“I will certainly do so, your Grace,” Liversedge responded with a bow. “But possibly you will excuse me for a few minutes while I cast my eye over the kitchen. I fancy you will be pleased with my way of serving woodcocks a la Tartar, but the menial at present presiding in the kitchen is not to be trusted with rare dishes. There is, moreover, the question of a sweet, which the presence of a lady at the board makes indispensable. I doubt whether the individual aforementioned has a mind fit to rise above damson tart and jelly, but I hope to contrive a Chantilly Basket which will not disgust her ladyship.”
He bowed again at the conclusion of this speech and sailed away without giving the Duke time to answer him. “If I must consort with rogues,” remarked Gideon, pouring out some sherry, “I own I like them to be in the grand manner. It’s my belief you’ll never be rid of this one, Adolphus.”
He was mistaken. When Liversedge presently returned to the library, it soon became evident that he had no desire to remain at Cheyney. He found the life there too circumscribed.
“Had it been your Grace’s principal residence, I might have been tempted to consider the propriety of establishing myself in some useful capacity,” he explained, with one of his airy gestures. “Although, I must add, servitude, however genteel in its nature, has little charm for me. It does not, if I may say so, offer sufficient scope for a man of my vision. Not that I would have your Grace think that it was with reluctance that I assumed the control of this establishment. On the contrary! I have the greatest regard for your Grace—indeed, I may say that I was much taken with you at the first moment of setting eyes on you!—and I have been happy to feel that I was being of service to you.”
“Before you succumb to this eloquence, Adolphus,” drawled Gideon, “I would remind you that this admirer of yours would have murdered you for a paltry sum.”
“There, sir,” instantly replied Liversedge, “I must join issue with you! For fifty thousand pounds I might have been able to overcome my natural repugnance to putting a period to his Grace’s life, but for a lesser sum I could not have brought myself to contemplate it. Those nobler instincts which even the basest of us have must have revolted.”
The Duke regarded him curiously, his chin in his hand. “Would you really have murdered me?” he asked.
“If,” said Mr. Liversedge, “I were to seek refuge in a lie, you, your Grace, would not believe me, and I should have debased myself to no purpose. I shall not seek to deceive you: for fifty thousand pounds I must have steeled myself, if not to perform the deed, at least to order its execution. I do not deny that it would have been a struggle, for I am not a man of violence, but I am inclined to think that the temptation would have been overmastering. A man of your wealth, sir, has no business to offer himself to be the prey of those less fortunately circumstanced, and that, you will allow, is precisely what you did. It was neither politic nor right, but I shall say no more on that head. Your Grace is young, and, when you came, incognito, into my orbit, you were—if I may say so without offence—shockingly green! I flatter myself that through my exertions you have gained in experience, and will not err again after that fashion.”
“You had better reward the fellow!” interpolated Gideon.
Mr. Liversedge was quite unabashed. “Captain Ware, though scarcely in sympathy with me, touches the very nub of the matter,” he said. “Consider, your Grace! If we are to balance our accounts, which of us is the gainer?”