"When I came upon the scene it was Auntie who was using violent and insulting language to the unwashed foreigner," Violet remarked demurely.
"Silence, minx," the old lady retorted. "I found the maid, Louise Aubin, in tears in the shrubbery walk, with the creature bullying and threatening her. She explained that the fellow, who is one of the onion-sellers from a French lugger recently arrived at Exmouth full of similar vermin, knew her at her home in Normandy, and was, in fact, her lover there. On discovering her here by accident while disposing of his wares, he wanted to renew the old relations, and has been hanging about for the last month with that intention. He has found out that during the last week Louise has been coquetting with some summer visitor staying in the town. She did not mention this second Lothario's name, but I gathered that he was putting up at the Plume Hotel."
"Ah!" said Nugent, who had been listening politely, "that does not tell us much, for I was informed this morning that the Plume is full to overflowing just now. Well, dear lady, I cannot presume to criticise your drastic measures. It seems to me to depend on Mademoiselle Aubin's inclinations. If she prefers the Frenchman, you have acted somewhat severely; if the gentleman at the Plume is the favoured swain, you have played the good mistress in protecting your servant from a nuisance."
Aunt Sarah, quaintly valuing the opinion of the man she disliked, nodded reflectively. "I'll find out which she likes best," she said. "It won't be the foreigner, I think, she being a girl of sense. She'd be as silly as Violet would have been if she'd accepted that blackamoor who had the impudence to propose to her at the beginning of the London season."
Montague Maynard let off one of his mighty bellows. "That was cheek if you like," he said, "though my little girl very soon sent him off with a flea in his ear. But you are forgetting, Aunt Sarah, that the boot was on the other leg in the case that made the Maharajah of Sindkhote the laughing-stock of London. The onion-seller is a compatriot of his inamorata. By the way, Nugent—you were pretty thick with his Highness—how did he take his knock-out?"
Travers Nugent looked across the table at Leslie Chermside through the wealth of hot-house flowers, pondering his reply with greater deliberation than it seemed to demand.
"As you know," he said at length, "the Maharajah left England within a few days of the ball at Brabazon House, where I understood that his discomfiture took place. I saw very little of him in the interval. Like all men worthy of the name who have set out to win a great prize and have met with failure, he was not one to admit defeat."
"Hear that, Vi?" said the screw manufacturer, rising. "His Highness means to come back and have another try next season. There'll be a chance for you to be the pride of the harem yet, if you choose to think better of it."
Violet's laugh, as she also rose to join in the general movement, rang out merrily, proving how lightly she had treated Bhagwan's wooing—how little she realized the smouldering danger that lurked for her in the steamer at Portland, lying ready to snatch her from peaceful Ottermouth to undreamed of horrors in the unspeakable East.
"I hope he won't trouble," she said lightly. "I let him down easy last time, but if it occurs again I shall have to be rude."