Eventually he became calmer, and after plunging his fervid body into a foot-bath, he showed himself once more in society, assuming an air of meretricious waggishness to conceal the worm that was busily cankering his internals, and so successful was he that Lord Jack was entirely deceived by his vis comica, and invited him to spend the Autumn up the country with his respectable parents.
Mr Bhosh accepted—but when he knew that Princess Petunia was also to be one of the amis de la maison, he was greatly concerned at the prospect of infallibly reviving her love by his propinquity, and thereby inflicting the cup of calamity on his best friend. Willingly would he have imparted the whole truth to his Lordship and counselled him to postpone the Princess's visit until he, himself, should have departed—but, ah me! with all his virtue he was not a Roman Palladium that he should resist the delight of philandery with the radiant queen of his soul. So he kept his tongue in his cheek.
However, when they met in the ancient and rural castle he constrained himself, in conversing with her, to enlarge enthusiastically upon the excellences of Lord Jack. "What a good, ripping, gentlemanly fellow he was, and how certain to make a best quality husband!" Princess Jones listened to these encomiums with tender sighing, while her soft large orbs rested on Mr Bhosh with ever-increasing admiration.
No one noticed how, after these elephantine efforts at self-denial, he would silently slip away and weep salt and bitter tears as he weltered dolefully on a doormat; nor was it perceived that the Princess herself was become thin as a weasel with disappointed love.
Being the ardent sportsman, Mr Bhosh sought to drown his sorrow with pleasures of the chase.
He would sally forth alone, with no other armament than a breechloading rifle, and endeavour to slay the wild rabbits which infested the Baronet's domains, and sometimes he had the good fortune to slaughter one or two. Or he would take a Rod and hooks and a few worms, and angle for salmons; or else he would stalk partridges, and once he even assisted in a foxhunt, when he easily outstripped all the dogs and singly confronted Master Reynard, who had turned to bay savagely at his nose. But Bindabun undauntedly descended from his horse, and, drawing his hunting dagger, so dismayed the beast by his determined and ferocious aspect that it turned its tail and fled into some other part of the country, which earned him the heartfelt thanks from his fellow Nimrods.
Naturally, such feats of arms as these only served to inflame the ardour of the Princess, to whom it was a constant wonderment that Mr Bhosh did never, even in the most roundabout style, allude to the fact that he had saved her life from perishing miserably on the pointed horn of an enraged cow.
She could not understand that the Native temperament is too sheepishly modest to flaunt its deeds of heroism.
Those who are au fait in knowledge of the world are aware that when there are combustibles concealed in any domestic interior, there is always a person sooner or later who will contrive to blow them off; and here, too, the Serpent of Mischief was waiting to step in with cloven hoof and play the very deuce.