Then the stranger arose, with a harsh laugh.
“Ha-ha-ha! I’m afraid you’re the victim of a trifling ‘sell’ to-night, Hubert Dorrien.”
To say that the new-comer was astonished would be to say next to nothing at all. He was thunderstruck—speechless; and his face was as white as a sheet, as he stood rooted to the earth—gazing at this unexpected apparition as one transfixed.
“G-Good God! Who are you, sir, and what do you want with me?” he stammered at last.
“Ha-ha-ha! Good boy, Hubert. Good boy! Mother’s darling and papa’s expectant and deserving heir,” went on the stranger in the same harsh, jeering tone. “And now, may I ask, who is the fair frail one with whom this most delightful moonlight tryst was to have come off?” Excess of courage was at no time one of Hubert Dorrien’s besetting faults, and now he simply shivered, and his lips trembled. All of which the stranger noted as the moonlight played upon the white, terrified face.
“I don’t know who the devil you are, sir—and I don’t care,” he found courage to bluster at last. “But anyhow, I shall wish you good-evening, for I must go,” and he made a movement.
“But you are not going, Hubert Dorrien, not yet at least. Not until you and I have had a little talk together,” said the stranger, laying a firm hand upon his shoulder.
“Well, what do you want with me?” said Hubert doggedly, but horribly uneasy in his mind, for to his ordinary “prudent” disposition was now added the incubus of a tolerably guilty conscience. The place was hideously lonely withal, and his strange questioner looked powerful enough to have eaten him.
“Good boy, Hubert—ha-ha-ha! Does papa know you’re over here to-night, I wonder? But now—who were you expecting to find here?”
“Be damned to you!” broke out the young fellow furiously. “I’m not going to stand your impudent catechising. Go to blazes and find out. Oh—by God!”