She began to draw on her gloves. “How odious it is in you always to be so precisely right! Do your friends in general feel themselves to be remarkably foolish when they are with you?”
“As I am fortunate in having a good many friends, I believe not,” he replied gravely.
She laughed, and rose to her feet. As she did so, a bell pealed vigorously, as though pulled by a very urgent hand. It startled her, and she turned her eyes toward Carlyon in a look of dismayed inquiry. He had risen when she did, and he moved toward the door, saying, “That is doubtless my cousin. You will not wish to meet him. Do not be alarmed! I will not let him come into this room.”
“It is his own house, after all!” she said, amused. “I suppose he will not eat me!”
“Unlikely, I think. But he will probably be drunk, and I should be loath to subject you to any more annoyance than you have already suffered.”
The servant must have been nearer at hand than either of them knew, for before Carlyon could reach the door voices were heard in the hall, a hasty footstep sounded, and a tall, slender young gentleman fairly burst into the room, exclaiming in accents of heartfelt relief, “Oh, Ned, thank God you are here! I had nearly rid home, only that Hitchin told me in the very nick of time that you had driven over here! I am in the devil of a pucker! In fact, I don’t know what’s to be done, and I thought I had best come to you at once, even if you are not quite pleased with me!”
One glance at this fair-headed, fresh-faced youth, with his open blue eyes and tanned cheeks, had been enough to convince Miss Rochdale that whoever else he might be, he was not Carlyon’s dissolute cousin. A second glance was needed to enable her to discern an indefinable likeness in him to Carlyon, for it was not marked. He was plainly in considerable agitation, and he looked more than a little scared. Her experience of Carlyon, brief as it was, prevented her from feeling any surprise at his damping response to the young man’s impetuous speech.
“Yes, certainly it was the best thing to do,” he said. “But I cannot believe there is any occasion for all this commotion, Nicky. What have you been doing?”
His young brother heaved a large sigh, and smiled blindingly at him. “Oh, Ned, you always make a fellow feel there is nothing so desperately bad after all! But indeed there is! I’m excessively sorry, but I have killed Eustace Cheviot!”