“Well, yes, I suppose I did,” said Matthew wretchedly. “You know how it is when one writes a letter!”
“Did you write her letters?”
“Yes, I did, but I never thought—And she did not answer one of them!” said Matthew, on a note of ill-usage.
“Matt, has she many of your letters?”
“It isn’t she: it’s a fellow who says he is her guardian. He says he has half a dozen of my letters. I do not know how I came to write so many, for in general, you know, I am not much of a dab in that line! But she was so excessively beautiful—! You can have no notion, Gilly!”
“Where did you meet her? Not in London?”
“Oh, no! In the High! She was looking in at a shop-window, and there was a lady with her—well, I thought she was a lady, but when I came to know her better of course I saw that she was not quite the thing, but that didn’t signify, and she said she was her aunt, and her name was Mrs. Dovercourt, but I daresay it was not. Anyway, Belinda dropped her reticule, and of course I picked it up, and—and that is how it all began!”
The Duke, feeling a trifle bewildered by this not very clear account of his cousin’s entanglement, suggested that they should thrash the matter out in the privacy of his library at Sale House. Matthew agreed to this, but said with a heavy sigh that he did not see what could be done about it. “I won’t let you pay, Gilly, and that’s an end to it! It’s all very well to say you may draw what money you please, but what a flutter there would be if you drew such a sum as that! It would be bound to come to my uncle’s ears, and he would tell my father, and then I should have nothing to do but to jump into the river, and that would not answer, because I am a pretty strong swimmer, and I daresay I shouldn’t drown at all! Of course, if I were like you, and could afford to keep my own phaeton, or curricle, or some such thing, I could drive to the devil, and break my neck, but I should like to see anyone driving a job-horse and gig to the devil! Why, you couldn’t do it! Job-horses are all slugs! I suppose I could blow my brains out, but it would mean purchasing a good pistol, and I’m not too well-blunted at this present, and to tell you the truth, Gilly, I don’t above half fancy the idea.”
The Duke, realizing that Captain Ware’s punch had something to do with this despairing utterance, replied in soothing terms, agreeing that among his own many advantages must be ranked the means of putting a period to his life in an expensive way, and drew his young relative on towards Curzon Street. The walk did much to clear Mr. Ware’s clouded intellect, but nothing to lift his depression. When he entered Sale House in Gilly’s wake, he made ah effort to appear sprightly and at his ease, but achieved such ah alarming result that had the Duke’s upper servants had eyes to spare for anyone but their master they must have noticed it, and have wondered what could be in the wind. But in the event Borrowdale, Chigwell, and Nettlebed were far too much taken-up with conveying to his Grace by innuendo a sense of anxiety he had caused them to labour under all the evening to have any attention to spare for Mr. Matthew.
The Duke bore all the solicitude that met him with his usual patience, disclaiming any feeling of chill or of fatigue, and desired Borrowdale to bring wine and biscuits into the library. “And you need none of you wait up for me!” he added. “Leave a candle on the table, and I shall do very well.”