“Admirable!” murmured his lordship. “I am struck by the similitude of our ideas, Ravenscar. You must not suppose that this had not already occurred to me. Now, to be plain with you, I regard your entrance upon our little stage as providential—positively providential! It will, I trust, relieve me of the necessity of resorting to the use of a distasteful weapon. Instinct prompts me to believe that you have formed the intention of offering the divine Deborah money to relinquish her pretensions to the hand of your cousin.”
“Judging from the style of the establishment, her notions of an adequate recompense are not likely to jump with mine,” said Mr Ravenscar.
“But appearances are so often deceptive,” said his lordship sweetly. “The aunt—an admirable woman, of course!—is not, alas, blessed with those qualities which distinguish other ladies in the same profession. Her ideas, which are charmingly lavish, preclude the possibility of the house’s being run at a profit, in the vulgar phrase. In a word, my dear Ravenscar, her ladyship is badly dipped.”
“No doubt you are in a position to know?” said Mr Ravenscar.
“None better,” replied Ormskirk. “I hold a mortgage or the house, you see. And in one of those moments of generosity, with which you are doubtless familiar, I—ah—acquired some of the more pressing of her ladyship’s debts.”
“That,” said Mr Ravenscar, “is not a form of generosity with which I have ever yet been afflicted.”
“I regarded it in the light of an investment,” explained his lordship. “Speculative, of course, but not, I thought, without promise of a rich return.”
“If you hold bills of Lady Bellingham’s, you don’t appear to me to stand in need of any assistance from me,” said Mr Ravenscar bluntly. “Use ’em!”
A note of pain crept into his lordship’s smooth voice. “My dear fellow! I fear we are no longer seeing eye to eye Consider, if you please, for an instant! You will appreciate, am sure, the vast difference that lies between the surrender: from—shall we say gratitude?—and the surrender to—we shall be obliged to say force majeure.”
“In either event you stand in the position of a scoundrel,” retorted Mr Ravenscar. “I prefer the more direct approach.”