"Don't speak to me about Horatia!" cried the irate parent. "I ought to have shut her up with bread and water. I have spoilt her, and this is the outcome of it. And as for you—I can't think why you ever brought a Frenchman about the place!"
Before Tristram could reply to this thrust the Frenchman in question came hastily in, equipped, as was evident, for an immediate start, a cloak over his arm, his hat in his hand.
"I regret that I have to go at once—but at once!" he said to Tristram. "Ah! pardon, M. le Recteur, I did not observe you"—though the bound with which Mr. Grenville had quitted his chair must have rendered him hard to overlook.—"Excuse me that I take leave of my kind host. It seems," he went on, turning to that individual, "that the horses I have procured are old and slow, and that to catch the coach from Oxford I must start immediately. So, with a thousand apologies——"
"Understand, Sir," interrupted the Rector in high wrath, "that I will not entertain your proposal for an instant, and that I forbid you to come near my house!"
The Comte de la Roche-Guyon transferred his attention to the angry cleric. "Mais parfaitement, Monsieur," he responded with a bland little bow. "I should not dream of entering your house again until I have the consent of my father to the alliance. I go at once to Lulworth in the hope of obtaining that consent. It was not, indeed, what I should have wished, to speak to your daughter before approaching you, but, as I had the honour of telling you last night, Monsieur, I did seek to ask your permission first, but you were out, and time was short. Enfin, when I come again I trust it will be more en règle. Meanwhile, I am your humble servant." He made the Rector another, more formal, valedictory bow, and advanced upon Tristram.
"I know that I leave my cause in good hands," he said gracefully. "Cher ami, for that, as for your hospitality, I shall be your debtor for life. But you English do not like speeches, I know, and time presses..."
As much to prevent a second ebullition of Mr. Grenville's wrath as because time pressed the cher ami hastened with his guest from the room. A few last directions from himself, a smile or two from Armand, a shake of the hand, and the man who had so lightly taken his happiness from him was gone, confident, easy, and attractive to the last.
When Tristram came back into the dining-room the Rector was still standing thunderstruck on the hearth-rug.
"Well!" he ejaculated pregnantly, "for sheer impudence commend me to one of that nation!"
Tristram sat wearily down without replying to this cry of the heart, and there was silence, broken only by a sort of soliloquy on the Rector's part, on the blindness which had been his—and Tristram's.