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The banker's shining forehead wrinkled in a reflective frown. "Medenham?" he said. "Fairholme's eldest son." Mrs. Devar chortled. "Such fun!" she said. "Our chauffeur calls himself George Augustus Fitzroy." "How odd!" agreed Countess Millicent. "You people speak in riddles. Who or what is odd?" asked Ducrot. "Oh, don't worry, but listen to that adorable waltz."
Abandoning the bicycle, and hardly realizing why he should be so perturbed, Dale ran forward. Twice he stumbled and fell amidst the stringy heath grass, but he was up again in a frenzy of haste, and soon was near enough to the group of men to see that Medenham and Marigny, bare-headed and in their shirt sleeves, were fighting with swords.
"Perhaps the manageress may be able to tell you something, sir. Beg pardon, but may I ask your name?" "Medenham." The man tickled the back of his ear in doubt, since he was aware that an Earl's son usually has a courtesy title. "Lord Medenham?" he hazarded. "Viscount." "I thought, perhaps, you might have been a gentleman named Fitzroy, my lord," he said. "Well, I am that, too.
At first, she yielded only to the flood of memories pent in every American brain when the citizen of the New World stands in one of these treasure-houses of history and feels the passing of its dim pageants; when they stood together in the ruined banqueting hall, Medenham gave play to his imagination, and strove to reconstruct a scene once spread before the bright eyes of a maiden long since dead.
Still, his gestures were eloquent. Quite obviously, he was saying to a man whose arm he caught: "Did you ever in your life see anybody more like George than that chauffeur? Why, damme, it is Medenham!" So Mrs. Devar lost a golden opportunity. She knew Fenton by sight, and her shrewd wits must have set her on the right track had she witnessed his bewilderment.
We last met in Calcutta, where you swindled me out of fifty pounds. Unfortunately I did not hear of your presence in South Africa until you were cashiered at Cape Town, or I might have saved the authorities some trouble." The man wilted under those stern eyes. "Good gad! Medenham!" he stammered. Medenham replaced the lamp in its socket. "I am glad you are not trying any pretense," he said.
"What do you think of our chauffeur now?" cried Cynthia radiantly, for the winning of those few sovereigns was a real joy to her, and the shadow of the welsher had no terrors, since she did not know what Medenham meant. "He improves on acquaintance," admitted Mrs. Devar, thawing a little under the influence of a successful tip. He soon returned, and handed them six sovereigns apiece.
When our tour is ended, Cynthia, I shall have to bant for months." The fare was excellent. Under its stimulating influence Miss Vanrenen forgot her vapors and elected for the front seat during the run to Glastonbury. Medenham thawed, too.
Medenham had roamed the South Downs as a boy, and he was able now to point out Chanctonbury Ring, the Devil's Dyke, Ditchling Beacon, and the rest of the round-shouldered giants that guard the Weald. In the mellow light of a superlatively fine afternoon the Downs wore their gayest raiment of blue and purple, red and green decked, too, with ribands of white roads and ruffs of rose-laden hedges.
His own hot youth was crowded with episodes that Medenham might regard with disdain, yet he would be shocked out of his well-fed cynicism by the notion that his son was gallivanting round the country as the chauffeur of an unconventional American girl and a middle-aged harpy like Mrs. Devar. So Medenham's message was non-committal. Aunt Susan was unable to come Epsom to-day.
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