[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
Lord Charles was too glad to gain Leycester's consent to leave town to care where they went, and to prevent all chance of Leycester's changing his mind, this stanch and constant friend went with him to his rooms and interviewed the patient Oliver.
"Go away, sir?" said that faithful and long-suffering individual. "I'm glad of it! His lordship—and you too, begging your pardon, my lord—ought to have gone long ago. It's been terrible hot work these last few weeks. I never knew his lordship so wild. And where are we going, my lord?"
That was the question. Leycester rendered no assistance whatever, beyond declaring that he would not go where there was a houseful of people. He had thrown himself into a chair, and sat moodily regarding the floor. Bellamy's sudden illness and prophetic words had given him a shock. He was quite ready to go anywhere, so that it was away from London, which had become hateful to him since the last hour.
Lord Charles lit a pipe, and Oliver mixed a soda-and-brandy for him, and they two talked it over in an undertone.
"I've got a little place in the Doone Valley, Devonshire, you know," said Lord Charles, talking to Oliver quite confidentially. "It's a mere box—just enough for ourselves, and we should have to rough it, rough it awfully. But there's plenty of game, and some fishing, and it's as wild as a March hare!"
"That's just what his lordship wants," said Oliver. "I know him so well, you see, my lord. I must say that I've taken the way we've been going on lately very serious; it isn't the money, that don't matter, my lord; and it isn't altogether the wildness, we've been wild before, my lord, you know."
Lord Charles grunted.
"But that was only in play like, and there is no harm in it; but this sort of thing that's being going on hasn't been play, and it ain't amused his lordship a bit; why he's more down than when we came up."
"That's so, Oliver," assented Lord Charles, gloomily.