“I hope so,” and Tony drew in a deep breath. “It would be a merciful relief to feel I had seen the last of him. Why in the name of all that’s wonderful are you afraid he has gone?”
“Because I wanted a statement and your letter from him,” said Appleby. “You see, you will have to tell Miss Wayne that story sooner or later.”
“Tell her!” said Tony blankly. “I’ll be shot if I do!”
“Then she’ll find out, and it will be considerably the worse for you.”
Now, Tony Palliser was a good-natured man, and had as yet never done anything actually dishonorable, but whenever it was possible he avoided a difficulty, which, because difficulties must now and then be grappled with, not infrequently involved him in a worse one. He lived for the present only, and was thereby sowing a crop of trouble which he would surely have to reap in the future.
“I don’t think it’s likely, and there is no reason why I should make unpleasantness—it wouldn’t be kind,” he said.
“You don’t know Violet yet. She is almost unmercifully particular, and now and then makes one feel very small and mean. It would hurt her horribly to know I’d been mixed up in the affair at all—and, the fact is, I don’t feel equal to telling her anything of that kind. Besides, I did kiss the girl, you see—and I don’t think Violet would understand what prompted me.”
“Still,” said Appleby dryly, “that story will have to be told.”
Just then one of the other men touched his shoulder and asked a question, while there are topics which when once left off are difficult to commence again; but Appleby fancied that Tony had made one incorrect statement. He felt, strange as it seemed, that he knew Violet Wayne better than her prospective husband did.
They drove on, and nothing of moment happened during the shooting, or at the lunch they were invited to at one of Palliser’s neighbor’s houses, though Tony, who seemed to have recovered his spirits, shot unusually well. He also bantered the beaters and keepers, and, though he was as generous as such men usually are, the largesses he distributed somewhat astonished the recipients. It was a bright day of early winter, with clear sunlight that took the edge off the faint frost; and most men with healthy tastes would have found the hours spent in the brown woods, where the beech leaves still hung in festoons about the lower boughs, invigorating, even if they had not just had a weight lifted off their minds. Tony made the most of them, and it was, perhaps, as well he did, for it was long before he passed another day as free from care again.