"Not a day!"
Kate drew herself up with a sort of dignity.
"I despise you and your schemes, and Eugene Lane, and Claudia Territon, and all your crew!" she allowed herself to say.
"But you promise?"
"Yes, I promise. There! Now, may I go?"
Ayre courteously took off his hat, and stood on one side, holding it in his hand and bowing slightly as she swept indignantly by him.
"I'll give her a day to tell Haddington, and three days to tell Eugene. Unless she does, I must go through it all again, and it's damnably fatiguing. She's not a bad sort—fought well when she was cornered. But I couldn't let Eugene do it—I really couldn't. Ugh! I'll go back to breakfast."
Kate was cowed. She told Haddington. Let us pass over that scene. She also wrote to Eugene, addressing the letter to Millstead Manor. Eugene was not at Millstead Manor; and if Ayre had hastily assumed that his fiancée would be in possession of his address, was it her business to undeceive him? She was by no means inclined to do one jot more than fulfill the letter of her bond—whereby it came to pass that Eugene did not receive the letter for nearly two months and did not know of his recovered liberty all that time. For Haddington, in his joy, easily promised silence for a little while; it seemed only decent; and even Ayre could not refuse to agree with him that, though Eugene must be told, nobody else ought to be until Eugene had formally signified his assent to the lady's transfer. Ayre could not take upon himself, on his friend's behalf, the responsibility of dispensing with this ceremony, though he was sure it would be a mere ceremony.
As for Ayre himself, when his task was done he straightway fled from Baden. He was a hardened sinner, but he could not face Mrs. Welman.
It was, however, plainly impossible to confine the secret so strictly as to prevent it coming to the knowledge of Lord Rickmansworth. Indeed he had a right to know the issue, for he had been a sharer in the design; and accordingly, when he also left Baden and betook himself to his own house to spend what was left of the autumn, he carried locked in his heart the news of the fresh development. On the whole he observed the injunction of silence urgently laid upon him by Ayre with tolerable faithfulness. But there are limits to these things, and it never entered Rickmansworth's head that his sister was included among the persons who were to remain in ignorance till the matter was finally settled. He met Claudia at the family reunion at Territon Park in the beginning of October, and when she and he and Bob were comfortably seated at dinner together, among the first remarks he made—indeed, he was brimming over with it—was: