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Suddenly he seemed to recover himself, and looked up. "You," he said slowly, "you are Montagu Durant, the fellow she was engaged to before she married Rotherby." The doctor bent his head. "Yes," he said. "I am Montagu Durant." "Rotherby's friend," Ford went on. "The chap who stuck to him through thick and thin to be betrayed in the end.
Caryll's sword; then, easily but irresistibly, it was lifted out of Rotherby's hand, and dropped on the turf a half-yard or so from his lordship's stockinged feet. A cold sweat of terror broke upon him. He caught his breath with a half-shuddering sob of fear, his eyes dilating wildly for Mr. Caryll's point was coming straight as an arrow at his throat.
Rotherby's hand fell away from his sword. He realized that bluster was not the most convenient weapon here. He addressed Mr. Caryll very haughtily. "You are from France, sir, and something may be excused you. But not quite all. You have used expressions that are not to be offered to a person of my quality. I fear you scarcely apprehend it."
Art a clumsy gallant to have been overtaken, and the maid's in the right on't to resent your clumsiness." Rotherby's reply was lost in a splutter of laughter from a group of sycophants who had overheard his grace's criticism and were but too ready to laugh at aught his grace might deign to utter.
But before that came to pass Everard had discovered that the rumor of her death was false put about, no doubt, out of fear of that same cousin who had made himself champion and avenger of her honor. Everard sought her out, and found her perishing of want in an attic in the Cour des Miracles some four months later eight months after Rotherby's desertion.
Templeton looked at the young man before him with eyes of real commiseration. He was entirely duped, and in his heart he regretted that for a moment he could have doubted Rotherby's integrity of purpose. "Sir," he said, "I offer you my sympathy my profoundest sympathy; and you, my lady.
Caryll left White's which he did at a comparatively early hour, that he might be at home to receive Lord Rotherby's friends not a man present but had offered him his services in the affair he had upon his hands. Wharton, indeed, was not to be denied for one; and for the other Mr. Caryll desired Gascoigne to do him the honor of representing him.
"That even at this hour, if the matter were put about, his lordship might be brought to account for it, and it might fare very ill with him. The law of England deals heavily with an offense such as Lord Rotherby's, and the attempt at a mock-marriage, of which there is no lack of evidence, would so aggravate the crime of abduction, if he were informed against, that it might go very hard with him."
"Were you, by any chance, going to seek me in town, Mr. Caryll?" Mr. Caryll suppressed a desire to laugh. Here was a way to deal with State secrets. "I, my lord?" he inquired, with an assumed air of surprise. The earl looked at him, and from him to Rotherby, bethought himself, and started so overtly that Rotherby's eyes grew narrow, the lines of his mouth tightened.
How to all present and to my Lord Rotherby's own face you had related the true story of what befell at Maidstone how I had gone thither, an innocent, foolish maid, to be married to a villain, whom, like the silly child I was, I thought I loved; how that villain, taking advantage of my innocence and ignorance, intended to hoodwink me with a mock-marriage.
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