Marion accepted his Grace's offered arm, looking by no means so much petrified at the unexpected rank of her partner as Agnes did, who started, and colored with evident vexation, at having even in thought rejected the greatest man in Harrowgate, the hero of all her castles in the air, and one who was considered as eminent for ability as for rank.
"Well, Agnes!" exclaimed Sir Patrick, in a bantering tone, "for the first time in a long life you have made a blunder. You who never, even at chess, would play a pawn, if you could move a knight or a bishop, to have actually rejected a ducal coronet. I thought that in general you could draw out people's whole histories and characters like an opera-glass, and see through them in a minute. You generally know everybody's peculiarities and everybody's value, who everybody is, and what everybody does, with notes and annotations of your own, all original and authentic,—who have elder brothers to impoverish them, and rich uncles to give them hopes,—in short, their whole biography better than they know it themselves!"
"To be sure! I am an inestimable cicerone, 'honest, civil, obliging, and thoroughly to be depended on!' Where other people have only two eyes, I have three, and I make it my duty to ascertain who brings a footman or an abigail, what carriages people travel in, what stay they intend to make here, whether they hire a sitting-room, or lounge, like Mrs. O'Donoghoe, in the public saloon! I do believe the well-informed visitors at Harrowgate know exactly how much silver we carry in our purses every day, and what our washing-bills amount to!"
"Not much in some cases!" said Captain De Crespigny, fixing his satirical, mischievous glance on a shabby-genteel stranger who seemed to be lurking near and watching the lively party with an evil eye. "Look at this dark figure leaning against the door in a sort of Italian bandit attitude, trying to look romantic with his arms stuck on like crooked pins, his neckcloth perfectly strangling him, and his scarlet waistcoat like a robin-red-breast!"
"Is there a man in a waistcoat!! where?" asked Agnes eagerly. "Another Duke, I suppose. He seems like the picture of a robber in some sixpenny story book. But how he stares at you, Captain De Crespigny! I declare that look would pin me to the wall!"
"It is rather odd! Surely I have seen that man somewhere before! He must have dressed my hair at Brighton, or measured me for a coat at Dodd's. He is probably now the sort of £200 a-year man who wears a gold chain and vagabondizes about perpetually from one watering place to another! He seems by his look inclined to pick a quarrel with me; and, if he does so, I feel pretty certain he ought already to be sent among the velvets below stairs, which he certainly shall be without much ceremony. What can the fellow mean by looking such daggers at me in particular?"
"One addition is expected to the Crawford party to-night, which will puzzle you all!" said Mrs. O'Donoghoe. "That enchanting suite of rooms next the garden has been bespoken during the last three weeks, by some person whose name is quite unguessable! The landlady says that Mr. Crawford has made her solemnly promise never to divulge it! Now! there is something worth knowing!—a dark unfathomable mystery in a place like this, is perfectly inestimable!"
"I undertake to solve it in twenty-four hours!" exclaimed Sir Patrick, with animation. "When there is a real undeniable secret to be ferreted out, I am wider awake than most people! I can do everything but what is impossible! If I fail, then, as the lawyer once pathetically exclaimed, 'may my head forget the wig that covers it!' What will you bet that I succeed? Here is my betting-book to register our agreement; I never stir without it!"
"I have no turn for betting my head off my shoulders; but you shall have the Pigot diamond for your trouble!" replied Mrs. O'Donoghoe. "I have been busy about it for three weeks in vain, going about investigating, with my glass at my eye, like Paul Pry, but the maids pretend to know nothing, and the landlady looks bursting with mysterious importance whenever she speaks of her coming guests!"
"Then I am twice a man when there is anything to be found out!" continued Sir Patrick. "If I had lived in the days of the Iron mask, that affair would have been probed to the bottom, and laid open. I have quite a genius for unravelling mysteries!"