"The deuce you didn't! Why, where did you dine, then?"
"At the hotel at Hastings, with Bobby Maitland and that young fellow he's always about with now--'Haystacks.'"
"I know," growled Gilbert. He hated Maitland, and half-despised him, as men do their unsuccessful rivals. "What on earth made you dine with them?"
"Well, I don't know," said the earl, blushing a little, in spite of vigorous attempts to prevent it and look unconcerned. "I--I had stopped later there than I intended at Hardriggs, and I thought you would have dined, and so I put up at Hastings, and those fellows saw me and asked me to dinner."
"And you went, deuced Samaritan-like and benevolent, and all that, I declare! That fellow Stackborough will be set up for life; there will be no holding him, now that he has once dined in company with a real live earl."
"Well, I don't know; Mr. Stackborough seemed to me to behave like a gentleman."
"O yes; but you like a fellow who bows down before you, Etchingham, we all know that; and it's natural enough. However, that's neither here nor there. What about the object of your visit to Hardriggs? You saw the young lady?"
"Yes, I saw her."
"And you carried out your intention?"
"What intention?" asked Lord Ticehurst, summoning up courage, and looking his friend full in the face. And then Gilbert knew for certain, what he had decidedly anticipated, that Lord Ticehurst had been rejected by Gertrude.