He smiled. "I have been twenty-three myself. Of course I know. You may believe me when I tell you that this doesn't signify. No, I know you cannot quite see how that may be true, but I pledge you my word it is."
She sighed. "How kind you are! You make me feel such a goose! How shall I prevail upon Perry to take me home? What shall I say to him?"
"Nothing. I am going to have a talk with him, and I think you will find him only too ready to take you home." He rose, and took out his card case, and, extracting a card, wrote something on the back of it with a pencil picked up from Harriet's escritoire. "I'll leeve this with your butler," he said. "It is just to inform Peregrine that I am coming to call on him after dinner tonight. You need not mention that you have seen me."
"Oh no! But he is sure to be going out," she said mournfully.
"Don't worry! He won't go out," replied the Colonel.
She looked doubtful, but it seemed that the Colonal knew what he was talking about, for Peregrine, the card with its curt message in his waistcoat pocket, retired after dinner to his study on the ground floor. Dinner had been an uncomfortable meal. When the servants were in the room a civil interchange of conversation had to be maintained; when they left it, Harriet sat with downcast eyes and a heavy heart, while Peregrine making a pretence of eating what had been put before him, wondered what Colonel Audley was going to say to him, and what he was to reply.
The Colonel, who had dined at the Duke's table, did not arrive until after nine o'clock, and by that time Peregrine had reached a state of acute discomfort .When the knock at last fell on the front door, he got up out of his chair and nervously straightened his cravat. When the Colonel was shown into the room, he way standing with his back to the empty fireplace, looking rather pale and feeling a trifle sick.
One glance at his visitor's face was enough to confirm his worst fears. This was going to be an extremely unpleasant interview. He wondered whether Audley would insist on satisfaction. He was not a coward, but the knowledge of having behaved vey shabbily towards Audley set him at a disadvantage, and made him hope very much that the affair was not going to culminate in a meeting outside the ramparts in the chill dawn.
He tried, from sheer nervousness, to carry the thing off with a high hand, advancing with a smile, and saying with as much heartiness as he could muster: "Well, Charles! How do you do?"
The Colonel ignored both the greeting and the outstretched hand. He laid his hat and gloves down on the table, saying in a voice that reminded Peregrine unpleasantly of Worth's: "What I have to say to you, Peregrine, will not take me long. I imagine you have a pretty fair notion why I am here."