Evidently he was nowhere near it, for his long face looked blank as a white sheet of note-paper as prisoner and gaoler left the room.
All through that weary Cup Day Mr. Rodney was for ever in Mrs. Verulam's pocket, emotionally sticking to her in a manner that irritated her till she could have burst into tears. His eyes, usually so indefinite, now blazed with the fires either of rheumatic fever, jealousy, or protection. His voice, usually mellifluous as the twilight murmur of a tideless sea, now rose in harsh intonations, and was set a-trembling by a vibrato that might have belonged to a fourth-rate Italian tenor. His wonted soothing demeanour and reassuring Mayfair gait were exchanged for an animation that savoured of delirious sick-beds, and a strut of suspicion on the qui vive that might have become a scout compelled to follow his profession on a pavement composed of red-hot needles. The Royal Pen gaped at him, and heard his passionate volubility with unutterable amazement. Again, as on the preceding Tuesday, he was feverishly intent on dodging, and inducing Mrs. Verulam to dodge, the venerable Countess of Sage, who, crowned with a gimp helmet, clothed in chain mail of shining bugles, and bedizened with ornaments of black bog-oak, grown on the family estate at Ballybrogganbroth, Ireland, pervaded the enclosure on the arm of a Commander-in-Chief, with a Field-Marshal on her further side. But Fate, which was leading him in such slippery places, chose to frustrate his chivalrous purpose. Soon after the second race, while busily engaged in manœuvring Mrs. Verulam away from the neighbourhood of Chloe, who was shooting at her despairing glances demanding an interview, Mr. Rodney ran her and himself into the very arms of Lady Sage, who was energetically airing her views on the recent Crimean campaign, and pointing out certain mistakes in tactics committed by those who were in charge of the British army in the Crimea. They were, in fact, practically impaled upon her bog-oak brooches and necklets before they observed her. Lady Sage paused on the words "If I had been Lord Raglan, I should certainly have——" stared Mrs. Verulam and the owner of Mitching Dean full in the face for a minute or more, then remarked in a piercing voice to the Field-Marshal, "What extraordinary people manage to get into the Enclosure!" and waddled away, rattling her armour in a most aggressive manner, and tossing the gimp helmet until it positively scintillated in the sunshine.
Mr. Rodney's knees knocked together, and he shut his eyes. The worst had happened. The heavens had fallen. The flood had come again upon the earth, and there was no ark of refuge. His brain was full of buzzings, and he felt as if he was being pricked all over. When at last he opened his eyes and looked at Mrs. Verulam, he perceived that she was rather pale, and that her expression was slightly more set than usual. Yet she seemed calm and cool, while he was hot as fire. Glancing away from her, he beheld the expressive faces of a serried mass of his oldest and most valued friends, whose lips seemed curling with derision, while their family and ancestral noses were surely tip-tilted with contempt. He clasped his hands together mechanically, and, with a hunted demeanour, turned as if to flee. Vague thoughts of leaving the country, of endeavouring to make a home and get into a fresh set in Buenos Ayres, or of retiring to a hermitage in Iceland, ran through his collapsing mind. There is no saying whether he would not have usurped the place of the Ascot dog, and run yelping down the cleared course to the golden gates, if Mrs. Verulam had not murmured to him in her voix d'or:
"Shall we go for a little stroll in the paddock?"
He assented with a bow that was scarcely worthy of a yokel, and led her among the parading horses, getting so entangled with the four legs of the favourite that it seemed as if his one ambition was to become a centaur before evening. After being rescued by a swearing trainer, who addressed him in a long and highly ornate speech, he seemed desirous of immersing Mrs. Verulam in the jockeys' dressing-rooms, or of having her incontinently weighed, but she resisted, and at last said:
"Mr. Rodney, your fever makes you act very strangely. I think, perhaps, we had better be going."
"Going—gone!" he muttered, like a second-rate auctioneer.
"Oh, please do try to compose yourself! All the jockeys are looking at you."
"Let them look!" replied Mr. Rodney distractedly. "Let all the jockeys in Christendom look! What does it matter now?"
And he stared wildly about, as if searching for sackcloth and ashes.