Cup Day, dawning in an ethereal mist, found Mr. Bliggins wrapped in a pallid slumber in the hall, and Mr. Harrison setting forth to the fishing-cottage to confer with the Emperor. The groom of the chambers roused the sleeping detective with a hasty shake.
"Mr. Bliggins, you was hired to watch; oh, indeed!" he said in stern rebuke.
"I was watching, Mr. Harrison, sir," replied the creature, confusing Mr. Harrison's orders with the Duke's. "'The red-bearded man—he's the fiend! Stalk him! Dog his feet! Creep after him!' you says to me. I was doing of it."
"Mr. Bliggins," replied Mr. Harrison, with scathing dignity, "them was no words of mine—oh dear no, on no account whatever! My words to you was, 'Watch the lot;' oh, most certainly! Go, Mr. Bliggins, plant yourself in the garden, and don't let yourself be knowst, according to Mr. Lite's strict orders; oh, indeed!"
The weary detective departed to carry out this horticultural command, and Mr. Harrison proceeded to lay his grim report of the employment of the sacred instrument, etc., before the agitated Emperor, whose passions steadily increased with the lapse of time and the prolongation of exile.
By the post that morning Chloe received a communication from one of the private enquiry agents whom she had directed to give her information as to the proceedings of her ex-husband, if that personage were actually within the British Isles.
"I beg to inform you," it ran, "that a Mr. Huskinson Van Adam did arrive at Liverpool by the Arethusa, but I have not yet been able to discover where he went upon disembarking. I have no doubt, however, that I shall be successful in tracing him within a day or two. Awaiting your further esteemed orders, I am," etc., etc.
Chloe laid this letter down with an unsteady hand. It filled her with a cataract of mingled emotions, one of which surprised her by its happy violence and covered her cheeks with blushes. In the midst of these blushes she caught sight of her trousers, and the vision helped her to pull herself together. She was no longer a woman; she was a man—at any rate for a day or two more. After that the Deluge! After that no more society! No more Duchesses! No more Lady Pearls! Did this knowledge horrify her? Did she feel in it the end of pleasure, the coming of doom? or did she hear faintly the glories of the dream which she had desired, which she had by a wild stroke of audacity achieved, rustling down and away into the darkness like the damp golden leaves of autumn—and hear their rustlings with an abrupt and strange indifference, child of some hidden, furtive, and scarcely acknowledged emotion? Chloe herself, perhaps, scarcely knew. In either case she pulled up her trousers, assumed a jaunty air, and talked hard all through breakfast—chiefly to the Lady Pearl, of whose presence, however, she was in truth scarcely aware, being so full of her own situation, which was half-absurd and surely half-tragic. After breakfast she tried with all her might to speak a word alone with Daisy. But both the Duchess of Southborough and Mr. Rodney were on the watch to prevent any such nefarious attempt from succeeding. Her Grace, despite her own trouble with the Duke, whose disgraceful suspicions—although they remained unexpressed in words—she was increasingly conscious of, was determined to fight her hostess to the death on behalf of the Lady Pearl. Until Mr. Van Adam was actually ravished away to Paris, the Duchess would not confess herself beaten, would not lose all hope. Strung up by unmerited misfortune to the highest pitch of nervous tension and agitated obstinacy, her eyes prominent with mental strain, her large and respectable face rigid with anxiety and outrage, she inflexibly kept at Mrs. Verulam's side. And the more she observed Chloe's obvious manœuvres to be alone with Mrs. Verulam, the more was the Duchess determined to frustrate them. In all her exertions she was backed up by the excellent owner of Mitching Dean.
When a normally peaceful and conventional man is roused, by the hammering blows of Fate, into acute distress and warfare, he is apt to become far more terrific, far more unconventional, than any swashbuckler or man of deeds whatever. So it was with Mr. Rodney. Circumstance was gradually working him up into a state of mind compared with which Gehenna is typically joyous and calm. His imaginary rheumatic fever was, on this lovely morning, nowise abated. His anxiety as to the procedure of the Countess of Sage moment by moment increased. His suspicions of Chloe were advancing rapidly, and his enmity against the man from Bungay had attained almost to fury. Also he had had a sleepless night, and Harry, his man, had abrased his skin while shaving him. If his pulse mounted to 102, is it to be wondered at? If he resolved not to leave Mrs. Verulam's side for one single instant during the entire day, shall he be blamed? In vain did Mrs. Verulam endeavour to get rid of him for a second or two. In vain did she try to invent some pretext, to design some chivalrous duty which must urge his steps from her. He was too sharp to go. And the more ardently she tried, the more ardently did he deny her, opposing his rheumatism to her every suggestion.