“I will do so if you wish,” he said, measuring out his words carefully, so as to give his conscience no possible excuse thereafter for reproaching him with treachery to his brother.
The Vanbrughs had not been in the house five minutes that night before the Duke saw more than anyone else had seen. Every look that passed across the table between Alistair and Hero told him that they had nothing more to tell each other. He saw also that the physician had as little suspicion of what had happened as if he had been a thousand miles off all the time.
After dinner was over the lovers wandered down the garden paths and the Duchess retired to her drawing-room. The Duke and Vanbrugh were left sitting on the verandah over the coffee and cigars, of which only Trent partook. The physician dealt as severely with himself as with his patients, and the abstemious habits so long enforced by poverty had not been departed from in prosperity.
The Home Secretary considered how he could make his attack most crushing. An ingenious idea suggested itself.
“Do you think you have treated me quite fairly, Sir Bernard?” he asked in an accent of mild reproach.
The physician turned and stared at him.
“In what way do you mean, Duke?”
“Am I not correct in saying that you declined me for a son-in-law principally on the ground that I had the misfortune to be the brother of Lord Alistair Stuart?”
“That was one of my strongest reasons, certainly—perhaps the strongest. Well?”
“Well!”