However, in spite of the head-dress and the gleams of red that flashed from the ruthless orbs beneath it, he was able to assume an aspect of excellent indifference. The finished duplicity may not have deceived his old friend or it may have done so. At least the old lioness grew more couchant in her aspect. But the mouth was as resolute in its sarcasm as ever.
“Well, Caroline,” said Cheriton, amiably, “let us settle the thing one way or the other. It is becoming tedious.”
Perhaps Caroline thought so too. Or perhaps she thought she had made a reasonably good bargain, all things considered, and that she was not likely to do better. For there came a further accession of scorn to the grim old countenance, and for a moment the head-dress ceased its immodest gyrations.
“Take the girl and be damned,” said Caroline Crewkerne.
Cheriton bowed with ironical politeness. He had got his way, not of course that there was anything surprising in that. He had had it so often. Still there was a certain satisfaction in it, for it always seems a part of the essential fitness of things that one should get one’s way, no matter how much one is accustomed to getting it. He was also a little inclined to plume himself, as was too often the case with him, on his diplomacy. It was really an achievement to screw a cool three thousand a year out of the most avaricious old woman in England. Yet it may have been that he had only inserted that clause into the negotiations to give them a further spice. It had enabled him to pose as the prophet of justice, liberality, and other delectable things. He had never cared greatly about money, but that was no reason why he should not bait those who did care greatly about it when he was in need of a little private relaxation.
Cheriton went to bed and slept the sleep of the just. By the exercise of his talents he had got a charming countess on liberal terms. How the young fellows would envy him! His affectation of youth would now lose its point. Upon the day he married his young goddess he would resume his natural age, which was sixty-five. In his mind’s eye he could see himself walking down the aisle on the happy occasion with all the gravity of a pillar of the Government, of one eminent in council, looking if anything rather more than his years in order to score off the rising generation.
“He is so old, my dear!” he could hear the buzz of tongues. Yes, so old; what had happened to Youth and its vaunted pretensions?
Caroline Crewkerne went to bed, and she slept the sleep of the just also. All the same there is really no reason why she should have done so. For there was precious little justice in that old woman. She was well satisfied that she had won at cards, but in the matter of her niece she had a very decided feeling that that man Cheriton had overreached her. The clause of the three thousand pounds per annum took a good deal of the gilt off the gingerbread. Without that clause there would have been a certain amount of gilt upon it.
Cheriton, for all his coxcombry, was a pretty considerable parti, at whom the arrows of the worldly had been aimed for two generations. But in Caroline’s own phrase, “Cheriton was no fool.” In spite of his vanity and his fribbling he knew his way about the world. He was a cool hand. He marked his quarry and pursued it at his leisure, in his own impersonal and peculiar way, and never once had he been caught napping. Great would be the applause and the merriment when it became bruited about that this astute bird had actually been limed by the old fowler of Hill Street. And after all nobody need know about that three thousand pounds per annum.
Therefore both parties to this transaction slept the sleep of the just, and next morning had breakfast in their rooms. At half-past five a.m. the unconscious object of their negotiations was haled out of bed by her sister Muffin. And as the descent to the floor did not arouse her, she was beaten about the head with a pillow until that object had been attained. They spent incomparable hours among the dew on the slopes of Gwydr and his brethren. Jim Lascelles was with them. He piloted them among the rocks, and was of course prepared to save their lives if necessary.