‘I don’t mean that—and you know it, sir; but, unless you wish to be taken for a pirate yourself, or an escaped I-don’t-know-what, you will do as I tell you.’
So Ernest was fain to do as he was bid, commencing, unconsciously indeed, that period of servitude to which every son of Adam, all unheeding, is pledged who rivets on himself the flower-wreathed adamantine fetters of matrimony. He sought Mr. Frankston’s extremely comfortable dressing-room, at the behest of his beloved châtelaine; and very glad he was to find himself there.
His sense of relief and general congratulation was, however, slightly alloyed by the thought of the stupendous amount of explanation and narrative due to Paul Frankston, when this now fast-approaching hour of dinner should arrive.
‘I would it were bedtime, and all well,’ groaned he, in old Falstaff’s words, as he addressed himself to the rather serious duties of the toilette.
Mr. Frankston arrived from town but a few minutes before the dinner-hour, and, like a wise man, made at once for his room.
‘Only just time to dress, darling,’ said he to his daughter. ‘Got such a budget of news; met Croker just as I was coming out, tell Ernest. No end of news—quite unparalleled. You will be surprised, and so will he.’
‘And so will you,’ thought Mr. Neuchamp, who just came into the hall in time to hear the concluding sentence. But he darkly bided his time.
As the dinner-bell rang, forth issued Mr. Frankston, radiant with snowy waistcoat and renovated personnel, having the air at once of a man in good hope and expectation of dinner, also conscious of the possession of news which, however sensationally disastrous, does not prejudicially affect himself.
‘Now then,’ he said, the soup having been disposed of, and the mildly stimulating Amontillado imbibed, ‘what do you think has become of our friend—or, rather, your friend, Antonia, for you never would let me abuse him—the Count von Schätterheims?’
‘What indeed?’ replied Antonia, looking at her plate.