answered.
“Well, why shouldn’t I know Kit? He seems an attractive person.”
 “O! Kit’s attractive.”
“I see, I see. Pardon my stupidity.”
“What do you see?”
“Kit’s a—hem!—friend of yours.”
“Indeed, Kit is—the best, a’hem, friend of mine that ever hemmed a
hem.”
“What! a woman?”
“Either that or a tailor.”
“Damn it! Not a tailor?”
“Damn it, why not? Though it takes nine tailors to make a man, one
woman can make a tailor.”
“Come, Moll, thou art goosing me.”
“A tailor’s goose, maybe.”
“Tell me, who is this friend of yours?”
“I wonder.”
“Frankly, is it man or woman?”
“Frankly, I’ve never asked.”
“Ah! you won’t tell me. Are we not good comrades now, and as such
should have no secrets from one another?”
“What do you want to know?”
“What is Kit?”
“Sometimes this, sometimes that. We all have our moods.”
“I believe he has no existence but in your imagination. Who is he? Tell
me.”
“Will you kiss me, George, if I tell?”
“That I will.”
He suited the action to the word, putting his lips to hers, while she
submitted quietly.
“Now,” said he.
“But I haven’t told,” she protested.
He could have boxed her pink ear; and he did fling from her with
some roughness.
“P’sha!” he said. “I am wasting time.”
“And that is not all,” said she.
He saw a warning flush in her cheek, and forced his vexation under.
“Well,” he said, with a propitiatory laugh, “if you tell me nothing, I’ve
got the kiss for nothing; and so mine is the best of the bargain. But I
count you a little unkind, Mollinda.”
“I don’t mean to be that, George,” she answered, somewhat penitent.
“But I shouldn’t tell secrets not my own; now should I?”
 That only served to restimulate his doubts and perplexity; but he said
no more on the subject, feeling it wiser to desist.
“Never mind,” he said. “You have your own good reasons for silence,
of course, and it’s no business of mine to press them. What is more to the
point is this question of your scruples regarding his lordship. So you
won’t go to extremes? Then, what is to be the course? With all
deference, Mrs. Moll, you can’t surely be planning to stay on here
indefinitely.”
“Well, I’ll work up to any conclusion you like, short of that.”
“You will?”
“Sure.”
“Even if it were to an appearance—of that?”
“Why not? ’Twould be enough for me to know my own innocence,
since I’m the only one that ever believes in it.”
He pondered, musing on her. “I’ll think it out, faith. We’ll arrange
some trick between us—some coup de grâce for her ladyship. Shall we?”
“O, go to grass yourself!” she said. “Speak English.”
 CHAPTER XI

T the Duke of York’s chambers in Whitehall came a mincing exquisite,

with a guitar slung from his neck by a broad silver ribbon. He was
dressed in silvered white from chin to toe, and he strutted exactly like a
white leghorn cock surveying his seraglio. His long, straw-coloured hair
was elaborately curled over his temples; the lashes to his eyes were like
pale spun glass; a tiny cherished moustachio, pointed upwards at the tips,
stood either side his round nose like a couple of thorns to a gooseberry.
He hummed as he walked, flourishing a beringed and scented hand to
such palace minions as met and saluted him by the way, and reaching the
Duke’s quarters, acknowledged, with a charming condescension, the
respectful greetings of M. Prosper, gentleman of the Chamber to his
Highness, who accosted him at the door of the anteroom.
“Ha, my good Prothper! I thee you well, j’ethpère bien?”
“Vair well—most—milord of Arran. You are to come this way, sair.
His Royal ’Ighness ’e expectorate you.”
Bowing and waving his arms, as if he were “shooing” on a fowl, M.
Prosper conducted the visitor by a private passage to the Duke’s closet,
where, committing him to the hands of a page, he bobbed and ducked
himself away. And the next moment the Earl found himself in the
presence of the Lord High Admiral.
James Stuart was seated at a table liberally strewn with documents,
writing, and mathematical implements. There were no gimcracks visible
on it, unless a little bronze ship, which served for a paper-weight,
deserved the title. The aspect of the room, like his own, inornate,
businesslike, severe, was in odd contrast with the silken frippery which
came to invade it. One would have guessed some particular purpose to
lie behind the permitted violation of those austere privacies. His
Highness was minutely examining a chart when the lordling entered.
Standing over him and occasionally dabbing a forefinger, like a
discoloured banana, on some specified shoal or anchorage, was a huge
individual, in a full-skirted blue coat, trimmed with the coarse lace called
trolly-lolly, whose bearing spoke unmistakably of the sea. This was
Captain Stone, of the Naseby frigate, in fact—a practical sailorman,
much in favour with his royal master. He was a rough-and-ready
specimen of his class, with manners as blunt as his features. He turned to
stare at the sugary apparition as it sailed into view, and a grin of derision,
which he made no effort to conceal, widened his already ample features.
“Ha, my lord!” said the Duke; “you are welcome. Be seated, sir, be
seated. I shall be disengaged in one moment. Stone, oblige me by
removing your hat from that chair, that my lord of Arran may come to
anchor.”
The bulky sea-captain, with a most offensive affectation of alacrity,
skipped to obey. He swept the chair with his hat; more, he produced from
somewhere an enormous blue handkerchief like a small ensign, and
elaborately polished the seat with it.
“Now,” says he, “if your lordship’s breeches will deign to reconsecrate
the altar my top-gear hath profaned.”
The Duke, his elbow leaned on the table, shaded his face with his
palm, and laughed noiselessly. As for the sweet puppy himself, self-
esteem had thickened his moral cuticle beyond penetration by anything
less than a pickaxe of ridicule. He closed his lids, and, with an ineffable
smile and wave of the hand, dropped languidly into the proffered place.
Duke and Captain continued for a while their investigation of the chart.
Then the former put it away, and, leaning back in his chair, addressed a
question to the latter.
“What is this I hear, Captain, of decent folk impressed illegally in the
City by order of my Lord Mayor?”
The burly seaman shrugged his shoulders.
“He’s an ass, sir, that Bludworth, yet an ass in some sort deserving
commendation.”
“In what way?”
