“No, not for that,” Léonie replied. “I think — I think there is a billet for you from Monseigneur.”
The Marquis’s laugh held a note of recklessness. “Be sure. I have it in my pocket. Inform him, madame, that I shall wait upon him in the morning.”
There was real trouble in Léonie’s face. “Dominique, you do not seem to me to understand at all. Monseigneur is enraged. He says you must leave the country, and, oh, my dear one, I beg you not to anger him any more! You should wait on him at once.”
“Who told him?” Vidal answered. “You, Rupert?”
“Fiend seize you, do you take me for a tale-bearer? You young fool, he saw it!”
The frowning eyes stared at him. “What the devil do you mean?”
“You’d no sooner got clear of the place — and a pretty turmoil you left behind you, I can tell you — than in walks Avon with Hugh Davenant.” Lord Rupert, apparently overcome by the recollection, mopped his brow with his fine lace handkerchief.
“What, at five o’clock in the morning?” demanded the Marquis.
“It wasn’t as much as that, not but what I thought myself ’twas the wine got into my head when I clapped eyes on him. He’d been at Old White’s all night, d’ye see, playing pharaoh, and the devil put it into his head to call in at Timothy’s, to see what sort of a hell it was that his precious son had honoured with his patronage. ‘And I perceive,’ said he, ‘that it is indeed something beyond the common.’ Now I put it to you, Vidal, isn’t it Avon all over to walk in pat like that?”
The frown was lifting. A gleam shone in the Marquis’s eyes. “Of course it was inevitable. Tell me it all.”