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‘My good boy, is your engagement in Worthing so pressing that you cannot spare me half an hour? To-morrow might suit you better, but it would be highly inconvenient to me. I am going to the races.’
‘Oh well!’ sighed Peregrine. ‘I suppose I must come then, if you make such a point of it.’
The Earl felt his horses’ mouths with a movement of his long fingers on the reins. ‘I have often had it in mind to ask you, Peregrine, why your father omitted to send you up to Oxford,’ he remarked. ‘It would have done you so much good.’
Peregrine reddened, turned his horses, and followed rather sulkily in the wake of the phaeton.
The house which Worth rented on the Steyne stood on the corner of St James’s Street, and had the advantage of a yard and st
ables to the rear. Worth led the way into the cobbled alley that ran behind the house, drove his phaeton into the yard, and got down. Henry scrambled from his perch and took charge of the horses, just as Peregrine’s tilbury entered the yard.
‘You had better tell your man to take the horses into the stable,’ said the Earl, stripping off his gloves.
‘I thought he might as well walk them up and down,’ objected Peregrine. ‘I shall not be as long as that, surely?’
‘Just as you please,’ shrugged the Earl. ‘They are not my horses.’
‘Oh, very well, do as his lordship says, Tyler,’ said Peregrine, climbing down from his seat. ‘I shall want them again in half an hour, mind!’
This was said in a firm tone that was meant to indicate to the Earl that half an hour was the limit Peregrine had fixed to the interview, but as Worth was already strolling away towards some iron steps leading up to a back door into the house it was doubtful whether he had heard the speech. Peregrine went up the stairs behind him wishing that he were ten years older, and able to assume a manner ten times more assured than the Earl’s own.
The door opened into a passage that ran from the hall to the back of the house. It was not locked, and the Earl led Peregrine through it to his book-room, a square apartment with windows on to St James’s Street. The room was furnished in a somewhat sombre style, and the net blinds that hung across the window while preventing the curious from looking in also obscured a good deal of light.
The Earl tossed his gloves on to the table and turned to see Peregrine glancing about him rather disparagingly. He smiled, and said: ‘Yes, you are really better off on the Marine Parade, are you not?’
Peregrine looked quickly across at him. ‘Then this was the house my sister wanted!’
‘Why, of course! Had you not guessed as much?’
‘Well, I did not think a great deal about it,’ confessed Peregrine. ‘It was Judith who was so set on –’ He stopped, and laughed ruefully. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know which of the two she did want!’ he said.
‘She very naturally wanted the one I told her she was not to have,’ replied the Earl, moving over to a console-table where a decanter of wine and two glasses had been placed. ‘Fortunately I was able to read her intention just in time to retrieve my own mistake in ever mentioning this house.’
‘Ay, and devilish cross you made her,’ said Peregrine.
‘There is nothing very new in that,’ said the Earl in his driest voice.
‘Oh, she had not been disliking you for a long time then, you know,’ said Peregrine, inspecting a round table snuff-box with a loose lid that stood on the Earl’s desk. ‘In fact, quite the reverse.’
The Earl was standing with his back to the room, but he glanced over his shoulder, holding the decanter poised for a moment over one of the glasses. ‘Indeed! What may that mean?’
‘Lord, nothing in particular!’ said Peregrine. ‘What should it mean?’
‘I wish I knew,’ said the Earl, and returned to his task of filling the glasses.
Peregrine looked at him rather sharply, and after fidgeting with the lid of the snuff-box for a moment blurted out: ‘May I ask you a question, sir?’
‘Certainly,’ said the Earl, replacing the stopper in the decanter. ‘What is it?’
‘I daresay you won’t like it, and of course I may be wrong,’ said Peregrine, ‘but I am Judith’s brother, and I did think at one time, when my cousin hinted at it, that you might be – well, what I wish to ask you is – is, in short –’
‘I know exactly what you wish to ask me,’ said the Earl, handing him one of the glasses.
‘Oh!’ Peregrine accepted the glass, and looked at him doubtfully.
‘I can appreciate your anxiety,’ continued the Earl, a trifle maliciously. ‘The thought of being saddled with me as a brother-in-law must be extremely unnerving.’
‘I did not mean that!’ said Peregrine hastily. ‘Moreover, I don’t believe there is the least fear – I mean, chance – of it coming to pass.’
