“That’s all very well,” objected Ludovic, “but what do you expect him to do?”
“I haven’t a notion,” said Shield calmly, “but I am reasonably certain that he will do something.”
“Tell me what you wish me to say!” begged Miss Thane.
Beau Lavenham was not kept waiting long in the parlour. In a very few minutes his cousins joined him there. He shot a quick, searching look at them under his lashes, and advanced, all smiles and civility. “My dear Eustacie—Tristram, too! You behold me on my way home from a most tedious, disagreeable sojourn in town. I could not resist the opportunity of paying a morning call upon you. I trust I do not come at an awkward time?”
“But no!” said Eustacie, opening her eyes at him. ‘Why should it be?”
Sir Tristram came over to the fire in a leisurely fashion, and stirred it with his foot. “Oh, so you’ve not yet been home, Basil?” he inquired.
“No, not yet,” replied the Beau. He put up his ornate quizzing-glass, and through it looked at Shield. “Why do you ask me so oddly, my dear fellow? Is anything amiss at the Dower House?”
“Something very much amiss, I am afraid,” said Shield. He waited for a moment, saw the flash of eagerness in the Beau’s eyes, and added: “One of your Jacobean chairs has been broken.”
There was a moment’s silence. The Beau let his glass fall, and replied in rather a mechanical voice: “A chair broken? Why, how is that?”
The door opened to admit Miss Thane. Until she had exclaimed at finding the Beau present, greeted him, inquired after his health, the condition of the roads, and the state of the weather in London, there was no opportunity of reverting to the original subject of conversation. But as soon as she paused for breath the Beau turned back to Shield, and said: “You were telling me something about one of my chairs being broken. I fear I don’t—”