'Waiter, bring me a Bradshaw, or an A B C,' said Lord Hartfield.
He had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast, but he was ready to go off at once, supperless, if there were a train to carry him. Unluckily there was no train. The mail had started. Nothing till seven o'clock next morning.
'Eat your supper, old fellow,' said Maulevrier. 'After all, the danger may not be so desperate as I fancied this morning. Slander is the favourite amusement of the age we live in. We must allow a margin for exaggeration.'
'A very liberal margin,' answered Hartfield. 'No doubt the man who warned you meant honestly, but this scandal may have grown out of the merest trifles. The feebleness of the Masher's brain is only exceeded by the foulness of the Masher's tongue. I daresay this rumour about Lady Lesbia has its beginning and end among the Masher species.'
'I hope so, but—I have seen those two together—I met them at Victoria one evening after Goodwood. Old Kirkbank was shuffling on ahead, carrying Smithson with her, absorbing his attention by fussification about her carriage. Lesbia and that Cuban devil were in the rear. They looked as if they had all the world to themselves. Faust and Marguerite in the garden were not in it for the expression of intense absorbing feeling compared with those two. I'm not an intellectual party, but I know something of human nature, and I know when a man and woman are in love with each other. It is one of the things that never has been, that never can be hidden.'
'And you say this Montesma is a dangerous man?'
'Deadly.'
'Well, we must lose no time. When we are on the spot it will be easy to find out the truth; and it will be your duty, if there be danger, to warn Lesbia and her future husband.
'I would much rather shoot the Cuban,' said Maulevrier. 'I never knew much good come of a warning in such a case: it generally precipitates matters. If I could play écarté with him at the club, find him sporting an extra king, throw my cards in his face, and accept his challenge for an exchange of shots on the sands beyond Cherbourg—there would be something like satisfaction.'
'You say the man is a gambler?'