“I said that so far as we could ascertain nothing had been stolen,” replied Carlyon.
“I wonder what he will do next!” John said.
“He informs me that he must return to London in the morning, but will be in Sussex again to attend the funeral. Upon which occasion,” Carlyon added, taking a pinch of snuff, “he will put up for the night at Highnoons.”
“Good God, Ned, I begin to believe you may have been right!”
“Yes, I can see you do,” said Carlyon. “But I begin to think I may have been wrong!”
Chapter XII
When he reappeared, in time for dinner, Lord Bedlington seemed to have shaken off his petulance. He sighed heavily from time to time and twice was obliged to wipe his eyes, but his hosts were gratified to observe that his bereavement had not affected his appetite. He partook lavishly of every dish and was so much moved by the excellence of the Davenport fowls, stuffed, parboiled, and stewed in butter, that he sent a complimentary message to the cook and congratulated Carlyon on having acquired such a treasure. By the time he had worked his way from the Hessian soup and ragout which began the repast through a baked carp dressed in the Portuguese way, some beefsteaks with oyster sauce, the fowls, and a floating island, with a fruit pie as a remove, he was so far reconciled to his nephew’s death as to be able to recount three of the latest good stories circulating town and to confide to Carlyon as he ecstatically savored the bouquet of the port, that he really could not agree with his old friend Brummell in deeming it a wine only fit for the lower orders to drink. He certainly drank a great many glasses of it, but whatever hopes John might have cherished of his tongue’s being loosened soon vanished. My Lord Bedlington had not kept company with the Regent for years without acquiring a hard head and the digestion of an ostrich. Mellow he might become, and indiscreet stories he certainly told, but not his worst enemy would have accused him of being foxed.
When he could at last be parted from the decanters Carlyon took him off to his library, firmly excluding John by saying that he knew he had letters he wished to write. John made a face at him but bowed to this decree and went off to kick his heels in one of the saloons.
After commenting on the comfort of a log fire, the luxury of the chair he was sitting in, and the superlative qualities of the brandy he was rolling round his palate, his lordship seemed to bethink him of his nephew again and to recall the sad circumstance which had brought him into Sussex. He very handsomely owned that he believed Carlyon had acted always with the best of intentions, and even confessed that his own partiality for his dear brother’s only son might have made him overlenient toward faults in Eustace which he perceived as clearly as anyone could wish. He blamed the most of them on the bad company which Eustace had kept, and, lowering his tone to a confidential note, asked Carlyon if he had any reason to fear that Eustace might have been in some worse scrape than any of them suspected.
“I have sometimes wondered whence he obtained the means to live as expensively as he did,” responded Carlyon, in his level voice,