Sophia by Stanley J. Weyman

At the corner of Bolton Row Sir Hervey paused. He felt, to be candid, a trifle awkward in the _role_ of knight-errant, a part reserved in those days for Lord Peterborough. The Northeys' heartless cynicism, and their instant and cruel desertion of the girl, had stirred the chivalry that underlay his cold exterior. But from the first he had been aware that his status in the matter was ill-defined; he now began to see it in a worse, an absurd light. He had taken the field in the belief that Sophia had not stayed in Davies Street; that Hawkesworth, therefore, was beside the question; and that whatever folly she had committed, she had not altogether compromised herself; he now found the data on which he had acted painfully erroneous. She had not stayed in Davies Street, because she had not gone to Davies Street. But she might have joined Hawkesworth elsewhere; she might by this time be his wife; she might be gone with him never to return!

In that event Coke began to see that his part in the matter would prove to be worse than ridiculous; and he paused at the corner of Bolton Row, uncertain whether he should not go home and erase with a sore heart a foolish child's face from his memory. His was a day of coarse things; of duchesses who talked as fishwives talk now, of madcap maids of honour, such as she --