Fok a full minute after he bad read this missive the Duke knew an impulse to wash his hands of the whole affair. Then a cold, unaccustomed rage took possession of him, and, as he raised his eyes from the letter in his hand, his valet was startled to see in them an expression so reminiscent of the late Duke in one of his rare fits of anger that he could almost have supposed that the Duke’s father and not himself stood before him.
The Duke crushed the letter into a ball, his mouth tightening. He glanced at Nettlebed, and spoke. “My chaise, and four good horses,” he said curtly.
Nettlebed knew that voice, though he had never heard it issuing from this Duke’s lips. He was frightened, but he felt himself bound by his love and duty to protest. “Now, your Grace,” he began, in a scolding tone.
A sudden flash of anger in the Duke’s frowning eyes silenced him. “You heard what I said!”
“Yes, your Grace,” said Nettlebed miserably.
“Do as I bid you, then! It is to be ready for me within twenty minutes. I am going round to Laura Place now. Call me a hackney!”
Devoutly trusting that Lady Harriet would be better able than himself to dissuade his master from undertaking whatever grim project he had in mind, Nettlebed said: “Yes, your Grace!” again, and hurried out of the room.
The Duke bade the hackney-coachman wait for him outside Lady Ampleforth’s house, and ran up the steps to the door. It was opened to him by the porter, who at once ushered him upstairs to the drawing-room, where he found the Dowager seated beside the fire, with her gloved hands clasped on the head of her ebony cane, a bonnet overpoweringly bedecked with curled ostrich plumes, tied over her improbable ringlets. At the writing-table in the window, Lady Harriet, also in walking-dress, sat agitatedly scribbling on a sheet of hot-pressed note-paper. When the Duke was announced, she turned quickly, half-rising from her chair, and exclaiming in a faint voice: “Oh, Gilly!”
“For heaven’s sake, girl!” snapped the Dowager. “Let us have no die-away airs, I beg of you! One would suppose the end of the world to be upon us! Well, Sale, you are come in a good hour! That fancy-piece of yours had found another fool to run mad over her blue eyes.”
“Gilly, I have been quite unworthy of your trust in me!” Harriet said, in a conscience-stricken tone. “I am so mortified, and I fear you will think I have been dreadfully to blame!”