Mr Merriot said haughtily — “You’re heated sir, and I believe excusably. I don’t heed what you say therefore. I have asked your pardon for a mistake — understandable, I contend — that I made.”
“Puppy!” snapped Mr Markham, and drank off the rest of the wine in the glass. It seemed to restore him. He got up unsteadily and his hot gaze swept round again. “Letty!” he shot out. “Where is the girl?”
“Dear sir, indeed you are not yourself yet!” Miss Merriot laid a soothing hand on his arm. “There is no girl here save myself.”
She was shaken off. “No girl, you say?” roared Mr Markham, and went blundering towards the room across the passage. “Letty!” he shouted. “Letty, I say! Hell and damnation, her cloak’s gone!” He came back, his face dark with rage and suspicion, and caught at Mr Merriot’s straight shoulder. “Out with it! Where is she? Where have you hidden her? You don’t trick me, my fine sir!”
Miss Merriot, hovering watchfully, cast herself between them, and clung to her brother. “No, no!” she cried. “No swords, I do beseech you. Sir, you are raving! There is no girl here that I have seen.”
Mr Merriot put his sister aside. “But wait!” he said slowly. “As I remember there was a lady in the room as I came in. A child with black hair. My sister was overwrought, sir, and maybe forgets. Yes, there was a lady.” He looked round as though he expected to see her lurking in some corner.
“Damme, it won’t serve!” cried out the infuriated Mr Markham, and went striding off to the door that led into the taproom, calling loudly for the landlord.
Mine host came quickly, with an uneasy look in his face. In answer to Mr Markham’s furious query he said nervously that in the scare of the fire someone had driven off with his worship’s chaise, and he doubted but that the lady was in it.
Mr Markham swung round to face Peter Merriot again, and there came a red light into his eyes, while his hand fumbled at his sword hilt. “Ah, you’re in this!” he snarled.
Mr Merriot paused in the act of taking snuff. “Your pardon, sir?” he asked in some surprise. “A lady gone off in your post-chaise, and myself in it? I don’t understand you, sir. Who is the lady, and why should she go off so? Why, it’s churlish of her, I protest.”