Chapter 27

"'Twas the night thou hidst the package in the wall"

"So," said the fashionable triflers, "'twas the Duke after all, and his
Grace flies to France to draw his errand to a close, and when he flies
back again, upon the wings of love, five villages will roast oxen whole
and drink ale to the chiming of wedding-bells."

"Lud!" said my Lady Betty, this time with her pettish air, this matter
not being to her liking, for why should a Duke fall in love with widows
when there were exquisite languishing unmarried ladies near at hand.
"'Tis a wise beauty who sets bells ringing in five villages by marrying
a duke, instead of taking a spendthrift rake who is but a baronet and
has no estate at all. I could have told you whom her ladyship would wed
if she were asked."

"If she were asked! good Lord!" cried Sir Chris Crowell, as red as a
turkey-cock. "And this I can tell you, 'tis not the five villages she
marries, nor the Duke, but the man. And 'tis not the fine lady he takes
to his heart, but our Clo, and none other, and would have taken her in
her smock had she been a beggar wench. 'Tis an honest love-match, that
I swear!"

Thereupon my Lady Betty laughed.

"Those who see Sir John Oxon's face now," she said, "do not behold a
pretty thing. And my lady sees it at every turn. She can go nowhere but
she finds him at her elbow glaring."

"He would play some evil trick on her for revenge, I vow," said another
lady. "She hath Mistress Anne with her nearly always in these days, as
if she would keep him off by having a companion; but 'tis no use,
follow and badger her he will."

"Badger her!" blustered Sir Chris. "He durst not, the jackanapes! He is
not so fond of drawing point as he was a few years ago."

"'Tis badgering and naught else," said Mistress Lovely. "I have watched
him standing by and pouring words like poison in her ear, and she
disdaining to reply or look as though she heard."

My Lady Betty laughed again with a prettier venom still.

"He hath gone mad," she said. "And no wonder! My woman, who knows a
mercer's wife at whose husband's shop he bought his finery, told me a
story of him. He was so deep in debt that none would give him credit
for an hour, until the old Earl of Dunstanwolde died, when he persuaded
them that he was on the point of marrying her ladyship. These people
are so simple they will believe anything, and they watched him go to
her house and knew he had been her worshipper before her marriage. And
so they gave him credit again. Thence his fine new wardrobe came. And
now they have heard the news and