“Indeed, I wish I might!” he said. “I am very sorry to leave you in such a place. Were you fond of my—of Mr. Ware?”
“Oh, yes!” she replied, a soft glow in her eyes. “He was a very pretty-behaved gentleman, and when we were married he said I should have jewels, and a purple silk gown.”
The thought that his young cousin had wounded anyone so young and so beautiful had been troubling the Duke, but this artless speech considerably allayed his qualms. He smiled, and, colouring a little, said: “Forgive me—I have very little money in my pocket, but if your heart is set upon a silk gown—I do not know about such matters, but will you take this bill and buy yourself what you like?”
He had been half afraid that she might be offended, but she smiled in a dazzling way at him, and accepted the note he was holding out. “Thank you!” she said. “I had never any money to spend of my own before! I think you are quite as handsome as Mr. Ware!”
He laughed. “No, no, that is flattery, I fear! But I must not stay! Goodbye! Pray do not let your uncle use you again as he has done!”
He caught up his hat from the table, cast a final glance at Mr. Liversedge, who was beginning to recover his complexion, and went swiftly out of the room, and down the stairs. Belinda sighed regretfully, and looked in a doubtful way at her guardian. In a few more moments he groaned, and opened his eyes. They were blurred at first, but they cleared gradually. He put a hand first to his cracked skull, and then, instinctively, to his inner pocket. Then he groaned again, and enunciated thickly: “Lost!”
Belinda, a kind-hearted girl, perceiving that he was striving to pick himself up, helped him into a chair. “Your head is broke,” she informed him.
“I know that!” said Mr. Liversedge, tenderly feeling his skull. “That I should have been floored by a greenhorn! For God’s sake, girl, don’t stand there with your mouth half-cocked! Fetch me the brandy-bottle from the cupboard! Why did you not call Joe, silly wench? Five thousand pounds gone in the flash of an eye!”
Belinda brought him the brandy, and he recruited his strength by a generous pull at the bottle. His colour was by now much more healthy, but his spirits were sadly overborne.
“Done by a gudgeon!” he said gloomily. “Done by a miserable, undersized sapskull that has no more wits than to talk of marriage to the first pretty wench he meets! I was never more betwattled in my life! If I could but get my hands on your precious Mr. Matthew Ware—!”