“Why, in the way that leads by short-cuts to disputed ends. He gets
there, while your wise man talks.”
“Aye, but he tramples rights to do it.”
“He may. We must have men.”
“They were given no press money, I understand.”
“He had none to give them. Still, we must have men.”
“The thing should be in order. There were those among them, I hear,
of quite respectable estate.”
“Aye, but we must have men, I say. Your fool, on occasion, can have
his uses.”
The Duke, as if involuntarily, shot a swift glance towards the seated
figure.
“Could they, under the circumstances,” he said, “be broke for
desertion?”
 “I leave that,” answered the seaman dryly, “to your Highness.”
“’Tis not the way, at least, to make the King’s service popular.”
“Well, I could venture a better way.”
He meant, of course, the settlement of long arrears of pay—a chronic
scandal in the Navy. But the obvious was not palatable. The Duke, just
raising his eyebrows at the speaker, bent them in a frown, and sat
drumming for some moments with his fingers on the table. Suddenly he
turned to Arran.
“What would you suggest, my lord,” said he, “to make the Navy
popular? The lay opinion, given an intelligence such as yours, is often
valuable in these matters.”
His lordship, exquisitely flattered, sat up.
“I should offer a handthome bounty, Thir,” said he—with perhaps
some vivid recollection of personal sufferings endured in the Channel
—“to the man who should devith or invent a thertain cure for thea-
thickneth.”
Captain Stone, regardless of his company, burst into a roar of laughter.
“By Gog, your Highness!” cried he, “here’s the pressman for our
money. To make the Navy popular, quotha—give them stomach for it!
Aye, why not? And lace our sails with silver twist, and hang a silken
tassel at the main, and pipe to quarters on a hurdy-gurdy! O, we’ll have
our Captain’s monkey yet with lovelocks to his head and white ribbons
to his shoon!”
His lordship, on whom this pickaxe had wrought at last, flushed up to
the eyes with anger and resentment. He rose to his feet.
“Thith monthtruth inthult,” he began; “I crave your Highnetheth grath
——” and stuck for lack of words.
The Duke, whose cue was nothing if not propitiation, turned in some
genuine wrath on the seaman.
“You forget yourself, sir,” he said sternly. “You will favour me by
retiring. Waiving the question of respect for his lordship’s opinions, you
fail in it to me, who invited them. Nor need you be so cocksure in your
own. Who knows what inclinations might have served us but for dread of
that malady! You must go.”
The Captain, not venturing to remonstrate, but seeing, as he thought,
through the other’s motive, obeyed, and so much without rancour that he
could not forbear some subdued sputtering laughter as he left the room—
an ebullition which, in fact, found its secret response in the Duke’s own
bosom. He addressed himself, the man gone, with a rather twinkling
blandishment to his remaining guest.
 “A rough, untutored fellow, my lord; but reliable, according to his
lights. They are not penetrating, perhaps; yet clear as regards the surface
of things. You must forgive him. That was an original suggestion of
yours. He would not grasp its inner significance, naturally. To cure sea-
sickness, now. There is something in it.”
“I am happy,” minced the bantling, “in your Highnetheth
commendation. That mal-de-mer is a very dithtrething thing. It maketh a
man look a fool; and a man dothn’t like to look a fool.”
The Duke considered.
“But for the character of the remedy? What do you say to music?
Music will not, according to Master George Herbert, cure the toothache:
but is sea-sickness the toothache, my lord?”
“Not the toothache; no, Thir.”
“Is it not rather, by all reports, a surging or vertigo of the brain,
induced by that reversal of the laws of equilibrium which transposes the
offices, as it were, of matter animate and matter inanimate?”
“I—I take your Highnetheth word for it.”
“Why, it is clear. We are designed and organized, are we not, to be
voluntary agents on a plane of stability?”
“Yeth, yeth, O yeth!”
“Very well. So we lie down or rise at will, the solid earth abetting. But
supposing the parts reversed, ourselves the willingly quiescent, the earth
the one to rise or fall? Would not our brain, devised on the opposite
principle, be naturally upset, carrying with it the stomach, its most
intimate relation?”
“I’m thure it would; quite thure to be thure.”
“Take my word for it. When we go to sea we are transposing the
functional processes of mind and matter. How, then, to render that
exchange nugatory? The sense of it is conveyed through what? The eyes,
is it not?”
“O yeth, indeed! You thee the heaving before you heave yourthelf.”
“Exactly—a sympathetic emotion, or motion. Our vision, then, is the
direct cause of sea-sickness. Why? Because in pursuing an unstable thing
it becomes itself unstable. And there I see light. The eyes are at right
angles to the ears, are they not? And we are agreed that the sense of
instability is conveyed through the eyes?”
“Through the eyeth.”
“Well, supposing now we introduce a second appeal to the senses
through the ears; that second appeal would traverse the first appeal,
would it not, at right angles, the two forming together a sort of sensory
cross-hatch, or truss, which would immediately produce the stability
necessary to keep the otherwise unsupported sight from accommodating
itself to the action of the waves? You follow me?”
“I think—— O yeth!”
“Your suggestion was a really very able one, my lord, and it speaks
loudly against the folly of scorning all ex-official criticism in these
matters. But, to follow our theorizing to a practical end. We are at one,
then, in believing it possible that the sense of sight could be trussed and
stiffened by the introduction of the sense of sound. To make an effective
business of it, however, that sense of sound would have to be compelling
enough to arrest and neutralize the visual tendency; it would have to be,
that is to say, exceedingly strong and exceedingly sweet. It might be
possible to introduce on each of our ships a professional harpist, or lutist,
to supply with their music a prophylactic against sea-sickness; but one
has to remember that not all musicians are sailors, and that it might prove
disastrous to the moral should one fail in his own sea-legs at the very
moment he was trying to provide another with his.”
“Yeth; that ith very true.”
“Then, again, as to the force of the appeal. Not all performers have
that convincing mastery of their instruments, my lord, which according
to what I hear, is peculiarly your own.”
“O, truth, your Highneth flatterth me!”
