“Before you left him, you mean,” growled the Earl. “What sort of sense was there in letting him fight a duel?—it could have been stopped in fifty different ways.”
“Yes, my lord, but I never suspicioned a word of it till he went off in the cab with them——”
The Earl held up a warning finger.
“Hush,” he said, “this is France, remember, and you are the foreigner here. Where is my son’s car?”
“In the garage at Folkestone, my lord.”
“Well, you had better cross by an early boat to-morrow and bring it here. You understand all the preliminaries, I suppose? Find out from the Customs people what deposit is necessary, and come to me for the money.”
So it happened that when Medenham was able to take his first drive in the open air, the Mercury awaited him and Cynthia at the door of the hotel. It positively sparkled in the sunlight; never was car more spick and span. The brasswork scintillated, each cylinder was rhythmical, and a microscope would not have revealed one speck of dust on body or upholstery.
On a day in July—for everybody agreed that not even a marriage should be allowed to interfere with the Scottish festival of St. Grouse—that same shining Mercury with the tonneau decorously cased in glass for the hour, drew up at the edge of a red carpet laid down from curb to stately porch of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and Dale turned a grinning face to the doorway when Viscount Medenham led his bride down the steps through a shower of rice and good wishes.
Wedding breakfasts and receptions are all “much of a muchness,” as the Mad Hatter said to another Alice, and it was not until the Mercury was speeding north by west to Scarland Towers, “lent to the happy pair for the honeymoon” while Betty took the children to recuperate at the seaside, that Cynthia felt she was really married.