“No, you must not! I’ll settle Gil! Deserves to be called out himself for frightening you like this!”
“Oh, no, pray don’t do that, George!” she said hastily.
“Wouldn’t be any use if I did: there’s no getting Gil out at all. But you know, Kitten, I do think you should have known I wouldn’t hurt Sherry!”
“To tell you the truth,” she confided. “I did not think so, until Gil and Ferdy came to see me. But how odious it was of you to lead them to think you meant to kill him! You are quite abominable, George, you know you are!”
He admitted it, but pleaded that Gil and Ferdy had been in such a pucker that he could not help himself. Hero laughed at this; he escorted her out to her barouche, and they parted on the best of terms. Hero drove back to Half Moon Street, and George sent round a note to Mr Ringwood’s lodging, desiring him to stop making a cake of himself. Mr Ringwood showed this cryptic missive to Mr Fakenham, and both gentlemen came to the conclusion that whatever had been the outcome of Miss Milborne’s intervention George had no intention of killing Sherry on the morrow.
Sherry, meanwhile, had been spending a singularly depressing morning with his lawyer. He had been making his Will, a task that engendered in him such a mood of melancholy that he dispatched a note to Sir Montagu Revesby, excusing himself from making one of a card party that evening, and would have spent the evening by his own fireside had it not occurred to him that such tame behaviour might be thought to augur a disinclination (to put it no higher) to meet Lord Wrotham upon the morrow. So instead of indulging his gloomy reflections in his wife’s drawing-room he took her to the theatre, and, since the piece was a lively one, contrived to be tolerably amused. Hero enjoyed herself hugely, a circumstance which led his lordship to suppose that she could not be aware of his assignation at Westbourn Green. He naturally would not have dreamed of mentioning such a matter to her, but he could not help thinking that it might come as a severe shock to her if his lifeless corpse were to be borne into the house just as she was sitting down to breakfast, so he tried to drop her a hint.
“You know, Kitten,” he said, outside her chamber door, “if anything were to happen to me at any time — mind you, I don’t say anything will, but you never know! — well, what I mean is, I’ve made all the proper provisions, and — and no strings tied to ’em, so that you’ll be able to marry again, if you choose.”
“I never, never should!” Hero said, holding his hand very tightly.
“No reason why you shouldn’t. Only don’t have George, brat! He wouldn’t suit you at all!”
“Sherry, don’t!” she begged. “Nothing will happen to you!”