“I may be able to give Sir Harry some little information about his estates. They are in good hands, and though naturally we in Lancashire would welcome amongst us the presence of so notable a landowner, the estate itself is well managed by his people.” Which was quite a pretty effort in tact from one unaware of Sir Harry’s misfortune, and puzzled by the laughter.
Whitworth snatched at the opportunity, meager as it was. “I will come with you to hear of it, Verners.” Then as he turned, a feeling that he was making a poor show of it tempted him to say, “Gentlemen, I heard you laugh. Next time we meet, next time I visit Almack’s, the laugh will be upon the other side. Godalming, will you wager on it?” He could issue that simulacrum of a challenge, at any rate. Men betted upon anything.
“A thousand guineas that you never come back,” suggested Godalming.
“A thousand that I am back—back, you understand me—in a month.”
“Agreed,” said Godalming. “I back Prinny’s resolution for a thousand for a month.”
“Shall we go, Mr. Verners?” said Sir Harry to the mystified squire, and “Gad, they’re betting on a weather-vane,” murmured Mr. Seccombe in the ear of his friend, Mr. Collinson.
CHAPTER V—SIR HARRY WOOS
TO know one’s duty and to do it are often different things. Sir Harry’s duty, as he knew, was to regard his wild oats as sown, to marry Dorothy, and to go home quietly to Lancashire. In London, he competed on equal terms with men far richer than himself at a pace disastrously too hot for his means, but the competition had been, socially, a triumph for him and to go back now of all times, when temporarily he was under a cloud, was a duty against which his pride fought hard.