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Her ladyship concealed a cynical smile under cover of her fan. Mr. Caryll standing in the background beside Hortensia's chair smiled, too, and poor Hortensia, detecting his smile, sought to take comfort in it. "My son," interposed the countess, "is, I am sure, gratified to hear you so commend his conduct." Mr. Templeton bowed to her with a great politeness.
He shall make good his words, or eat them. But the matter cannot rest thus." "It shall not, by God!" swore Rotherby, purple now. "It shall not. I'll kill him like a dog for what he has said." "But before I die, gentlemen," said Mr. Caryll, "it were well that you should have the full story of that sorry adventure from an eye-witness." "An eye-witness?
Caryll let pass, as typical, the ludicrous want of logic in Ostermore's strictures of his Grace of Wharton, and the application by him to the duke of opprobrious terms that were no whit less applicable to himself. "Then, that being so, what cause for these alarms some six months later?"
But I make no doubt that it deserves your praise." "And Paris, now," persisted Mr. Green. "They tell me 'tis a great city; a marvel o' th' ages. There be those, ecod! that say London's but a kennel to't." "Be there so?" quoth Mr. Caryll indifferently. "Ye don't agree with them, belike?" asked Mr. Green, with eagerness. "Pooh! Men will say anything," Mr.
"Lard, sir!" cried the landlady, her eyes wide with astonishment. Mr. Caryll smiled enigmatically. "'Tis so, I assure ye, ma'am. My Lord Rotherby is of a family singularly cautious in the unions it contracts. In entering matrimony he prefers, no doubt, to leave a back door open for quiet retreat should he repent him later." "Your honor has his lordship's acquaintance, then?" quoth the landlady.
British stolidity was in the ascendant with him then. He felt that he had the need of it. "It is... ugly," he said at last slowly. "It is God's own will," was the hot answer, and Sir Richard smote the table. "Has God taken you into His confidence?" wondered Mr. Caryll. "I know that God is justice." "Yet is it not written that 'vengeance is His own'?"
"Ye'll be a Jacobite, no doubt, then," were her first, uncompromising words to the guest. Mr. Caryll made her another bow. "If I were, I should make no secret of it with your ladyship," he answered with that irritating suavity in which he clothed his most obvious sarcasms. Her ladyship opened her eyes a little wider. Here was a tone she was unused to.
"It is better so," he was saying. "Better so!" His glance was upon her, and she understood what none other there suspected that those words were for her alone. He closed his eyes and swooned again, as the doctor stooped to remove the temporary bandages from his wound. Hortensia, a sob beating in her throat, turned and fled to her own room. Mr. Caryll was almost happy.
Caryll. "You, sir," she said to him, "you have been dragged into this, I know not why." She broke off suddenly, looking at him, her eyes a pair of gimlets now for penetration. "Why have you been dragged into it?" she demanded. "What is here? I demand to know. What help does my lord expect from you that he tells you this?
My lord laughed, musically enough, but overloud for a man of brains or breeding. "Marry in haste, eh?" quoth he. "You are penetration itself," Mr. Caryll praised him. "'Twill take a shrewd rogue to better me," his lordship agreed. "Yet an honest man might worst you. One never knows. But the lady's patience is being taxed."
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