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Nero politely routed an excursive bug from his path and lay down to listen. "Mr. Poynter!" called a voice from the darkling trees behind him. Mr. Poynter smiled and fell deliberately to filling the bowl of his wildwood pipe. Gnarled and twisted and marvelously eccentric was this wildwood pipe and therefore an object of undoubted interest.
Poynter, looking decidedly trim and smiling, summoned Dick Whittington, climbed aboard and, whistling, disappeared from view with uncommon grace and good humor. The hay-wagon rumbled off. Diane bit her lips convulsively and looked at Johnny. Simultaneously they broke into an immoderate fit of laughter.
Poynter. "You don't mean to say, Jennings, that you are brute enough to be seducing that poor man Roger's daughter, just as he's going to be tried for his life?" asked Sir John. Simon uttered nothing in reply; but Grace burst into tears. "A fair idea that, 'pon my honour," drawled the chivalrous Pypp, proceeding to direct his delicate attentions towards the weeping damsel.
At luncheon the Duchess of Ross had complained that no one would give her a chance of meeting young Eric Lane; Gerald Deganway had murmured, "One poor martyr without a lion"; and, as Deganway was incapable of originating anything, Lady Poynter felt that she was not infringing any copyright in recording the jest against that day when Eleanor Ross tried to steal any more of her young men the moment she had put a polish on them and made them known. . . .
Lady Poynter was retailing the secret history of the latest political crisis and the fall of the Coalition Government. His wheezing, well-fed host was attacking the Board of Trade with ill-disguised venom. "They've cut down imports to such an extent," he was saying, "that in six months' time you won't be able to get a cigar fit to smoke.
Houdania! Yes, he had found Houdania. Philip Poynter had told him of the monastery months before. Philip liked to seek and find the picturesque. Thus had he come into Andorra in the Pyrenees and Wisby in the Baltic. And he Carl had found Houdania. But what of it? Ah, yes, the burning candlestick the paper the paper! And again a gust of laughter drowned the fitful crackle of the fire.
"Yes," said Ronador impatiently, "what is it?" "Miss Westfall I spied upon her camp in Connecticut " "Yes?" "It is well to know all. For days she lived with Poynter in the forest " Ronador's eyes blazed. "Go, go!" he cried, his face quite colorless, "for the love of God go before I kill you! I I can not bear any more to-night." Who had scored!
Philip was very grateful that the Baron had not misunderstood; a breath might shatter the idyllic crystal into atoms. Later, when the Baron had departed, Philip flushed suddenly at the ugly suspicion rising wraithlike in his mind. He was accustomed to the Baron's subtleties. "Mr. Poynter!" called Diane. Mr. Poynter perversely went on whittling out the hollow of his wildwood pipe. "Mr. Poynter!"
Up, and with my wife to Church, and at noon home to dinner. No strangers there; and all the afternoon and evening very late doing serious business of my Tangier accounts, and examining my East India accounts, with Mr. Poynter, whom I employed all this day, to transcribe it fair; and so to supper, W. Hewer with us, and so the girl to comb my head till I slept, and then to bed. 27th.
The final result was that she eloped with her lover, because if she was to die, as she wrote her aunt, she wished to die in her husband's arms. Human nature plus hysteria will defy all knowledge of character. This was what our old professor of practice used to say. Mr. Poynter had now to account for a large trust estate which had somehow dwindled.