“I said, Thérèse, that I had kept a dozen gaming-houses. No other man alive would have dared. But I swayed them — I, Tremaine of Barham!” His admiration of the deed held him silent for a moment, but he went on. “They perceived that I could play the lackey and still keep my prestige. It is true! It is very true.”
My lady gasped. “And they condoned it? They supported you?”
“It was not for them to condone what Tremaine might choose to do,” said my lord, with hauteur. “They applaud me now. I achieve the impossible.”
“He is a great man,” my lady said to Prudence. “You must admit it.”
“Oh, I do, ma’am, believe me.”
My lord tapped the lid of his snuff-box with one polished finger-nail. “Even that large gentleman, that ponderous baronet, that sleepy-eyed Sir Anthony Fanshawe, who looked askance at me — even he concedes me admiration. I win all to my side. It could not be otherwise.”
“Indeed, sir, he said he had begun to conceive a liking for you,” nodded Prudence.
My lord accepted this with a gracious inclination of the head.
His daughter continued with a hint of seriousness in her tone. “Yet I think you would be well advised, sir, not to seek too great an intimacy with that same large gentleman.”
“My Prudence, it is he, and all the rest, shall seek intimacy with me,” his lordship said majestically.