“Nay, my dear, I’m in no mood to thank you, I protest. Yet ’tis something to have had a vision of a pretty face and a kind, womanly spirit at the last.”
“There you go again! Sir, sir!”
She surrendered the smoking pistol, and, as he slipped it into his pocket:
“Farewell, my dear,” said he.
“Ah, no!” She clutched his arm by both hands. “You shall not go till you have promised me—promised me on your honour as a gentleman to spare yourself.”
“I could do that, on my honour,” he answered her; “but that I will not quibble before such true eyes. Nevertheless it is to spare myself that I seek death. You bid me on my honour. ’Tis because I cannot live dishonoured that I hold this pistol to my temples. ’Tis not that I don’t love life as well as another man, or better. ’Fore Heaven, it is because I have loved life too well. Had I as much as a guinea in my pocket I would have defied Fate. When I stood on those steps and rapped that knocker a while ago, I swear I had as little thought of blowing my brains out as you had. When you and I smiled at each other I thought this world a very good place, I do assure you. That woman in her fine house yonder, rolling in luxury, with her lap dog and her chocolate and her black page, her jewels and her laces, her silks and her satins; all in her cushions; that woman, I say, who finds the Bellairs’ money of so vast a use to spend, might have given me a ten-pound note out of her store. When all’s said and done, I’m the only Bellairs left. And, if but a nephew by marriage, nevertheless the last kin of her old Nabob. Ten pounds I asked of her—that contemptible sum! And what did I receive? The vilest insult, through the most insulting medium. Odds my life, when I think of it——”
He clenched his hands.
Pamela stood, reflecting profoundly, one needle-marked finger to her lip, her white brow drawn together under the shade of her hat.
Ten pounds to save a man’s honour. It seemed indeed a strangely small sum! As if he read her thought, he broke forth:
“I dreamt last night, three times over, that I tossed a double six at tric-trac, and ’tis the sixteenth of July and I am twenty-six. My Lord Sanquhar promised to give me my revenge at the Six Bells at six of the clock. ’Twas such a conjunction of luck as could not fail. I would have won back my I.O.U.’s. I would have returned my Lady Kilcroney the passage money to India. She wants to ship me to India, my dear, the inconvenient poor relation. Ah, she need not fear. I shall beg from her no more. What a farce it has all been! ’Tis time to put an end to it. Bless you for your sweet looks, my pretty child. Think of me only as one who, after life’s fitful fever, sleeps well. Aha! I shall sleep better I dare say, than my Lady Kilcroney when she has read the letter I sent to her anon!”