Fletcher bowed and removed both himself and the tray. Three minutes later the door was opened again. Miss Challoner came in bearing the same tray. She set it down on the table by the bed, and handed his lordship a napkin. “I am sorry I cannot let you have your bottle of claret, sir,” she said. “But I think you won’t find my gruel so very bad. I am thought to make it tolerably well.”
There was a spark of anger in Vidal’s eyes. “You’re outside your rôle, ma’am,” he told her. “I don’t require either your solicitude or your gruel. Have the goodness to refrain in future from meddling in my concerns.”
Miss Challoner was not noticeably dashed. “Very well, sir, but will you not, to oblige me, at least taste my gruel?”
“No, ma’am, I will not.”
Miss Challoner picked the tray up again, with a small unhappy sigh. “I did not mean to offend you, my lord,” she said wistfully. “I thought, perhaps, that if I prepared it very carefully you would not be so unkind as to refuse even to partake of a spoonful.”
“Then you are wrong, ma’am,” replied his lordship icily.
“Yes,” Miss Challoner said rather sadly, “I see that I was. I suppose it was presumptuous of me. I am sorry, sir.”
She went slowly to the door. My lord said, in the voice of one goaded beyond endurance: “Oh, bring it back, girl — bring it back! I’ll swallow the brew if it will please you.”
Miss Challoner seemed to hesitate. “Yes, indeed, it would please me, but I do not at all desire to plague you with it.”
“For God’s sake let’s have no more words!” besought Vidal. “Give it to me, and have done!”