"Stay? Not I! I just ducked down on all fours, and came back like a beast through the rhododendrons."
"Indeed!" continued the Duke pleasantly. "A very sensible posture and mode of exit under the circumstances. Who's your sportsman?" he added, turning to Mrs. Verulam.
"I have no idea, indeed!" she replied, in perplexity unutterable. "Oh, Mr. Bush!" she added, with a most tender accent of commiseration, "I can scarcely tell you how grieved, how horrified I am that you should have been so nearly murdered—and so soon after your arrival, too!"
"I should think so!" Mr. Bush rejoined angrily. "A nice thing to happen to a respectable man!"
His tacit refusal to be mollified reacted upon his hostess, who, as usual in untoward circumstances, turned instantly upon the man who she thought loved her.
"Mr. Rodney," she said with bitter reproach, "you never told me there was a murderer living in this neighbourhood."
"I never knew it!" cried Mr. Rodney. "It never occurred to me, I do assure you. Where were you?" he exclaimed to Mr. Bush, with the poignant accent of a man whose reputation is at stake.
"I was walkin' in the garden, a-lookin' at the mistakes the gardener here's been makin'," said Mr. Bush sulkily.
"Yes, yes!" chorused the company.