“Lord, I was so rattled, I don’t know what happened. There was young Comyn holding a napkin to the wound you’d blown through Quarles’s chest, and someone splashing water about, and Wraxall shouting for the porter to run for a surgeon, and the rest of us in the devil of a fluster, and all at once I saw Avon standing in the doorway with his glass held up to his eye, and Davenant gaping beside him. Well, you know how it is when your father is about. There was an end to the noise; everyone was watching Avon, save Comyn — I’d say that lad is a cool hand — who went on staunching the blood as calm as you please. If you ask me, Avon saw the whole at a glance, but he chose to look all round, mighty bland, and then down at Quarles. Then he says to Davenant: ‘I was informed, my dear Hugh, that Timothy’s was unlike other hells. And I perceive,’ says he — but I told you that bit. Of course, if I’d had my wits about me, I’d have left by the window, but I don’t deny I had a deal of champagne in me. Well, your father turned his infernal quizzing-glass towards me. I was waiting for that. ‘I suppose,’ says he, ‘I need not ask where is my son.’” Lord Rupert shook his head wisely. “Y’know, he’s devilish acute, Vidal; you must grant him that.”
“I do,” said his lordship, with the ghost of a laugh. “Go on, what next? I wish I had seen all this.”
“Do you, begad?” said his uncle. “You might have had my place for the asking. Well, I said you’d gone. Young Comyn took it up in that finicky voice of his. ‘I apprehend, sir,’ says he, that his lordship is by now upon the road to Newmarket.’ Avon turns his glass on him at that. ‘Indeed!’ says he, devilish polite. ‘I fear my son has untidy habits. This gentleman’ — and he points his quizzing-glass at Quarles — ‘this gentleman — I think unknown to me — is no doubt his latest victim?’ I can’t give you his tone, but you know how he says things like that, Vidal.”
“None better. Oh, but I make him my compliments. He comes off with the honours. Did he make my apologies?”
“Well, now you mention it, I believe he did,” said Rupert. “But he divided the honours with that Comyn lad. We’d all lost our tongues. But Comyn says — which I thought handsome of him — ‘As to that, sir, the late affair was in a sort forced upon his lordship. I believe, sir, no man could swallow what was said, though I am bound to confess that neither of the principals was sober.’ And I thought to myself, well, you must be damned sober, my lad, to get all that out without so much as a stammer.”
The Marquis’s face showed his interest. “Said that, did he? Mighty kind of him.” He shrugged, half smiling. “Or mighty clever.”
Léonie, who had been gazing into the fire, raised her head at that. “Why was it clever?”
“Madame, I spoke a thought aloud.” He looked at the clock again. “I can’t stay longer. Tell my father I will wait on him in the morning. To-night I have an engagement I can’t break.”
“Dominique, don’t you understand that if that man dies, you must not be in England?” Léonie cried. “Monseigneur says that this time there will be trouble. It has happened too often.”
“So I’m to make off like a scared mongrel, eh? I think not!” He bent over her hand for a moment. “Pray do not show that anxious face to the world, maman; it accords very ill with our dignity.”