“I’ll stay as long as I——”
“No, my good man, you will not; you will go to-night. I have ordered the carriage for the eleven-ten train to Leeds, where you can stay the night. Your man is packing your box.”
“I won’t go,” he growled, but his chest was heaving.
“Oh yes you will, if you have to be assisted into the carriage by two footmen.”
He pulled himself together, although it was evident that his nerves, subjected to a long and severe strain, were giving way, and that the foundations of his insolence were weakened by the position in which she had placed him. He said quite distinctly:
“And who’s going to feed this crowd?”
“My husband and myself; and I’ll trouble you for your bill.”
“It’s a damned big bill.”
“I think not. I have no concern with what you may have spent elsewhere. I shall ascertain exactly when my mother-in-law’s original income ceased and I know quite as well as you do what is spent here; so be careful you make no mistakes. Now go, my good man, and see that you make no fuss about it.”
The situation would unquestionably have been saved, for the man was confounded and humiliated, but at that moment Lord Barnstaple entered the room.