"What I say," said Lord Ticehurst; "chaffin' about my not being able to do anything without asking you, and you being my dry-nurse, and all that kind of thing!"
"Ah, ha!" said Gilbert Lloyd; "you haven't dined with our friend Bobby Maitland for nothing! That's his stab, I'll swear. Now look here, Ticehurst, you've talked about our parting, and I never let a man threaten me twice. So part we will. We must wait over Doncaster, because there are some things coming off there in which we are mutually interested; but after that I'll square up all the accounts and hand over everything to you."
He looked bard at his pupil as he said these words, expecting that the announcement would evoke a burst of protestations and disavowals. But Lord Ticehurst merely said "Very well; all right;" and took up his candle and left the room.
[CHAPTER IV.]
Perplexity.
Lord Sandilands was looking and feeling ill and feeble, and was mainly occupied, as he hobbled across the not-magnificently-proportioned drawing-room of that most desirable lodging-house, with an unrivalled view of the Esplanade, in so putting down and moving his feet as to cause himself the least possible pain, when he came, leaning on the arm of his housekeeper, to meet Mrs. Bloxam and Miss Lambert. But he was a man of too quick perception at all times, and his mind had been dwelling of late with so much anxiety upon Gertrude and her interests, that he was additionally keen in remarking every incident in which she was concerned. As he put out his disengaged hand and took Gertrude's, he glanced from her face to that of the housekeeper, and back to hers again, and saw that each recognised the other.
"You know Mrs. Bush?" he asked, still holding Gertrude's hand in one of his, still leaning with the other on Mrs. Bush's arm.
"Mrs. Bush and I have met before," Gertrude answered calmly; "but she does not know my stage name. I am a singer, Mrs. Bush," she added; "and my stage name is Lambert."
"O, indeed, ma'am!" said Mrs. Bush, in a singularly unsympathetic voice, and with an expression which said pretty plainly that she did not think it signified much what the speaker called herself.--"Shall I put your lordship in the chair near the window?"
"Yes, yes," said Lord Sandilands testily; and then he added, with the perversity of age and illness, "and where did you know Miss Keith, Mrs. Bush?" He seated himself as he spoke, drew the skirts of his gray dressing-gown over his knees, and again looked from one to the other. Mrs. Bloxam, to whom the scene had absolutely no meaning, stood by in silence. Gertrude was very calm, very pale, and her eyes shone with a disdainful, defiant light, as they had shone on the fatal day of which this meeting so vividly reminded her. Mrs. Bush smiled, a dubious kind of smile, and rubbed her hands together very slowly and deliberately, as she answered: