"Are you serious?" said the marine store dealer, addressing Carlini.
"Quite," said the Italian, with a scornful look: "your friend has made some blunder, Mr. Bowes. His excellency, my master, has got cousins in London who have known him from his birth; and, do what you will, you cannot make him out anything but what he is. So, as this blackguard is going himself, you say, to Lady Fleetwood, the day after to-morrow, you can let him go. He'll only get himself into a scrape, and nobody else."
"Well, I've only told you what he told me," said Mingy Bowes; "but I don't think he told me the whole, and I did not see the inside of the book that he burned."
"Stop a bit," said Joshua Brown: "at what hour did you say he was to be there?"
"At twelve o'clock," answered the marine store dealer.
"I was to go with him to introduce him; but I thought I would just come here and see the colonel myself, to have a little deal with him if possible in the first place."
"It is well you did not see him," replied Carlini; "for, depend upon it, he would have thrown you out of the window. He's not a man to be frightened, I can tell you."
"I should think not," said Joshua Brown, with a laugh; "but now, Mr. Bowes, as all things are clear, and as we understand each other, I have nothing more to say, only that you must not go out of town till I tell you; and you must come and see me to-morrow morning at ten o'clock."
Mingy Bowes promised.
"I am very punctual," said the pedlar, with a meaning look; "and, as I shall certainly want to speak with you, if you don't come I must look for you, and get people to help me."