“Can this be accomplished without violence to the person of him whom we deem a Usurper?”
Only the narrowest observers could have detected the sneer round Malletort’s mouth, while he replied—
“Certainly, my lord!—certainly! With as little personal violence as is possible when armed men are fighting round a king in the dark! My lord, if you please, we will now pass on to a few trifling matters of finance, after which I need detain the meeting no longer.”
The meeting, as usual, was only too happy to be dissolved. In less than ten minutes hats and cloaks were assumed, reckonings paid, horses led out from the stable, and riders, with anxious hearts, diverging by twos and threes on their homeward tracks.
There was no question, however, about the cock-fight which was supposed to have called these gentlemen together.
Malletort, Florian, and Captain Bold remained in the Cedars. The two priests seemed anxious, thoughtful, and preoccupied; but the Captain’s eye twinkled with sly glances of triumphant vanity, and he appeared extremely self-satisfied, though a little fidgety, and anxious for his employer to leave the room.
CHAPTER LVIII
HORNS AND HOOFS
“There is nothing but the Declaration to be provided for now,” observed Malletort, after a pause. “You had better give it me back, Florian, even without Sir George’s name subscribed. He is a man of mettle, and will be in the saddle as soon as he hears steel and stirrup ring.”
Although the Abbé did not fail to observe how strange an alteration had to-day come over his young friend’s manner, he simply attributed it to the qualms of conscience which are often so embarrassing to beginners in the science of deception, but which, as far as his own experience served him, he had found invariably disappeared with a little practice. He never doubted that Florian was equally interested with himself in the success of their undertaking, though for different reasons. He attributed it to nervousness, anxiety, and a foolish hankering after Lady Hamilton, the wildness of the young priest’s dark eye—the fixed spot of colour in his cheek, lately so pale and wan—the resolute expression of his feminine mouth, denoting some desperate intention—and the general air of abstraction that showed as well unconsciousness of the present as recklessness of the future into which he seemed to project his whole being. The Abbé simply expected that Florian would place his hand in his bosom and bring out the roll of paper required. He was surprised, therefore, to receive no answer; and repeated, hastily, for he had still a press of business to get through—