Drake's face hardened. One thing at least he knew he couldn't do: he could not bring himself to accept charity from Lady Angleford. Lady Northgate understood the frown.
"Don't kill me before all these people, Drake!" she said. "I dare say it's very silly of me, but I can't help plotting for your welfare. You see, I am foolish enough to be rather fond of you. There! Go down and drink that soda and whisky with Harry. If you won't let your friends help you, what will you do?"
"I give it up; ask me another. Don't you worry about me, my dear lady; I shall jog along somehow."
CHAPTER XI.
The next morning, while at breakfast, he received a little note from Lady Angleford, asking him to dinner that night. It was a charming little note, as pleading and deprecating as her eyes had been when she looked at him at the Northgates'.
Drake sent back word that he would be delighted to come, and at eight o'clock presented himself at his uncle's house in Park Lane. Lord Angleford was, like Northgate, detained in London by official business. He was a very fine specimen of the old kind of Tory, and, though well advanced in years, still extremely good-looking—the whole family was favored in that way—and remarkably well preserved. His hair was white, but his eyes were bright and his cheeks ruddy, and, when free from the gout, he was as active as a young man. Of course, he was hot-tempered; all gouty men are; but he was as charming in his way as Lady Angleford, and extremely popular in the House of Lords, and out of it.
Though he had fallen in love with a pretty little American, perhaps he would not have married her but for the little tiff with Drake; but that little tiff had just turned the scale, and, though he had taken the step in a moment of pique, he had not regretted it; for he was very fond and proud of his wife. But he was also very fond and proud of Drake, and was extremely pleased when Lady Angleford had told him that she had met Drake, and was going to ask him to dinner.
"Oh, all right," he had said. "I shall be very glad to see him—though he's an obstinate young mule. I think you'll like him."
"I do like him very much indeed," she had said. "He is so handsome—how very like he is to you!—and he's not a bit stand-offish and superior, like most Englishmen."