"Escaped from the net!" his lordship said, sinking back into the deep chair he sat in, and staring at the uncouth messenger. "Escaped from the net! But the particulars, man, the particulars! How has it come about? Are the Government and their underlings a pack of fools and idiots that they let malignant traitors escape thus?"
"Very like, for all I know, or, for the matter of that, care. The captain's one of their underlings, as you call them, and I'm another. Perhaps we're fools and idiots."
"You are another, are you?" said his lordship, looking at him, "another, eh? Pray, sir, is that why you have dogged me into Cheshire and back again as you have done, for I have seen you often? Am I a suspected person that I am followed about thus? Am I, sir?"
"Very like," again replied this stolid individual. "Very like, though I know not. I received my orders at Dunstable to keep you in sight, and I kept you, that's----"
"Leave the room. Go out of my sight at once!" exclaimed Lord Fordingbridge, springing from his seat and advancing toward the man. "Go at once, or the ostler shall be sent for to throw you out. Go!"
When the man had departed, muttering that "fool, or idiot, or both, he'd done his duty, and he didn't care for any nobleman in England, Jacobite or Hanoverian, so long as he done that," the viscount gave himself up to the indulgence of one of those fits, or rather tempests, of passion, which, as a rule, he rarely allowed himself to indulge in, and cursed and swore heartily as he stamped up and down the room for half an hour.
"Everything goes wrong with me," he muttered, as he shook his fist in impotent rage at his own reflection in the great mirrors over the fireplace, "everything, everything! If that infernal captain had only gone to work as he should have done on the information I gave him, they would all have been lodged in gaol by now--two of them doomed to a certain death and the other to a long imprisonment or banishment to the colonies. And now they are fled--are free--safe, while I am far from safe since Elphinston is at large; and am suspected, too, it seems, since, forsooth, that chuckle-headed boor is set to follow me."
This latter thought was, perhaps, as unpleasant a one as any which rose to his mind, since if he were also suspected it might be the case that, while he had denounced the others, they--or probably Archibald Sholto alone--might have denounced him. And at this terrible thought he quaked with fear, for he knew what an array of charges might be brought. Nay, it was the very fear of those charges being brought, combined with his other fear of Elphinston wreaking vengeance on him for having deceived and stolen his promised wife, that had led to his betraying the three men who alone could denounce him. And now they were all free, instead of being in Newgate or the Tower, and he, it seemed, was as much suspected as they!
He tossed about his bed all night, made a wretched breakfast, and then set out for London, determined at all hazards to discover exactly what had happened, or perhaps to find out that nothing had happened. Yet as he went he mused on what his future course should be, and came to at least one determination.
"I will send her ladyship packing," he said, with a sardonic grin. "I have had enough of her and her airs and graces, and she may go to Elphinston or to the devil for aught I care. I have a surprise to spring upon her, a trump card, or, as the late Louis was said to call that card, 'La dernière piece d'or,' because it always won. And, by Heaven, I'll spring it without mercy!"