She threw him a reproachful, outraged look, and replied: “Certainly I have not forgotten, but I do not speak of indelicate things, and I am very much emue to think that you could mention it to me.”
He apologized profusely, but with an ironical air which made her feel rather uncomfortable. Luckily an interruption occurred before he could ask any more awkward questions. Miss Thane and Sir Tristram came into the room. Sir Tristram wore an expression of long-suffering, but in Miss Thane’s eyes there peeped an irrepressible twinkle.
The quick, anguished glance thrown at him by Eustacie was enough to warn Shield that all was not well. He gave no sign of having noticed it, however, but waited for Miss Thane to come to the end of her eulogies and thanks. The Beau received these with smiling civility, and when they ceased, turned to his cousin, and said in a languid voice that he had been hearing more of her adventure from Eustacie. Sir Tristram quite unwittingly bore out the character bestowed on him by Eustacie by saying curtly that the sooner the adventure was forgotten the better it would be.
“You are too harsh, my dear Tristram,” said the Beau. “But we know how kind-hearted you are under your—er—severity.”
“Indeed!” said Shield, looking most forbidding.
“Yes, yes, I have heard all about Eustacie’s smuggler, and how you helped to protect him from the riding-officers. I have been much moved. A—a connection of Sylvester, I believe?”
Sir Tristram replied coolly: “Just so. I thought there would be less noise made over the affair if he were allowed to escape.”
“I expect you were right, my dear fellow. How quick of you to recognize one of Sylvester’s—ah, I must not offend Eustacie’s sensibilities again!—one of Sylvester’s relations.”
Sir Tristram was not in the least put out by this. He said: “Oh, I knew him at once! So would you have done. You remember Jem Sunning, don’t you?”
“Jem Sunning!” There was just the faintest suggestion of chagrin in the Beau’s voice. “Is that who it was? I thought he went to America.”