“You shall prove it.” He smiled very pleasantly. “But, believe me, my
lord, I am infinitely your debtor for a suggestion which may go far to
revolutionize the whole question of impressment and the popularity of
the Navy. Now, will you not give me a taste of the quality which has
come to enter so aptly into the context of our discussion? You know I
play a little on the guitar myself, but not so well as to refuse a hint or two
from a master of the instrument. There was a question of a saraband. I
would fain take a lesson in its presentation.”
“Corbetti’th, your Highneth meanth.” The puppy—strange scion of a
house distinguished, in the persons of its head and firstborn, for both
courage and nobility—glowed with gratified vanity. He really believed at
last that ’twas he himself had originated that exquisite specific against
the curse of the ocean, and that the Duke was his admiring debtor for it.
He struck an attitude, slung his guitar into position, and, receiving a nod
from his auditor, forthwith touched out the measure of Signor
Francesco’s saraband. It was a quite graceful composition, and he played
it well.
The Duke was enraptured.
 “It is in truth a most sweet and moving piece,” he said, “and masterly
rendered. I have never known to be displayed a more perfect accord
between composer, performer, and instrument. Yet, if they were to be
considered in order of merit, I should put, without hesitation, the
executant in the first place and the guitar in the least.”
“Yet it’th a good guitar, Thir,” ventured the glowing youth. He lifted
and eyed with beatific patronage that faithful recorder of his genius.
“Good,” answered the Duke; “yet good is not good enough to be the
servant of the best. But where, indeed, could one look for an instrument
worthy of an Orpheus?”
“O, I bluth, your Highneth! Yet I will not thay but what I might give a
better account of mythelf on an inthtrument pothethed by my thithter, my
lady Chethterfield. It ith a wonder, that. Corbetti himthelf hath declared
it.”
“Indeed?” James spoke abstractedly, seeming hardly to attend. “Now,
will you make me your debtor, my lord, for a hint or two. It would flatter
my poor skill to expend it on so rare a melody.”
He was so full of compliment and ingratiation, that the first diffidence
of the sweet Earl was soon exchanged for a vanity approaching
condescension. He took his royal pupil in hand, and conducted him over
the opening bars of the composition. But the Duke, strange to say,
proved himself a most sad bungler. He could not, for some reason,
master the air, and finally, with a shrug of impatience, he desisted, and
begged his instructor to repeat to him his own version of certain
ingenious passages.
“I will murder the innocents no longer,” quoth he, handing back the
instrument. “Render them again in living phrase, and so take the taste of
my own villainy out of my mouth.”
“It is thith way,” said his lordship, and went on thrumming most
mellifluously.
“Ah!” said the Duke. “If one could take the way of genius only by
having it pointed out to one! Yet, did not that last note ring a little false?”
“No, by my fay, Thir.”
“You may be right. Yet methinks I have a very hair-splitting ear. It will
quarrel on so little as a fraction of a tone. Not the player, but the string,
maybe, was to blame. Even your best of instruments will lack perfection,
betraying weak places in their constitution, like broken letters in a
printed type. Sound it again. ... Ah! it is not quite true, indeed.”
“Your Highneth, thith ith a very ordinary fair guitar; but, ath I thay, I
know a better.”
 “True; my lady Shrewsbury’s.”
“No.”
“Not? I thought you mentioned hers?”
“Not herth. My lady Chetherfield’th.”
“O! Your sister’s. So, she is the possessor of that masterpiece. Is it
indeed so excellent?”
“None better, I dare to venture, in all the world.”
“My lord, you must let me hear you on it. So near the perfect
achievement, and yet to fall short of it by a hair! ’Twas not to be
endured. We must visit your sister, you and I together, and beg this
favour of her kindness.”
Now, even the Court of the Restoration had its codes of etiquette—
more particular, in some odd ways, than to-day’s—and among them was
none which permitted a prince of the blood royal to condescend to social
intercourse with a young married woman without danger to her
reputation. Arran, to be sure, knew this well enough, shallow dandiprat
as he was, and the slight qualm he felt over the proposition was evidence
of a certain suspicion awakened in him for the first time. But it was faint,
and no proof against his vanity. He was not so base as to design any
deliberate treachery to his own flesh and blood; but his conscience was
an indeterminate quantity, easily at the mercy of any plausible rascal. He
considered, and decided that the inclusion of himself in the Duke’s
suggestion was the surest proof that there could be no arrière pensée
behind it. An intrigant, bent on some nefarious conquest, would not
propose a brother to assist him in his purpose. He gave a little
embarrassed laugh, nevertheless, and hung his foolish head.
“If your Highneth thinkth it worth your Highnetheth while,” he said.
“Worth, my lord, worth?” said the Duke warmly. “What is this genius
of yours worth, if not the most perfect of mediums through which to give
itself expression?”
“You are very good.”
“I am very impatient, and shall continue so, until we have given effect
to this arrangement.”
 CHAPTER XII

L Lady Chesterfield sat in her private boudoir, looking out on a

glowing section of the palace gardens. Thirty feet away a marble basin,
shaped like a tazza, bubbled with a tiny jet of water; and on the rim of
the basin, as if posed for a picture, sat a single peacock. Great white
clouds loitered in a sapphire sky, a thousand flowers starred the beds, the
box borders were lush with growth, and all between went a maze of little
paths, frilled with green sweetness. It was an endearing prospect,
spacious and peaceful, hardly ruffled by the murmurs of the great life in
whose midmost it was cloistered; yet small consciousness of its
tranquillity was apparent in the blue eyes whose introspective vision
reflected only the mists and turbulence of a troubled heart.
Now, as regards physical infection, one may be susceptible to the
predaceous germ on one occasion and not on another: it is a question of
bodily condition. So, there is a moral microbe whose insidious
approaches may find us pregnable or not according to our spiritual
temper of the time. The healthiest constitutions enjoy no absolute
immunity in this respect, and those which do escape harm often owe
their reputation for incorruptibility to no better than the accident which
found them free from attack at the weak moments. Evil disposition
makes no more sinners than the lack of it does saints. It is mostly a
question of coincidence between the alighting seed-down and the soil
suitable to its germination.
