"Hush!" said the Duke, frowning at her like a tragic actor accustomed to provincial audiences.
She rustled upstairs in great agitation.
Chloe, according to her timid custom, vanished to bed when the women went to their rooms. She feared smoking-room stories. And so the paragon, the Duke, Mr. Rodney, and Mr. Ingerstall sat alone in the amber smoking-room, which adjoined Winter Garden No. 2, in which Mrs. Lite's favourites soundly slept. Mr. Rodney sat for about two minutes looking like a habitually nervous man, who is suddenly confronted with the last day. Then he hastily swallowed about a pint of brandy.
"Hullo, Rodney!" said the Duke. "Turning teetotaler?"
"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Rodney, with a distracted demeanour.
"Giving up the drink, I see," continued the Duke, with a dismal attempt at his usual jocose air. "Sousing yourself in water from the crystal spring."
"I beg your pardon, Duke," said Mr. Rodney, looking deeply hurt and almost on the verge of tears; "the outrage committed upon me this afternoon is scarcely matter for jest. I—I——" He drank another pint of brandy, and muttering something about the "necessity for expelling cold from the system," and the "terrible results following on rheumatic fever," hurried from the room, affecting the gait of an old hedger and ditcher, crippled with that roadside complaint to which he had so feelingly alluded.
The Duke glared at Mr. Bush, and, lighting a cigar, remarked to Mr. Ingerstall that Rodney would have D.T. on the course to-morrow if he didn't take care. Then he seized the Times, and buried himself in the advertisement sheets, through which he took stock of the paragon, making a hole with his finger in "Wanted, a quiet home for a clergyman afflicted with homicidal mania, who is subject to fits, but is High Church, studious, and of a happy disposition."
"Damn it, there's no absinthe!" cried Mr. Ingerstall. "In Paris one is not deprived of necessities as one is in England. Why don't I live in Paris?"