“He took you to that inn? Is it possible that he meant to keep you there?”
“Well, he could not help doing so,” explained Belinda. “Poor Uncle Swithin! he has so very little money left, and Mr. Mimms is his brother, so you see he does not have to pay him to stay there. And of course we was expecting Mr. Ware to send us a great sum of money, and then we might have been comfortable again. But Uncle Swithin says all is ruined, and it was my fault for not calling to Mr. Mimms to stop you when you went away. But he never told me I should do so!”
“Don’t you think,” he suggested gently, “that you will like just as well to go to your friend as to have a great sum of money?”
Belinda reflected, and shook her head. “No, for if I had the money I could also go to visit Maggie Street,” she said simply.
This was so unanswerable that the Duke abandoned the subject, together with a half-formed resolve to point out to Belinda the reprehensible nature of Mr. Liversedge’s attempts to extort money from undergraduates. Something told him that Belinda’s intelligence was not of the order that readily appreciated ethical considerations.
In a short time, Tom returned to the inn, his mission accomplished. If Mr. Rufford would step down to the George, he said, to confirm the arrangement he had made on his behalf, a chaise could be hired, and would be sent round to the White Horse as soon as it was needed.
The Duke was not very anxious to visit the George, where he had several times stopped on his way to his estates in Yorkshire, to change his horses, but he did not think that he had ever alighted there, and could only hope that he would not be recognized. He desired his protégés to pack their few belongings, and sallied forth, requesting Mrs. Appleby, whom he met at the foot of the stairs, to prepare his reckoning. Mrs. Appleby allowed him to see by her manner that he had sadly disappointed her; and the waiter, hovering in the background, plainly regarded him in the light of a hardened libertine.
In the event, no one whom he interviewed at the George showed the smallest sign of recognizing him. He thought the luck was miraculously with him, until it occurred to him, on his way back to the White Horse, that, had he wished to do it, he might have found it difficult to convince the landlord and the servants at the George that an unattended gentleman, staying at the White Horse and in need of a hired chaise, could possibly be his Grace the Duke of Sale. He reflected then that it was to be hoped he would have no occasion to prove his identity, since he had taken care to leave his visiting cards at Sale House, and had handed over to Gideon his seal ring.
When he reached the White Horse again, he found that although Belinda had packed her bandboxes, Tom was by no means ready to depart, having, in fact, made no attempt to stow away the articles of apparel procured for him into the carpet-bag which was all the Duke had been able to find in Baldock for the carriage of his effects. Tom had expended some part of the guinea the Duke had given him on the acquisition of a fascinating new toy, called, not without reason, Diabolo. He had already succeeded in breaking a water-bottle, and a cherished vase of unsurpassed hideousness which Mrs. Appleby stated had belonged to her husband’s grandfather and was quite irreplaceable. The Duke was greeted on his arrival with a strongly worded complaint from Mrs. Appleby, and a simple request from Belinda to buy her a Diabolo too. However, Tom, who found that he did not excel in manipulating the toy, said loftily that it was a stupid thing, and very handsomely made Belinda a present of it. But the Duke was obliged to do his packing for him, and by the time he had left Tom to strap up the carpet-bag, and had dealt with his own effects, and settled his reckoning with Mrs. Appleby, the hired chaise was at the door. He saw his charges into it, directed the post-boy to take them to the Sun Inn at Hitchin, and turned to take his leave of Mrs. Appleby.
“Mark my words, Mr. Rufford, sir,” she said bodingly, “you will live to regret it, for if ever I saw a light-skirt, which I never thought to soil my lips with such a word, I see one this day!”