Well, there are soils and soils, and as one seed which sickens on a rich
loam will wax bursting fat in an arid crevice, so sand will not produce
roses. Yet, I should say, if one sought a common denominator in this
matter of proneness to moral infections, one could not instance a state
more typically susceptive to all than that of idleness and boredom.
And to that perilous condition had poor Kate succeeded. She was
ennuyée, sick of soul, tired of everything and everybody. Her
matrimonial barque, she felt, had been flung on a shoal, where it lay as
divorced from wreck as from rescue. There appeared no alternative but
to abandon it; and yet all her instincts of faith and decency still fought
against that seeming treachery to her vows. She had really at one time
believed in the poor creature her husband—even though necessarily at
the modified valuation imposed upon wives of her date and condition:
she had not utterly abandoned her hope in him yet. But little of it
remained, and that little so tempered with scorn and disgust as to seem
hardly worth the retaining. Still, the wifely instinct clung by a thread,
and was so far her resource and safety. Yet not much was needed to snap
that last strand, and she knew it, and felt it, and was wrought thereby to a
state of nervous irritability which halted, in its sense of sick isolation,
between fidelity and revolt. She was susceptible, in fact, when the germ
made its appearance.
It was a flattering germ, garbed royally, with a melting eye and an
insinuative manner. She may have been already conscious in herself of
premonitory symptoms betokening its approach, as the wind of the
avalanche heralds the fall thereof; I will certainly not commit myself to
any statement to the contrary. But even were that the case, it is not to say
that her hold on the thread continued less fond and desperate. It is likely,
indeed, that it acquired a more urgent grip, as foreseeing a particular
strain upon its resources. Royalty could pull so hard with so little effort
of its own. However that may be, it is worthy of note that she displayed
at least the courage of her sex in facing the possibility of infection
instead of flying from it.
Now, as she sat, gazing out on the quiet scene with unregarding eyes,
and obsessed with the sole thought that she was the most aggrieved and
weary-spirited woman in the world, she heard a sound in the room
behind her, and turned to see her second brother, young Arran. He
minced forward, the darling, and saluted her with the most unimaginable
grace, though there was certainly a little tell-tale flush on his callow
cheek.
“Thithter Kit,” quoth he, “I have taken the privilege of a brother to
introduth a vithitor to your private apartment.”
“A visitor!” She rose, uncertain, to her feet, and was aware, with a
little shock of the blood, of the figure of the Duke of York standing in the
doorway. His Royal Highness, with a grave smile, in which there was
nevertheless a touch of anxiety, advanced into the room, closing the door
behind him.
“Uninvited, but not too greatly daring, I hope,” said he. “Formality,
ceremonial, were all incompatible with the boon we designed to ask of
your ladyship.”
A vivid flush would rise to her cheek; she could not help it, nor
control, with all her will to, the self-conscious instinct betrayed in her
drooped lashes. For a moment, in the embarrassment of her youth, she
stood dumb before this realized liberty.
 “A privilege, your brother called it,” continued the Duke. “Then, if for
him, how much more for me! Of its extent, believe me, I am so fully
sensible, that, accepting your silence for condonation of my presumption,
I hesitate to abuse a favour so freely vouchsafed by taking advantage of
it to beg another.”
She raised her lids, and again dropped them. The shadow of a smile
twitched the corners of her mouth. And then her breath caught, suddenly
and irresistibly, in a little half-hysterical laugh. The pomposity of this
prelude was after all too much for her.
“O, my lord Duke,” she said, “if I were to assume the nature of this
favour from the solemnity of its introduction, I should have no
alternative but to refuse it offhand, as implying something grave and
weighty beyond my years. I pray you bear my youth in mind.”
He smiled, relieved and at ease.
“Most tenderly, madam. For all that resounding symphony, you shall
find the piece, when we come to play it, a very pastorale in lightness.
Will you not be seated?”
“By your favour, your Highness—when you have set me the
example.”
She sought to take refuge from her fluttering apprehensions behind
that shy insistence on punctilio. The Duke bowed, and accepting a chair
from his lordship of Arran, signified his entreaty that the lady should
occupy another contiguous. Kate had no choice but to obey. She was not
yet mistress of her blushes, and she blushed as she seated herself. But
there was a strange excitement in her heart, nevertheless.
“Now,” said his Highness, “I am in the position of a litigant, who hath
engaged an advocate to plead his cause for him. So, like a sensible client,
I leave the first word to him.”
He waited, in a serene confidence. Lady Chesterfield looked at her
brother.
“What is it, Richard?”
His lordship giggled, “hem’d,” pulled at his cravat, and spoke.
“Nothing in the world, thithter Kit.”
“O!” she said, “nothing is easily granted. I give you the case, your
Highness.”
“He rates his own genius too lightly,” cried the Duke. “I see that, for
the sake of his modesty, I must reverse the parts. Take me for advocate,
then, and hear my plea. It is that, saving one factor, your brother is the
most accomplished guitarist at Court.”
 “O, fie, your Highneth!” said Arran, squirming in every limb. “Think
of Corbetti.”
“A master, I grant,” said the Duke, “but with the faults incident to
professionalism. A perfect executant, art hath yet despoiled him of
nature. For pure sympathy, give me your born musician before your
trained.”
Again Arran squirmed. “O, your Highneth, your Highneth!”
The Duke turned to Kate.
“Do you not love your brother’s playing?”
“Indeed,” answered the girl, perplexed, “Richard plays well.”
“Well?” he echoed, protesting. “Have you heard him in the new
saraband?” She shook her head. “Ah!” he said: “not Corbetti himself
could so interpret the loveliness of his own composition. I speak as one
who knows. My lord’s performance, to eschew superlatives, was divine.
Yet there was a flaw. The perfect master lacked the perfect instrument.
To attain the latter, or at least more nearly approximate it, only one
resource offered. Your ladyship, as he informed me, was owner of the
finest guitar in all England. To hear him on that guitar became then a
necessity with me—a fever, a passion. It was to entreat that opportunity
that I ventured this descent upon your ladyship’s privacy.”
She heard; she opened her eyes in ingenuous wonder. Before she could
consider the words, they were on her lips.
“Is that all?”
“Nay, not all,” he answered softly—“not all. But that you might hear
and feel.”
