"Why can't you?" he demanded in a difficult, husky voice.
She could scarcely answer that question, a question which he had no right to ask. But—she felt sorry for him in his very obvious disappointment.
"If you care to ask Captain Dove, perhaps he will tell you," she said, unable to think of any other safe way out of that difficulty, and not caring very much what Captain Dove might say.
But Lord Ingoldsby was not so easily to be got rid of. He stayed where he was, arguing and imploring by turns until his youthful aunt appeared again, looking somewhat serious; she seemed to take in the situation between them at a shrewd glance.
He left the room then for a little, and when he returned Sallie and the duchess were on the point of retiring.
"I'm going to have a hot bath and a rest before dinner, Ingoldsby," his aunt informed him.
"Your rooms will be ready now, too," Sallie added, unwilling to be left alone there with him again. And he went off, very glumly, under convoy of a servant, toward the bachelor apartments in the Warder's Tower.
Sallie saw the duchess settled in the suite which had been prepared for her, and having provided her with a plentiful choice of evening frocks, went on to the gun-room, to see what Slyne wanted with her.
Captain Dove and he were seated on either side of the fireplace, and looked round rather uncertainly as she came into the room.
"I've made the duchess quite comfortable, Jasper," she said with a smile, "and she's been exceedingly nice to me. I hope you'll look as well after Lord Ingoldsby."