She had beside her one in whom experience had taught her to have faith.
Louis Duras, Marquis de Blanquefort, and Earl of Feversham, coughed with mock discreetness under cover of his hand.

"Ahem!" He was a comely man with a long nose, good lowlidded eyes, a humorous mouth, and a weak chin; at a glance he looked what he was, a weak, good-natured sensualist.

He was resplendent at the moment in a blue satin dressing-gown stiff with gold lace, for he had been interrupted by Blake's arrival in the very act of putting himself to bed, and his head--divested of his wig--was bound up in a scarf of many colours.
At his side, the red-coated captain, arrested by the general's sardonic cough, stood, a red-faced, freckled boy, looking to his superior for orders.
"I t'ink you 'ave 'urt Sare Rowland," said Feversham composedly in his bad English.

"Who are you, sare ?" "This lady's husband," answered Wilding, whereupon the captain stared and Feversham's brows went up in surprised amusement.
"So-ho! T'at true ?" quoth the latter in a tone suggesting that it explained everything to him.

"T'is gif a differen' colour to your story, Sare Rowlan'." Then he added in a chuckle, "Ho, ho--l'amour!" and laughed outright.
Blake, gathering together his wits and his limbs at the same time, made shift to rise.
"What a plague does their relationship matter ?" he began.