“You'll feel better to-morrow, old man. The stitches hurt like the devil, don't they? Cheer up, old chap; I'm the one who needs encouragement. See what I have to face to-night. Good lord, there'll be three women, at least—maybe a dozen—begging, commanding me to tell all about that confounded shooting match, and I was getting along so nicely with her, too,” he concluded, dolefully.
“With the baroness? On such short acquaintance?”
“No, of course not. With Jane Oldham. I don't know how I'm going to square it with her, by jove, I don't. Say, I'll bet my head I bray in my sleep, don't I? That's the kind of an ass I am.”
When he looked listlessly into Quentin's room late that evening he wore the air of a martyr, but he was confident he had scored a triumph in diplomacy. Diplomacy in his estimation, was the dignified synonym for lying. For an hour he had lied like a trooper to three women; he left them struggling with the conviction that all the rest of the world lied and he alone told the truth. With the perspiration of despair on his brow, he had convinced them that there had been no real duel—just a trifling conflict, in which he, being a good Yankee, had come off with a moderate victory. Lady Jane believed; Lady Saxondale was more or less skeptical; while the Baroness, although graciously accepting his story as it came from his blundering lips, did not believe a word of it. His story of the “robbery” was told so readily and so graphically that it could not be doubted.
Like true women, Lady Saxondale and her sister, accompanied by their hostess and her brother, Colonel Denslow, seized the first favorable opportunity to call at the rooms of Mr. Quentin. They found him the next morning sitting up in a comfortable chair, the picture of desolation, notwithstanding the mighty efforts of Dickey Savage and the convivial millionaire. The arrival of the party put new life into the situation, and it was not long before Phil found his spirits soaring skyward.
“Tell me the truth about this awful duel,” commanded Lady Saxondale, after Dickey had collected the other members of the party about a table to which tall glasses with small stems were brought at his call.
“I'm afraid Dickey has been a bit too loquacious,” said he, smilingly.
“He fibs so wretchedly, you know. One could see he had been told what not to say. You can trust me, Phil,” she said, earnestly. And he told her all, from beginning to end. Not once did she interrupt, and but seldom did she allow horror to show itself in her clear, brave eyes.
“And she will go on and marry this man, Phil. I am afraid she cannot be convinced—or will not, I should say,” she said, slowly, at the end of the recital. “What a villain, what a coward he is!”
“But she must not be sacrificed, Frances! She must be saved. Good God, can't something be done to drag her from the clutches of that scoundrel?” he almost groaned.