“Pooh, what can he do, pray?” said Miss Grantham scornfully. “To be sure, he flew into as black a temper as my own, and took no pains to conceal it from me. I was excessively glad to see him so angry! He said—about Ormskirk—Oh, if I were a man, to be able to call him out, and run him through, and through, and through!”
Lady Bellingham, who appeared quite shattered, said feebly that you could not run a man through three times. “At least, I don’t think so,” she added. “Of course, I never was present at a duel, but there are always seconds, you know, and they would be bound to stop you.”
“Nobody would stop me!” declared Miss Grantham bloodthirstily. “I would like to carve him into mincemeat!”
“Oh dear, I can’t think where you get such unladylike notions!” sighed her aunt. “I do trust that you did not say it?”
“No, I said that I thought I should make Adrian a famous wife. That made him angrier than ever. I thought he might very likely strangle me. However, he did not. He asked me what figure I set upon myself.”
Lady Bellingham showed a flicker of hope. “And what answer did you make to that, Deb?”
“I said I should be very green to accept less than twenty thousand!”
“Less than—My love, where are my smelling-salts? I do not feel at all the thing! Twenty thousand! It is a fortune! He must have thought you had taken leave of your senses!”
“Very likely, but he said he would pay me twenty thousand if I would release Adrian.”
Lady Bellingham sank back in her chair, holding the vinaigrette to her nose.