Involuntarily she shrank away a little.
“Richard knew,” she said, “that he could always have my guitar for the
asking.”
“Is that so?” said his Highness. “But he did not tell me—perchance
because he would have his sister learn the estimate in which he is held by
others, to show his power to move me in your presence. Ah!” he waved a
playful hand—a very white and shapely one: “relations are notoriously
grudging critics of their own.”
Still she struggled faintly.
“This is a poor room for resonance, my lord Duke. The audience-
chamber would have been better chosen.”
“Nay,” he said; “are we not private here?”
“Private, Sir?”
“Is not privacy the very essence of all sweet sounds and thoughts? To
risk interruption is to risk the jarring of their lovely sequence. No, we are
happiest where we are, apart and secluded. The loneliest bower is that
where the bird sings his song to an end.”
She rose hastily, and with an effort to control her agitation.
“I will go and fetch it,” she said. “It is not here.”
He sought to detain her.
“Does not your brother know the place?”
Arran interposed. Some vague uneasiness, perhaps, was making itself
felt in the shallow brain of the nincompoop.
“No, by my thoul, your Highneth,” he said, “nor underthtand if she
told me.”
Kate hurried to the door. As she did so, a feminine form outside
whisked into the near shelter of some hangings. Then, foreseeing certain
detection if she remained where she was, waited until the issuing figure
had vanished down a passage, when she herself slipped away incontinent
in another direction.
The Duke in the meanwhile sat frowning and silent, half suspecting a
ruse on the lady’s part to escape him. But in that he did the Countess too
much or too little justice. For whatever reason—of honour or perversity;
you may take your choice—Kate acquitted herself faithfully of her
errand, and came back with the guitar; whereat the royal brow cleared
wonderfully.
And Arran played the saraband—this time to perfection, exclaimed his
Highness. Sweet melody, sweet touch, and sweetest atmosphere—it had
been all a banquet of delight, served, as it were, amidst the tenderest
surroundings, in a self-contained corner of Eden, by the most paradisical
of chefs. The Duke was transported; he was really transported, though it
is true some ecstasies stop short of heaven. There are sirens in Campania
to see to that.
And Kate was also moved; she could not well help but be. Her heart
was in too emotional a state to be safe proof against such soft besieging.
When the Duke leaned towards her, she did not stir, but sat with eyes
downcast, her bosom plainly turbulent.
“Was I not right,” he said, “and could any gain in resonance have
improved on this faultless unison of parts? Perfection must know
bounds, even like a framed picture, or the soul cannot compass it. To
have enlarged these but in one direction would have been to sacrifice the
proportions of the whole—the harmonious concord of place, and sound,
and tenderest feeling. Give me this bower, lady, for your rounded
madrigal, wherein sweetest music lends itself with love and beauty to
weave a finished pattern of delight. My lord, grant me the instrument a
moment.”
He took the guitar, somewhat peremptorily, from the Earl’s hesitating
hands; but he was in no mood, at this pass, to temporize or finesse. And,
having received it, he went plucking softly among the strings, gathering
up sweet chords and sobbing accidentals, as it were flowers, to present in
a nosegay to the heart of his moved hearer. There was a knowledge, a
sure emotionalism, in his touch which went far to discount his earlier
pretence of inadequacy; and Arran in his weak brain may have felt
somehow conscious of the fact, and of a suspicion that he had been
subtly beguiled into lending his own vanity for a catspaw to the other’s
schemes. But he had no wit to mend the situation he had encouraged; and
so he only stood silent, with his mouth open—sowing gape-seed, as they
say in Sussex.
The Duke, ending presently on a “dying fall,” sighed and looked up.
“Lady,” he said, “there is a test of the interpretative power of music
(which some deny), to render the very spirit of a flower in sound, so that
one listening, with closed eyes, will say, ‘That be jonquils,’ or ‘That be
rosemary,’ or lavender, or what you will. Only the player must have that
same blossom he would explain nigh to him, that his soul may be
permeated by its essence while he improvises. What say you, shall we
put it to the proof? Poor artist as I am, if my skill prove but twin-brother
to my wish I will interpret you my blossoms so that you shall cry, ‘That’s
for the one in flower language called Remembrance,’ or ‘That’s for
gentle Friendship,’ or ‘That’s for Love.’ Will you be so entertained?
Only—for the means.”
He looked to the Earl. This was no more than a ruse, devised on the
moment to rid himself of that simple incubus.
“My lord,” said he, with an ingratiatory smile, “will you favour me so
far as to go gather me a posy from the garden?”
But before the sappy youth could fall into that palpable trap, Kate had
risen hurriedly to her feet.
“Nay, brother,” she said, “stay you here. I know better than you where
to find the blooms most meet to his Highness’s purpose”—and she was
going, half scared and yet half diverted.
But scarce had she taken a step or two, when a sudden voice singing
outside the window brought her to an instant standstill—
“Oh, turn, love, I prythee, love, turn to me,
For thou art the only one, love, that art ador’d by me”;
so sweet and unexpected, they all whisked about in surprise to mark the
singer. She loitered, in seeming unconsciousness of their neighbourhood,
among the beds, a slender girl figure, on whose face, as she stooped and
rose, the sunlight went and came as if it fought her for a kiss. She looked
a very stillroom fairy of the gardens, herself expressed from all their
daintiest scents and colours.
And so, no doubt, the men thought; but, for my lady Chesterfield, the
apparition wrought in her a revulsion of feeling which was as instant as it
was startling. Her wrongs, the empty vanity of her scruples, all rushed
upon her in a moment, and she stood stock still. And then she gave a
chill little laugh, a woman of ice in a moment, and said she, small and
quiet—
“But it were ill manners for a hostess to desert her guest; and after all,
Dick, thou art the musician to feel a musician’s needs.”
My lord looked suddenly gratified.
“Ath you will, thithter Kit,” said he; “unless your friend outthide
would prefer your company.”
“Friend!” cried her ladyship; “she is no friend of mine.”
“Of whoth, then?”
“You may ask her if you will. Nay, I see that you are all excitement to
put his Highness’s pleasant fancy to the test. Go, then—leave your sister,
and gather flowers.”
