Baldock was reached all too soon for his taste, and without the slightest sign of an intervention by Providence. Captain Ware reined in his horses in the middle of the broad street, let them drop to a walk, and said: “You may now direct me, Mr. Liversedge. Unless you would prefer me to enquire the way to the nearest magistrate? It is all one to me.”
Mr. Liversedge was irritated by this remark, and answered with some asperity: “Now that, sir, is a manifestly false observation! It is not all one to you—or would not be to a gentleman of the smallest sensibility! Nothing, I am persuaded, could be further from your wishes than to create a stir over this business! In fact, the more I think on it, the more convinced I become that you and your noble relatives will be very much in my debt if I contrive the affair without anyone’s being the wiser. Consider what must be the result if I compel you to call in the Law! Not only will his Grace—”
He stopped, for it was apparent to him that Captain Ware was not attending. The Captain, glancing idly at an approaching tilbury, had stiffened suddenly, and pulled his horses up dead. “Matt!” he thundered. The next instant he had perceived that Nettlebed was sitting beside his cousin in the tilbury, and he ejaculated: “Good God!”
Young Mr. Ware, on being hailed in such startling accents, jumped as though he had been shot, and dragged his horse to a standstill. “Gideon!” he gasped. “You here? Gideon, something has happened to Gilly! Something must have happened, because—oh, we can’t talk here, in the road!”
“Yes, something has indeed happened to Gilly,” replied his cousin. “But what the devil are you doing here, and what do you know about it?”
Mr. Ware looked extremely wretched, and said: “It is all my fault, and I wish I had never consented to let him—But how was I to guess—though I told him I knew something would happen to him if he persisted! And then, when Nettlebed came to Oxford, and told me—”
“I suspicioned Mr. Matthew had a hand in it,” said Nettlebed, with ghoulish satisfaction. “Sitting up till all hours, and keeping his Grace from his bed, the way he was, the very day before he went off! If I hadn’t been so set-about, I should have thought of Mr. Matthew sooner, no question!”
“I never asked him to do it, and I would not have!” Matthew said hotly. “He would go, in spite of all I could say!”
“Come to the George!” commanded Gideon. “I’d better get to the bottom of this before I do anything else. I suppose you’re in a scrape again!”
“Gideon, where is Gilly?” Matthew called after him urgently.