Augusta said with a tinkle of laughter: "I doubt of Bab's considering that, my dear Vidal, once her affections have been engaged."
The Marquis reddened, but said: "The old man wouldn't countenance it. I wish you will not talk such rubbish! Come now, Audley! In my place, would you remove to England?"
"On my honour, no!" said the Colonel. He correctly guessed "the old man" to be the Duke of Avon, a gentleman of reputedly fiery temper, who was the Lady Barbara's grandfather, and lost very little time in finding Lord Harry Alastair again.
There was no more friendly youth to be found than Lord Harry. He was perfectly ready to tell the Colonel anything the Colonel wanted to know, and it needed only a casual question to set his tongue gaily wagging.
"Devil of a tartar, my grandfather," said Lord Harry. "Used to be a dead shot - daresay he still is, but he don't go about picking quarrels with people these days, of course. Killed his man in three duels before he met my grandmother. Those must have been good times to have lived in! But I believe he settled down more or less when he married. George is the living spit of what he used to be, if you can trust the portraits. Bab and Vidal take after my great-grandmother. She was red-haired, too, and French into the bargain. And her husband - my great-grandfather, that is - was the devil of a fellow!" He tossed off a glass of wine, and added, not without pride: "We're a shocking bad set, you know. All ride to the devil one way or another. As for Bab, she's as bad as any of us."
The Lady Barbara seemed, that evening, to be determined to prove the truth of this assertion. No folly was too extravagant for her to throw herself into; her flirtations shocked the respectable; the language she used gave offence to the pure-tongued; and when she crowned an evening of indiscretions by organising a table of hazard, and becoming, as she herself announced, badly dipped at it, it was felt that she had left nothing undone to set the town by the ears.
She was too busy at her hazard table to notice Colonel Audley's departure, nor did he attempt to interrupt her play to take his leave. But seven o'clock next morning found him cantering down the Allee Verte to meet a solitary horse-woman mounted on a grey hunter.
She saw him approaching, and reined in. When he reached her she was seated motionless in the saddle, awaiting him. He raised two fingers to his cocked hat. "Good morning! Are you in a quarrelsome humour today?" he asked.
She replied abruptly: "I did not expect to see you."
"We don't start for Ghent until noon."