"Viscount Blentmouth be hanged!" cried Harry. He mastered himself with an effort. "I beg your pardon, Lady Evenswood; and I'm much obliged to you, and to you too, Lord Southend, for—for screwing Mr Disney up. It's not a thing I could or should have done or tried to do for myself." In spite of his attempted calmness his voice grew a little louder. "I want nothing but what's my own. If nothing's my own, well and good—I can wait till I make it something."
"But, my dear Harry——!" began the discomfited Southend. Harry cut him short, breaking again into impetuous speech.
"There's nothing between my cousin and me. There's no question of marriage and never can be. And if there were——" He seemed to gather himself up for a flight of scorn—"If there were, do you think I'm going to save my own pride by saddling the family with a beastly new viscounty?"
His tones rose in indignation on the last sentence, as he looked from one to the other. "Viscount Blentmouth indeed!" he growled.
Southend's hands were out before him in signal of bewildered distress. Lady Evenswood looked at Harry, then, with a quick forward inclination of her body, past him; and she began to laugh.
"Thank you very much, but I've been Tristram of
Blent," ended Harry, now in a very fine fume, and feeling he had been much insulted.
Still looking past him, Lady Evenswood sat laughing quietly. Even on Southend's face came an uneasy smile, as he too looked toward the door. After a moment's furious staring at the two Harry faced round. The door had been softly and noiselessly opened to the extent of a couple of feet. A man stood in the doorway, tugging at a ragged beard and with eyes twinkling under rugged brows. Who was he, and how did he come there? Harry heard Lady Evenswood's laughter; he heard her murmur to herself with an accent of pleasure, "A beastly new viscounty!" Then the man in the doorway came a little farther in, saying:
"That's exactly what I think about it, Mr Tristram. I've heard what you said and I agree with you. There's an end, then, of the beastly new viscounty!" He looked mockingly at Southend. "I've been screwed up all for nothing, it seems," said he.
"Why, you're——?"