"We may find her up there in a chest, like the celebrated bride," remarked Aunt Hannah, who had reappeared from her retreat. "It's the lesser of several tragedies that might happen," she added insolently, to Desboro.
"To the attic!" thundered Cairns through his megaphone; and they started.
But Desboro still lingered at the armoury door, looking back. The noise of the chase died away in the interior of the main house; the armoury became very still under the flood of pale winter sunshine.
He glanced along the steel ranks of men-at-arms; he looked up at the stately mounted figures; dazzling sunlight glittered over helmet and cuirass and across the armoured flanks of horses.
Could it be possible that she was seated up there, hidden inside some suit of blazing mail, astride a battle-horse?
Cautiously he came back, skirting the magnificent and motionless ranks, hesitated and halted.
Of course the whole thing had been proposed and accepted in jest; he told himself that. And yet—if some other man did discover her—the foundation of the jest might serve for a more permanent understanding. He didn't want her to have any intimate understanding with anybody until he and she understood each other, and he understood himself.
He didn't want another man to find and claim the forfeit, even in jest, because he didn't know what might happen. No man was ever qualified to foretell what another man might do; and men already were behaving toward her with a persistency and seriousness unmistakable—men like Herrendene, who meant what he looked and said; and young Hammerton, Daisy's brother, eager, inexperienced and susceptible; and Bertie Barkley, a little, hard-faced snob, with an unerring instinct for anybody who promised to be popular among desirable people, was beginning to test her metal with the acid of his experience.
Desboro stood quite still, looking almost warily about him and thinking faster and faster, trying to recollect who it was who had dragged in the silly subject of marriage. That blond and hulking ass Ledyard, wasn't it?