He answered with a little foolish shamefaced snigger; then turned and
stole away a-tiptoe, as if he feared to be detected, while she watched his
departure with a twitch of scorn upon her lips. The Duke, with an
amused smile on his, regarded her furtively, her rigid attitude, the flushed
curve of her cheek, which alone of her face was visible as she stood with
her back to him. But much expression can be conveyed in a curve.
“No friend of yours, my lady?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said, and, lowering her head, began plucking at her
handkerchief without turning to him.
“Of your husband’s, perhaps?” he asked, in the same tone.
“Of any man’s,” she answered.
“O!” He rose and, just glancing through the window at the pretty
figure, now joined in company with that of the young nobleman, took a
step or two which brought him within close range of the averted face. “Is
that so?” he said. “And she lies in this house?”
She did not answer; and, venturing quite gently to capture her
reluctant fingers, he led her by them to the window. The couple outside
were already, it appeared, on friendly terms. They laughed and chatted
together, making a sport of the flower-choosing, in which, with all pretty
coquetries, the lady would defer to her companion, plucking this bloom
and that, and holding it to his button nose, and throwing the thing away
in a pretended pet if he shook his head to it. The Duke stood some
moments regarding the scene.
“Why, young, but practised,” he said presently. “He has met her
before?”
“Never, to my knowledge.”
She spoke low, trembling a little now—perhaps from that sudden chill.
“Not?” he said, and drew in a quick breath, as if scandalized. “I see, I
see. And how is she known?”
“Her name is Mary Davis.”
“Ah! Some wanton fancy of your——”
“Your Highness, I beg you to let me go.”
She broke from his too sympathetic hold, and went back from him,
until a space separated them.
“Believe me,” said he gravely: “I had no wish to surprise this unhappy
secret out of you.”
“I know,” she said hurriedly—“I know. But, learning it, you will be
considerate—considerate and compassionate.”
“On my royal faith,” he answered. “It shall be an inviolable
confidence between us. Have I not myself too good reason to sympathize
with the ill-mated?”
He did not say whether on his own account or on his wife’s. Perhaps,
if on hers, that ill-starred woman would have preferred his fidelity to all
the sympathy in the world. But, as in such matters the feminine prejudice
is always in favour of the man, so Kate, in no ways an exception to her
sex, was quite prepared to accept the sentiment at its obvious
significance. A faint sigh lifted her innocent bosom.
“I may not speak of that,” she said. “Is—is marriage always so
unhappy?”
He sighed too.
“Always? I know not. It may chance to include that natural correlation
of sympathies, that perfect soul affinity, which was no doubt in the
original scheme of things before the Fall. Blest, immeasurably blest the
nuptials in that case; yet how rare a coincidence! A man and woman,
both virgin, both unspoiled, may here and there find, as predestined, their
rapturous conjunction, and so achieve themselves in flawless unity. But,
for the most part, we must be resigned to forgo that heavenly encounter
until, caught fast in alien bonds, we meet and recognize for the first time
our elective affinities. Too late, then? I cannot say. Only is it possible
that Heaven could blame us for consummating its own ideal at the
expense of the social conventions made by man? Ah! if we could only, in
the first instance, be safe to meet with her, the heartfelt, the
unmistakable, the lovely ordained perfecter of our imperfect beings!
What happiness would be added to the world and what sin avoided!” His
very voice was like a wooing confidence. He bent to gaze into her face.
“Ill-mated! Alike in that, at least,” he said, and sought her hand again.
“Come, sweet soul, be seated, and let me play to you once more.”
Kate started, as if to an electric shock.
“No, your Highness.”
“You will not?”
“I must not. Let me call my brother.”
He intercepted her. “Say at least I may visit you again—see you—
speak to you.” He spoke low and vehemently.
“No, no,” she said, almost weeping—“not now. O, let me go, Sir! I
was wrong to complain—wrong to encourage you.”
She made past him, and hurried to the open window. “Richard!” she
cried. “Richard! How long you are! His Highness waits the flowers with
impatience.”
Arran had no choice but to obey. She saw his companion, with a pert
laugh and toss of the head, thrust the nosegay into his hand, and watch
him, with a mocking lip, as he retreated from her. And the next moment
he was in the room.
But, for the Duke, he was quite content with his progress. She had put
her confidence in his keeping, and, for a sound beginning, that meant
much.
 CHAPTER XIII

T Earl of Chesterfield entered his drawing-room in a very morose

frame of mind, which was scarcely improved by his discovery of a
young lady already seated there before him. She was yawning over an
illuminated missal; but, at sight of the intruder, she clapped the volume
down with a bang, stretched, put her arms behind her head, and smiled
with an air of relieved welcome. Any male to Moll was better than none.
“Come along,” she said. “Don’t be shy of me.”
He was pacing forward, his hands behind his back, and stopped to
regard her sourly, his head askew.
“Yes? You remarked——?” he said.
Mrs. Davis went into a noiseless shake of laughter.
“Don’t do that,” she cried, “or you’ll give yourself a stiff neck. What a
face, sure! Has my lady been putting bitter aloes on your nails, naughty
boy, to stop your biting ’em?”
“Mrs. Davis,” said my lord, not moving, and with an air of acid
civility, “I am really constrained to impress upon you that it is possible to
presume on one’s privileges as Lady Chesterfield’s friend and guest.”
“Is it?” was the serene answer. “And I’m really constrained to impress
upon you that it’s possible to presume upon one’s position as the
husband of that guest’s hostess.”
“Presume, madam, presume—in my own house!”
She jumped up, and came at him with such a whisk of skirts that
involuntarily he retreated a step before her.
“You dare!” she said: “when the very first time we met you had the
brazen impudence to kiss me. Presume, indeed—and in your own house!
A nice house, this, to pretend to any airs of propriety.”
“There are distinctions to be made, madam, which perhaps you can
hardly be expected to appreciate.”
“Between me and another? Why, deuce take you!” cried the lady. “Are
you telling me I’m not respectable?”
