Dunmore eyed him askance, twirling his jewelled pin.
"If I merit your suspicions," added Butler, icily, "I beg to wish you good fortune and good-night!" And he bowed very low and turned curtly towards the door.
"No! Damme if I suspect you!" cried Dunmore, hastily. "Come back, Captain Butler! Oh tally, man!—is there no wit in you that you freeze at a jest from an over-fond suitor? You shall conduct Miss Warren to Williamsburg. I say it! I mean it! Body o' Judas! am I not to follow as soon as I hang this fellow Mount and his rabble o' ragged pottle-pots?"
Butler came back, and—oh, the evil in his fixed stare as his kindling eyes fastened on Dunmore again!
"Will you be pleased—to—to receive Miss Warren immediately?" asked Lady Shelton, in a flutter of jellyfied excitement. "I have her closely watched wherever she takes a step. She has her boxes packed, the wilful child! Lud! she would have been gone these two hours had not Captain Butler's man caught my footman with a guinea!"
"I have a copy of her letter," squeaked Dunmore, angrily. "Faith, I could scratch her raw for what she wrote to that dirty forest-running fellow, Cardigan!"
"Fie! Fie!" tittered Lady Shelton, hysterically, shaking a fat finger at the painted beau. "Over-fond lovers should forgive!"
"Curse me if I forget, though," muttered his Lordship. "If I have to wait till Innocents' day, I'll birch the little baggage yet!"
He turned nervously to Butler:
"You had best attend in the ballroom, Captain Butler. Gad! I can persuade her, I think, within the half-hour. Lady Shelton, you will be in one of your cursed twitters if you remain here, and those same twitters set me dancing. Damme, madam! you are twittering now! I sha'n't endure it! I can't endure it! Pluck me bald if I can!"