Mr Drelincourt seemed to shrink into his pillows. “I—I am at a loss to understand you, Marcus!”
“Would you like me to make my meaning even clearer?” inquired his lordship.
“Really, I—really, Marcus, this tone—! My wound—I must beg of you to leave me! I am in no fit state to pursue this conversation, which I protest I do not understand. My doctor is expected, moreover!”
“Don’t be alarmed, cousin,” said the Earl. “I shan’t try to improve this time on Pelham’s handiwork. But you should remember to render up thanks in your prayers for that wound, you know.” With which sweetly-spoken valediction he went out of the room, and quietly closed the door behind him.
Mr Drelincourt might have been slightly consoled had he known that his late opponent had come off very little better at the Earl’s hands.
Rule, visiting him earlier, had not much difficulty in getting the full story from Pelham, though the Viscount had tried at first to adhere to precisely the tale Mr Drelincourt told later. However, with those steady grey eyes looking into his, and that lazy voice requesting him to speak the truth, he had faltered, and ended by telling Rule just what happened. Rule listened in patently unadmiring silence, and at the end said: “Ah—am I expected to thank you for this heroic deed, Pelham?”
The Viscount, who was in the middle of his breakfast, fortified himself with a long draught of ale, and replied airily: “Well, I won’t deny I acted rashly, but I was a trifle in my cups, you know.”
“The thought of what you might have felt yourself compelled to do had you been more than a trifle in your cups I find singularly unnerving,” remarked the Earl.
“Damn it, Marcus, do you tell me you’d have had me pass it by?” demanded Pelham.
“Oh, hardly that!” said Rule. “But had you refrained from taking it up in public I should have been greatly in your debt.”