"Nay, nay!" he said, "my lord Rochester you do forget—and you, too, gentlemen! Fie on you, fie, I say! Not a drop shall pass your lips until you have pledged me as you should. 'Tis I will give you the first toast of the evening. Gentlemen, the bride!"
There was loud clapping of mugs against the table, then lusty shouts of "The bride! the bride!" The three men raised their bumpers and drained them to the last drop, honouring the toast to the full. Sir John looked keenly at Michael, but even his sharp, observant eyes could not detect the slightest change in the calm and serene face. Michael, too, had raised his mug, but Ayloffe noted that he did not touch the wine with his lips.
Shrewd Sir John ever alive to his own interests fell to speculating as to what had gone amiss, and whether any event had been likely to occur which would affect his own prospects in any way. Mistress Peyton's twelve thousand pounds had not yet—remember,—been transferred to Cousin John's pocket, and no one was more profoundly aware of the truth of the old dictum that "there's many a slip—" than was Sir John Ayloffe himself. But there was naught to read on Michael Kestyon's placid face, only the vague suspicion of carefully concealed weariness; and in Ayloffe's practical mind there was something distinctly unnatural in the serene calm of a man who was richer to-day by one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, not even to mention an excessively pretty and well-dowered bride.
Sir John, relying on his own powers of observation, had every intention of probing this matter to the bottom, but in the meanwhile he thought it best not to let the others see, too clearly, what he himself had only vaguely guessed, therefore it was he again who shouted more lustily even than before:
"Now the bridegroom, gentlemen! I give you the bridegroom! Long live! Long live I say!"
He was on his feet waving his mug with every lusty shout. Then he drained it once more to the last drop, Stowmaries and Rochester doing likewise, for time-honoured custom demanded that such toasts must be responded to right heartily. Michael however made no acknowledgment as he should have done. He sat quite still with slender, nervy fingers idly toying with the crumbs on the table.
"Respond, Michael, respond," cried Lord Rochester who seemed to have quite shaken off his former diffidence. "Man, are you in the clouds?—Of a surety," he continued with a knowing wink directed at his friends, "'twere no marvel on this eventful night, and with a pretty bride awaiting her lord not thirty paces away on the other side of that door. We saw her in church, Michael, and by Gad, man, you are a lucky dog! But we did drink to the bridegroom and—"
"And I, too, drink to him," interposed Michael loudly, as he rose to his feet, bumper in hand and turned directly to his Cousin Stowmaries, "to you, my lord and cousin do I drink—the only bridegroom worthy of such a bride."
To say the least of it, this speech was vastly astonishing. No one quite knew how to take it, and as Michael drained his cup Stowmaries broke into a forced laugh.
"You do flatter me, Coz," he said, feeling strangely uncomfortable under the other's steady gaze, and realising that some sort of reply was expected of him, "but of a truth the flattery is misplaced. The bride is yours and you have won her by fair means; and I, in my turn, will add something to my lord Rochester's toast—something which, an I mistake not, will be vastly acceptable to you—a draft for seventy thousand pounds on my banker, Master Vivish of Fleet Street. The final payment of my debt to you."