“Oh, quite a trifling one, my dear fellow! It is merely that I find myself obliged to go to London on a matter of stern necessity tomorrow—my new coat, you know: it sags across the shoulders: the most lamentable business!—and it occurred to me that you might wish to charge me with a commission.”
“Why, that is very good of you, Basil, but I believe I need not trouble you. I expect to leave this place almost any day now.”
“Oh?” The Beau regarded him thoughtfully. “I infer then that Eustacie is also leaving this place?”
Sir Tristram replied curtly: “I believe so. Shall you be in London for many days? Do you mean to return here?”
“Why, yes, I think so. I shall remain in town for a night only, I trust. I have given the servants leave to absent themselves for no longer. Ah, and that reminds me, Tristram! I wish you will desire that fellow—now, what is the name of Sylvester’s carpenter? Oh, Johnson!—yes, I wish you will desire him to call at the Dower House some time. My man tells me the bolt is off one of the library windows. He might attend to it, perhaps.”
“Certainly,” said Shield impassively. But when his cousin presently went away, he looked after him with a faint smile on his lips, and said: “How very clumsy, to be sure!”
Ludovic, however, when the encounter was described to him on the following morning, exclaimed, with characteristic impetuosity: “Then tonight is our opportunity! We have gammoned the Beau!”
“He seems to have been equally fortunate,” said Shield dryly.
Ludovic cocked an intelligent eyebrow. “Now what might you mean by that?” he inquired.
“Not quite equally,” said Miss Thane, with a smile.