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‘Very true, but I have it in my power to compel him to do what I wish. You may safely trust in me.’
She heaved a relieved sigh, and again the enchanting smile trembled on her lips. ‘Oh yes! I do, sir! It is the oddest thing, for, to own the truth, I was a little afraid when you pulled back the curtain. You looked at me in such a way! But that was quite my own fault, and I saw in a trice that there was not the smallest need for me to be afraid. You are so very kind! I don’t know how I may thank you.’
‘Forget that I looked at you in such a way, and I shall be satisfied. I am going to take you home now. I think you said that no one knew you had left the house. Have you the means to enter it again without being seen by the servants?’ She nodded, a gleam of mischief in her big eyes. The amusement in his deepened. ‘Abominable girl! Lady Saltwood has my sincere sympathy!’
‘I know I have behaved shockingly,’ she said contritely. ‘But what was I to do? And you must own that it has come about for the best, sir! For I have saved Charlie, and I know you will never tell anyone what a scrape I have been in. I hope – I hope you don’t truthfully think me abominable?’
‘If I were to tell you what I truthfully think, I should be abominable. Come! I must convey you home, my little one.’
2
NEVER DID A young gentleman embarking on his first affair of honour receive less encouragement from his seconds than Lord Saltwood received from Sir Francis Upchurch and Mr Wadworth. Sir Francis, being inarticulate, did little more than shake his head, but Mr Wadworth, presuming upon an acquaintance with his principal which dated from the cradle, did not hesitate to speak his mind. ‘Made a dashed cake of yourself!’ he said.
‘Worse!’ said Sir Francis, contributing his mite.
‘Much worse!’ corroborated Mr Wadworth. ‘Devilish bad ton, Charlie! You were foxed, of course.’
‘I wasn’t. At least, not very much.’
‘Drunk as a wheelbarrow. I don’t say you showed it, but you must have been!’
‘Stands to reason!’ said Sir Francis.
‘No right to bully Torryburn into taking you to the Corinthian Club in the first place. Above your touch, my boy! Told you so, when you asked me to take you. No right to have stayed there after Rotherfield gave you that set-down.’
Lord Saltwood ground his teeth. ‘He need not have said that!’
‘No, I dare say he need not. Got a nasty tongue. But that don’t signify. You’d no right to accuse him of using Fulhams!’
Sir Francis shuddered, and closed his eyes for an anguished moment.
‘Ought to have begged his pardon then and there,’ pursued Mr Wadworth relentlessly. ‘Instead of that, dashed well forced a quarrel on him!’
‘If he hadn’t told a waiter – a waiter! – to show me out –!’
‘Ought to have called for the porter,’ agreed Sir Francis. He then perceived that this amiable response had failed to please his fiery young friend, and begged pardon. A powerful thought assailed him. He turned his eyes towards Mr Wadworth, and said suddenly: ‘You know what, Bernie? He shouldn’t have accepted Charlie’s challenge. Must know he ain’t bee
n on the town above six months!’
‘The point is he did accept it,’ said Mr Wadworth. ‘But it ain’t too late. Charlie dashed well ought to apologize.’
‘I will not!’ said Lord Saltwood tensely.
‘You were in the wrong,’ insisted Mr Wadworth.
‘I know it, and I mean to fire in the air. That will show that I acknowledge my fault, but was not afraid to meet Rotherfield!’
This noble utterance caused Sir Francis to drop with a clatter the cane whose amber knob he had been meditatively sucking, and Mr Wadworth to stare at his principal as though he feared for his reason. ‘Delope?’ he gasped. ‘Against Rotherfield? You must be queer in your attic! Why, man, you’d be cold meat! Now, you listen to me, Charlie! If you won’t beg the fellow’s pardon, you’ll come up the instant you see the handkerchief drop, and shoot to kill, or I’m dashed if I’ll have anything more to do with it!’
‘Awkward business, if he killed him,’ objected Sir Francis. ‘Might have to leave the country.’
‘He won’t kill him,’ said Mr Wadworth shortly.
He said no more, but it was plain to Saltwood that his seconds thought poorly of his chances of being able to hit his opponent at a range of twenty-five yards. He was by no means a contemptible shot, but he suspected that it might be easier to hit a small wafer at Manton’s Galleries than a large man at Paddington Green.
Mr Wadworth called for him in a tilbury very early in the morning. He did not find it necessary to throw stones up at his lordship’s window, for his lordship had not slept well, and was already dressed. He stole downstairs, and let himself out of the house, bidding Mr Wadworth good morning with very creditable composure. Mr Wadworth nodded, and cast a knowledgeable eye over him. ‘No bright buttons on your coat?’ he asked.
The question did nothing to allay the slightly sick feeling at the pit of Saltwood’s stomach. Mr Wadworth followed it up with a reminder to him to turn up his collar, and to be careful to present the narrowest possible target to his adversary. Lord Saltwood, climbing into the tilbury, answered with spurious cheerfulness: ‘I must suppose it can make little difference to such a shot as they say Rotherfield is.’
