Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v1.djvu/327

Rh ) and a rich library open at certain hours to decent people. One evening in winter there was in a meadow there, the gates of which were locked, a fight, which Josiana, escorted by Lord David, attended.

"Are women admitted?" she had asked.

"Sunt fæminæ magnates!" David had responded.

The free translation of this is, "Plebeian women are not." The literal translation is, "Great ladies are." A duchess goes everywhere. This is why Lady Josiana saw a boxing-match.

Lady Josiana made only this concession to propriety,—she dressed like a man, a very common custom at that period; women seldom travelled otherwise. Out of every six persons who travelled by the coach from Windsor one or two were women in male attire,—a certain sign of high birth. Lady Josiana betrayed her quality in one way,—she had an opera-glass, then used by gentlemen only.

Lord David, being in company with a woman, could not take any part in the match himself, and merely assisted as one of the audience. This encounter in the noble science of boxing was presided over by Lord Germaine, great-grandfather, or grand-uncle, of that Lord Germaine who towards the end of the eighteenth century was colonel, ran away in a battle from the regiment which he commanded, but who was afterwards made minister of war, and only escaped from the shells of the enemy to fall by a worse fate,—shot through and through by Sheridan's sarcasms. Many gentlemen were betting,—Harry Bellew of Carleton, who had claims to the extinct peerage of Bella-aqua, with Henry, Lord Hyde, member of Parliament for the borough of Dunhivid, which is also called Launceston; the Honourable Peregrine Bertie, member for the borough of Truro, with Sir Thomas Colpepper, member for Maidstone; the Laird