“I was on the ground when that incident occurred. I’m sorry the clubs got hold of it. It’s a confounded shame.”
Hobhouse spoke explosively. Lord Jersey’s shrewd deep-set eyes gathered interest, and Sheridan paused with a pinch of snuff in transit.
“It happened one sunrise, when we were camped on the sea-beach just outside Missolonghi. That is a Greek town held by the Turks, who keep its Christian citizens in terror of their lives. The girl in the case was a Greek by birth, but her father was a renegado, so she came under Moslem law.”
“I presume she was handsome,” drawled Lamb caustically. “I credit Gordon with good taste in femininity, at least.”
Hobhouse flushed, but kept his temper.
“It’s nonsense,” he went on,—“the story that it was any affair of his own. There was a young Arab-looking ensign who had fallen in with us, named Trevanion—he had deserted from an English sloop-of-the-line at Bombay. He had disappeared the night before, and we had concluded then it was for some petticoat deviltry he’d been into. I didn’t like the fellow from the start, but Gordon wouldn’t give an unlucky footpad the cold shoulder.”
Sheridan chuckled. “That’s Gordon! I remember he had an old hag of a fire-lighter at his rooms here—Mrs. Muhl. I asked him once why he ever brought her from Newstead. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘no one else will have the poor old devil.’”
“Come, come,” put in Lamb, waspishly. “Let’s hear the new version; we’ve had Petersham’s.”
“We had seen Trevanion talking to the girl,” Hobhouse continued, “in her father’s shop in the bazaar. We didn’t know, of course, when we saw the procession, whom the Turkish scoundrels were going to drown. I didn’t even guess what it was all about till Gordon shouted to me. His pistol was out before you could wink, and in another minute he had the fat leader by the throat.”
“With Mr. Hobhouse close behind him,” suggested the earl.