Underwood said nothing for a moment. Then suddenly—"I wish you'd come and talk to me about it!" he cried. "Any time that you will come I'll shut out everybody else. I'll keep myself free—"
"My dear fellow," Walter said in a supercilious tone, "why should I make Sloebury pay the penalty, and banish your friends from you for my selfish advantage?" To remember the time when this man had taken notice of him and been his superior, gave him a sense of impatient indignation. "Besides, I don't know that there is anything to say."
"Oh, as you please," said Underwood; but when they passed each other, he turned back and laid a hand on Walter's sleeve. "I keep early hours now," he said. "After ten I am always free."
Lord Erradeen walked away, half-angry, half-amused, by the man's presumption, who, after all, was a nobody; but yet, he made a secret note in his mind, almost outside of his consciousness. After ten—It might, in the dreadful blank of those hours after ten at Sloebury (or even before ten for that matter), be a resource.
He had not gone very much further when he fell into another lion's mouth. But how wrong, how cruel, to apply such a phrase to the red and smiling mouth, fresh as the cherries in the song, of Miss Julia Herbert, on her way from the rectory where she paid her old aunt a daily visit, to the cottage in which she was her mother's stay and solace! She had been flirting a great deal in Walter's absence, no one could deny. A young Wynn, a relation on the other side of the house, had been staying there, on leave from his regiment, and on such an occasion what else was there to do? But young Wynn was gone, and his circumstances were not such as to have stood in competition for one moment with Lord Erradeen. As soon as she saw him, Julia began to smile and wave her hand. If there was a little sense of guilt in her, so much the more reason for even an excess of friendliness now. And perhaps there was in Walter a certain desire to let the little world about, which had insisted upon her little infidelities, perceive that she was as much under his influence as ever, as soon as he chose to appear. This was not the way in which the world regarded the matter, if Walter had known. Instead of looking at him as the conquering hero, who had but to show himself, the spectators said pityingly that Julia Herbert had got hold of poor Lord Erradeen again.
"Oh, Walter!" she cried; then changed her tone with a very pretty blush, and said, "I ought to have said Lord Erradeen; but it was the surprise. And so you have come home?"
"I have come back," he said, with a little emphasis.
"I see it all. Forgive me that I should be so silly—back, of course; that means a few days, that means you have come for your boxes, or to see your mother, or to know her wishes respecting the new furniture of the banqueting hall. Shall it be mediæval or renaissance? If you ask my advice——"
"I do; of course, I do. It is for that chiefly I am here."
"That is what I thought. Renaissance, then. There, you have my opinion—with plenty of cupids and good, fat garlands——"