She quivered on the verge of an explosion. He was a little alarmed. It
had been foolish of him to lay aside, just because his wife was not by, the
part he was affecting to play. He had forgotten, in his peevishness, that it
was as necessary to mislead the visitor as to his sentiments as it was her
ladyship. Yet he could not command his temper all in a moment.
“Are you telling me,” he said, “that my house is not?”
 Her eyes sparkled at him.
“I can’t appreciate distinctions, you know,” she said, “or I might
understand why my lady may do just what I do, and be respected for it,
while I for my part have to suffer all manner of sauce and impudence.
One of these days I shall be taking two of those precious grooms of
yours and knocking their heads together.”
He frowned, setting his lips.
“I am sorry if you have reason to complain of the conduct of my
household. I was not aware of this, and will take immediate measures for
the punishment of any servant you may point out as having shown you
discourtesy.”
“O, all’s one for that!” cried Moll, with a toss. “I can look after
myself. Only don’t talk about my presumption in treating you with the
familiarity that you treat me, or be so sure of the holy propriety of your
house in everything where I’m not concerned.”
He looked at her with a gloomy perplexity, but did not answer.
“Liberties!” cried Mrs. Moll, snapping her fingers. “But where the
master sets the example, the mistress can’t be blamed for following him,
I suppose.”
“Do you allude to her ladyship?” he demanded.
“Yes, I do,” she answered, with a saucy laugh.
“To what ‘liberties’ do you refer—as applied to yourself, perhaps?”
“Myself be damned!” cried the lady. “I talk of her being closeted
alone, in her private apartments, with gentlemen visitors.”
His lordship started and stiffened, as suddenly rigid as a frog popped
into boiling water.
“What visitors?” he said, in a suffocated voice.
Moll laughed again.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, crosspatch?”
He took a furious step forward, and checked himself.
“Her brothers, belike. And so much for your mischief-making, Mrs.
Davis.”
He said it with a sneer; but his eyes glowed.
“Then that’s all right and settled,” replied the girl. “And so now you
can be at peace.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“You say so.”
“What do you say?”
“O! I mustn’t mention Kit, I suppose.”
 “Kit!” He uttered a blazing oath under his breath. “So my suspicions
are confirmed about that reptile! By God, if you and my lady are a pair
and in collusion, after all!”
“Fiddle-de-dee!” she said, putting out the tip of her tongue at him.
“What do you mean by collusion? That I’m abetting her in carrying on
with my own particular friend? Not likely!”
He stamped in impotent exasperation.
“Why do you tell me, then? But I see what it is. She has robbed you of
this creature, and you want to be revenged on her for it. And by God you
shall! Tell me, when was this?”
“This very afternoon.”
“And how long was he with her?”
“Who?”
“O, you know!”
“I thought you might mean the other.”
“The other? There was another, then?” He positively squeaked in his
fury. “Who was it? Curse it, I will know!”
“Sure, you’re so hot, I’m afraid to tell you,” she said.
He broke away, positively dancing, took a rageful turn or two, and
came back relatively reasonable.
“Now, Mrs. Davis,” he said; “will you be so good as to acquaint me all
—all about this visit? Come, let us kiss and be friends.”
He advanced towards her, with hands extended and a twisted smile,
meant to be ingratiatory, on his lips; but she backed before him.
“No, sure,” she said. “That would be friendship at too high a price.
What does it matter to you who visited her? Aren’t you ready to throw
her over, stock and block, for me?”
“Yes, yes. Only—h’m!—’tis a question of justification, don’t you see
—of proof—damn it!—of her guilt.”
“You won’t want to kiss me, now?”
“No; on my word.”
“And you won’t call the gentlemen out to answer for their
misbehaviour?”
“Curse me, no!”
“Then, I’ll tell you. It was—— You are sure you won’t kiss me?”
“Not for a thousand pound.”
“What, not for a thousand? Was ever woman so insulted!”
“Then I’ll kiss you for nothing.”
“You will? So, then, my mouth’s shut.”
 “O!” He threw up his hands and eyes, giving vent to the remarkable
utterance, “The foul fiend grant me virtue!” Then he waxed dangerous.
“Mrs. Moll, if it’s to be kissing after all, I’ll pay you, and with interest,
here and now.”
She gave a little scream.
“O, mussey! I’ll tell you. It was the Duke.”
He stood looking at her, grinning like a dog.
“The Duke? What Duke?”
“How should I know?”
“You saw him?”
“Sure.”
“How?”
“O, I just looked through the keyhole.”
Still he stared, the grin, or snarl, fixed on his face.
“And what did you see?”
“Only the two gentlemen and my lady.”
“What! They were there together?”
“Why not?”
“Why not, why not! Now, what does it all mean? And which was the
favoured one with her?”
“It was his Highness stayed longest.”
“His Highness!”
“So they called him. He looked a very nice tall gentleman, though
over grave for my taste.”
“Yes.” Chesterfield’s manner had suddenly fallen ominously quiet. “I
think I know whom you mean. And so he, the Duke, stayed longest, did
he? And what became of the other?”
“O! he came out to me in the garden, whither I’d run after peeping.”
She saw it rising in him, and likened it in her own mind to a saucepan
of milk coming to the boil. There was a flickering under the surface, and
then a heave and rise, and the next moment it was overflowing with a
tumultuous ebullition there was no stopping. Yet his voice maintained its
intense suppression, only doubly envenomed.
“He came out to you, did he? I understand. Your particular friend,
your particular pander to dishonourable royalty, came out to you, having
effected his purpose of infamous procuration—to congratulate you and
himself, I suppose, on the success of your joint villainy. So this is the
solution of the mystery, and this your return for the hospitality you have
received? Indeed my lady chooses her intimates cleverly.”
 Now, Moll was a mischief-making naughtiness, and knew it; but no
woman, however self-consciously guilty, can take abuse without
recrimination.
“You suppose so? Do you, indeed?” she said. “And I say if you apply
those names to me and Kit you’re a liar and a beast. A nice character
you, upon my word, to call shame upon your lady for doing in all
innocence what you are doing out of the wickedness of your soul every
day of your life. She mustn’t entertain a great gentleman, mustn’t she;
but you may practise your dissembling arts on her own friend, and think
none the worse of yourself for it. Pander, forsooth! I throw the word back
in your ugly teeth, as I throw your dirty attentions. I don’t want them,
and I don’t want you!”
