“Oddsbodikins!” ejaculated the squire. “Here ’s an upset, Clowes, to all our talk.”
“Ye’ll not be fool enough to let it make any difference,” growled the baron, his eyes resting on Mobray with a look that boded no good. “Ye’ll only increase your difficulties by holding to that old folly.”
“Nay, Clowes, Lambert Meredith ne’er broke his word to any man, and, God helping, he never will.”
With a real struggle, the commissary held his anger in check. “I’ll talk of this later,” he said, after a pause, “when I can speak less warmly than now I feel. As for ye, sir,” he said, facing Mobray, “I will endeavour—the favour ye have done shall not be forgotten.”
“Take what revenge you please, my Lord,” replied Mobray, his voice shaking a little none the less, “I have done what as a gentleman I was compelled to do, and am ready for the consequences, be they what they may.”
“A fit return for my lenience,” remarked Clowes to the squire after Sir Frederick had made his exit. “He has long owed me money, for which I have never pressed him, yet now he would have it that if I but ask payment, ’t is revenge.”
One result of Mobray’s outbreak was to give Janice another knight for the pageant.
“’T is a crying shame,” André told her; “but poor Fred has gone to the wall at last, and is to be sold up. Therefore he chooses to withdraw from the tourney, and begs me to make his apologies to you, for he is too dumpish to wish to see any one. ’T will make no difference to you, save that you will have Brigade Major Tarleton in place of the baronet.”
“Can nothing be done for him?” asked Janice.
“Be assured, if anything could be, his fellow-officers would not have allowed the army to lose him, for he is loved by every man in the service; but he is in for over eight thousand pounds.”