Then they had stolen out on tiptoe, and in the stillness of the early morning shaken hands all round and separated, the Major remaining with them, and walking with Colonel Mellersh and Richard Linnell to their door.
“What a horror!” he said hoarsely. “I would not for the world have taken you two there had I known. Good-night—good-morning, I should say;” and he, too, said those words—perhaps originated the saying—“What a ghastly serenade!”
Nine days—they could spare no more in Saltinville, for it would have spoiled the season—nine days’ wonder, and then the news that a certain royal person was coming down, news blown by the trumpet of Fame with her attendants, raised up enough wind to sweep away the memory of the horror on the Parade.
“She was eighty if she was a day,” said Sir Matthew Bray: “and it was quite time the old wretch did die.”
“Nice way of speaking of a lady whose relative you are seeking to be,” said Sir Harry Payne. “Sweet old nymph. How do you make it fit, Matt?”
“Fit? Some scoundrel of a London tramp scaled the balcony, they say. Fine plunder, the rascal! All those diamonds.”
“Which she might have left her sister, and then perhaps they would have come to you, Matt.”
“Don’t talk stuff.”
“Stuff? Why, you are besieging the belle. But, I say, I have my own theory about that murder.”
“Eh, have you?” cried the great dragoon, staring open-mouthed.