“By the Lord,” thought Colonel Harcourt, running his eye sardonically over the dark stains on Herrick’s handsome evening suit, his tossed and dishevelled hair, “it is all correct and complete! He’s had to come down by the window! The deuce!... I who thought the situation would have suited me!” He had another quiet laugh which enraged the youth almost beyond endurance. For one voluptuous moment Herrick saw himself laying this triumphant elderly Lothario at his feet. For every stain, for every rent in that riding suit, for every stone scratch on those heavy boots—brute beast, who could enter thus into his lady’s presence!—he should feel the cuffing of an honest fist! Nor were Colonel Harcourt’s next words likely to conduce to the young man’s self-control.
“Most poetical Herrick,” he said, “you have lost your hat, and you are in sad need of a brush!”
“For the matter of that, sir, where is your hat? And as for requiring a brush——”
Then he clenched his fist, this time for a most deliberate purpose. The situation was undoubtedly strained. Suddenly a piping voice drew their attention to quite a new quarter.—Upon the other side of the moat-bridge stood the quaint be-frilled, be-ringletted, tightly be-pantalooned figure of Mr. Villars. And even as they gazed this worthy hobbled across and came close to them, his face under the moonlight visibly quivering with excitement.
“My dear Harcourt! ... Luke, my poor lad!”
They turned upon him like angry dogs disturbed in the preliminaries of a private quarrel. The colonel’s somewhat precarious and thin-spread geniality was not proof against this witness of his inexplicable plight.
“My good friends,” pursued Villars, the mystification on his countenance giving way to a gloating delight as he looked from one to the other, “what has happened? This has been indeed a night of adventures! We thought you had gone to Bath, Colonel. Luke, lad, the ladies have missed you—at least some of them, he—he—he!” The skin of his dry hands crackled as he rubbed them. “This is extraordinary. This is something quite romantic, he—he!”
“Mr. Villars,” interrupted Harcourt suddenly, “is it not time you were in your beauty sleep, and your hair in curl papers?”
He turned his broad back upon the inquisitive gentleman and fixed Herrick for a couple of seconds with a hard straight look.
“Colonel Harcourt,” cried the boy hotly in answer, “I am at your service.”