'The fact of it is,' Redworth frowned and rose, 'I've done mischief. I had no right to mix myself in it. I'm seldom caught off my feet by an impulse; but I was. I took the fever from you.'
He squared his figure at the window, and looked up on a driving sky.
'Come, let's play open cards, Tom Redworth,' said Sir Lukin, leaving the table and joining his friend by the window. 'You moral men are doomed to be marrying men, always; and quite right. Not that one doesn't hear a roundabout thing or two about you: no harm. Very much the contrary:—as the world goes. But you're the man to marry a wife; and if I guess the lady, she's a sensible girl and won't be jealous. I 'd swear she only waits for asking.'
'Then you don't guess the lady,' said Redworth.
'Mary Paynham?'
The desperate half-laugh greeting the name convinced more than a dozen denials.
Sir Lukin kept edging round for a full view of the friend who shunned inspection. 'But is it?... can it be? it must be, after all!... why, of course it is! But the thing staring us in the face is just what we never see. Just the husband for her!—and she's the wife! Why, Diana Warwick 's the very woman, of course! I remember I used to think so before she was free to wed.'
'She is not of that opinion.' Redworth blew a heavy breath; and it should be chronicled as a sigh; but it was hugely masculine.
'Because you didn't attack, the moment she was free; that 's what upset my calculations,' the sagacious gentleman continued, for a vindication of his acuteness: then seizing the reply: 'Refuses? you don't mean to say you're the man to take a refusal? and from a green widow in the blush? Did you see her cheeks when she was peeping at the letter in her hand? She colours at half a word—takes the lift of a finger for Hymen coming. And lots of fellows are after her; I know it from Emmy. But you're not the man to be refused. You're her friend—her champion. That woman Fryar-Gunnett would have it you were the favoured lover, and sneered at my talk of old friendship. Women are always down dead on the facts; can't put them off a scent!'
'There's the mischief!' Redworth blew again. 'I had no right to be championing Mrs. Warwick's name. Or the world won't give it, at all events. I'm a blundering donkey. Yes, she wishes to keep her liberty. And, upon my soul, I'm in love with everything she wishes! I've got the habit.'