“My teeth may be ugly,” says my lord, with a savage grin; “but they
can bite, as this friend of yours will find to his cost when once I track
him down—as I shall do.”
“Poor Kit!” cried Mrs. Moll, with a mocking laugh.
“And as to my attentions to you,” said the other, “you may count them
for what you like, only don’t include any inclination of mine in the bill. I
paid them because it suited me, and not because you did—for anything
but a catspaw. And now that I know your true character, why, you may
take yourself off for any attraction I find in you, and the sooner the better
for all parties concerned. I do not consider you a fit companion for my
lady.”
“That’s plain,” said Moll, a little cowed in spite of herself.
“I wish to make it so,” answered his lordship frigidly. “For what
purpose my lady invited you here I know not, nor in what degree that
purpose tallied with your command of a confederate, the hired
instrument, as I take it, of a more exalted infamy. It is enough that you
have used your position here to consolidate the discord and
misunderstanding you found already unhappily existing——”
“And what have you done, I should like to know?” cried Mrs. Moll.
“And with an object,” went on the gentleman, not deigning to answer
her, “which is only perfectly apparent to me at a late hour. But that
recognition, now it has come, imposes a duty on me, and on you the
perhaps unwelcome realization that I am the master of this house. I
neither ask nor expect you to betray to me this creature of yours and of
my lord Duke: I shall identify him in good time, and then he will not
have reason to congratulate himself on his amiable participation in your
designs. But, as to yourself, I have merely to intimate that I shall esteem
it a favour, and to avoid unpleasantness, if you will put an early period to
your visit here.”
He bowed with such an immense and killing stateliness, that the young
lady was quite overawed, and for the moment had not a word to answer;
and so, walking deliberately, with his head high, he left the room.
Mrs. Davis sat for some minutes after he was gone, her face a lively
play of emotions.
“Why, deuce take it!” she thought, her lids wide, “if he doesn’t believe
as I’ve used Kit for go-between with Madam and the Duke creature.
Mussey-me!”
Her eyes half closed, her little nose wrinkled, stuffing her
handkerchief into her mouth, she went into a scream of laughter. But her
mood soon changed. Panting, she rose to her feet and struck one little fist
into the palm of the other.
“So I’m to go, am I!” she said. “Not before I’ve paid you for that
insult, my lad. I don’t quite know how, yet, but somehow, the last word’s
got to be with me.”
 CHAPTER XIV

T tormented nobleman, craving for advice and sympathy, lost little

time before he sought out his friend and kinsman, Mr. George Hamilton.
He found that gentleman, who had just returned from a game of pell-mell
with his Majesty, refreshing himself with a pot and sop in his own
chambers, before committing himself and his mid-day toilet to the hands
of his valet. Chesterfield drove out the man incontinent, and closed the
door on him.
“I want a word with you, George,” said he, breathless and agitated—
too disturbed and full of his subject to apologize or finesse. “It’s all out;
I’ve discovered the truth; and, curse me, if ’twere the King himself, I’d
bury my sword in his treacherous heart. As it is——”
Hamilton, his face half hidden by the quart pot, put up an
expostulatory hand, and bubbled amphorically.
“As it is, let me finish my ale.”
“O, you can jest,” cried the other; “but I tell you ’tis no jesting matter.
So he hath wronged me, I’ll have his life, were he twenty James Stuarts
rolled into one.”
George set down the tankard, drained. His eyes gaped a little.
“The Duke of York?”
“Damn him!” cried the Earl. “I always said it was he, but you would
never believe me. And now he hath been to visit her, on what false
pretext I know not, and they have been closeted alone, together—alone,
in her private apartments.”
“When was this?” asked Hamilton, astonished and disturbed enough,
for his part.
“Yesterday afternoon,” replied the other; and he hissed between his
clenched teeth. “And I’ll not forgive the dishonour done to my house, or
spare him though he wore the crown.”
“Nay, coz,” said Hamilton. “Command yourself. How got you this
information?”
“How? Why, from that little cursed, prying, eavesdropping skit, her
friend. And that is not all. ’Twas through ‘Kit’ the meeting came about—
a common pitcher-bawd, who shall pay for it with every bone in his body
broke.”
“Through Kit?”
 “Aye; she confessed to him at last. He brought the Duke—was the tool
arranged between them, no doubt. O, what measure can gauge the
perfidy of woman!”
“Who do you say confessed to him?”
“O, a curse on your dullness! Who but Mrs. Davis.”
“What, and to Kate’s collusion in the plot?”
“Of course.”
“Then she lied; and if she lied in one thing, the truth of all is to
question.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, unless you can conceive my cousin as the most double-
faced, artful little villain in the world, Mrs. Davis was lying to you in
pretending that Kate could be a party to this employment of the creature
Kit.”
“Why?”
“Because she knows so little about Kit, that ’twas only the other day
she was charging Kit to you as some probable light of your fancy before
you married her. She thought Kit a woman.”
“Well, she knows better now.”
“But, don’t you see——?”
“I see nothing and know nothing but that my lady has granted the
Duke a secret interview, and that I’ll call them both to account for it.”
“Now, Phil, be reasonable. Even if that’s the case—and I question it—
there can be harmless interviews.”
“Between a Stuart and a beautiful woman? P’sha! And what grounds
have you for questioning it?”
“I’ve told you one. Take it from me—and I had the confession from
Kate’s own lips—she’s as jealous of you and Kit as ever you can be of
Kit and her.”
The shaft went somewhat home. Chesterfield stood glowering and
gnawing his finger.
“Then who the devil is Kit?” he said suddenly.
“Ah!” replied Hamilton. “Who? We are all the gulls, I sometimes
think, of that little scheming hussy, your wife’s friend. But do you mean
to say she actually went so far as to assert that the Duke’s visit was due
to Kit?”
Chesterfield reflected, still devouring his finger.
“Well, now I come to think on’t, she didn’t explicitly, in so many
words, say as much.”
“Perhaps she didn’t mention Kit at all?”