“I’ll be damned if I’ll be put in any cellar!” said Ludovic. “I’ll be off as soon as I can stand on my feet.”
“No, you will not,” said Eustacie. “I have quite decided that you must stop being a free trader and become instead Lord Lavenham.”
“That seems to me a most excellent idea,” remarked Miss Thane. “I suppose it will be quite easy?”
“If Sylvester’s dead, I am Lord Lavenham, but it don’t help me. I can’t stay in England.”
“But we are going to discover who it was who killed that man whose name I cannot remember,” explained Eustacie.
“Oh, are we?” said Ludovic. “I’m agreeable, but how are we going to set about it?”
“Well, I do not know yet, but we shall arrange a plan, and I think perhaps Miss Thane might be very useful, because she seems to me to be a person of large ideas, and when it is shown to her that she holds your life in her hands, she will be interested, and wish to assist us.”
“Do I really hold his life in my hands?” inquired Miss Thane. “If that’s so, of course I’m much interested. I will certainly assist you. In fact, I wouldn’t be left out of this for the world.”
Ludovic moved on his pillows, and said with a grimace of pain: “You seem to know so much, ma’am, that you may as well know also that I am wanted by the Law for murder!”
“Are you?” said Miss Thane, gently removing one of the pillows. “How shocking! Do you think you could get a little sleep if we left you?”