Could My Lady but have postponed her exit for a few brief moments she would have beheld Sir Percy, at a word in his ear from a footman, quit Lady Diana’s side with but the smallest ceremony, dash out into the vestibule, seize with a vice-like grip the man who stood there pale and trembling, and gasp out:
“At last! the letter, the letter?”
Grigson shook his head and got even whiter.
“No letter?” Percy says in a dazed way.
“Only your own, Sir Percy,” handing back the missive. “Her Ladyship was from home, Sir.”
“Well, what of that! you infernal, damned rascal, did I not command you seek her, if ’twere at the other end of the world!”
“Aye, Sir, and the quickest way of settin’ about findin’ Her Ladyship was for me to get back to town, Sir, as fast as the cursed beast I was cheated into hirin’, Sir, would fetch me.”
“Speak out, for God’s sake! Is Her Ladyship up in London?” asked Sir Percy, actually shaking with impatience and astonishment.
Grigson nods and without more ado proceeds to give an exact if somewhat rambling account of his entire experiences, from the moment he had quitted his master until the present.
’Twere idle to attempt to describe Sir Percy’s state of mind. Up to now there had ever lingered in his heart the hope, nay, one of those unconscious beliefs men have, that in the end Peggy would be his. This news that Grigson brought crushed every such thought from his brain, but put in its place such a hatred of the young man now tasting the sweets of hero-worship (in little), in the adjoining room, as caused his fingers to itch for his steel and t’other’s flesh to meet once more, and to the death.