Luigi’s eyes fell and his knees trembled under him. As he said of himself afterwards, he felt “like a washed-out scarecrow.” He tried to moisten his lips, but his tongue was as dry as they. His first thought was: “That scoundrel, Lisle, did sell me, after all! Not a bit of use now pretending I was ill.”
Clearing his voice, he said: “I am very sorry, sir, that I was not able to get home yesterday in time for dinner. That I took more wine than was good for me I frankly admit. So little am I used to it that a very small quantity tells upon me. I don’t know whether you are aware of it, sir, but the occasion was a birthday wine party to drink the health of young Jack Derrick.”
“Jack whom did you say?” demanded Sir Gilbert, adding, sotto voce: “If the fellow would only stand up and face me like a man and not look so confoundedly cringing and obsequious, I could forgive him almost anything.”
“Jack Derrick, sir, son of Colonel Derrick, he who has lately come to reside at Stanbrooke Grange.”
Luigi had calculated that his lie was a tolerably safe one. He knew that the Colonel and Sir Gilbert had never met and that, in view of the secluded habits of the latter, there was little likelihood of their doing so. Besides, it was quite true that young Derrick, with whom, however, he was merely on nodding terms, had just come of age, but the rest of his statement was a pure invention. It was the health of Miss Jennings that had been drunk in creaming bumpers.
“Humph!” said Sir Gilbert, as he gave a tug at the lobe of his right ear. Then he took a turn across the room and back again, for he had been standing by the chimney-piece on Luigi’s entry. “After all, then,” he remarked to himself, “the boy was in better company than I gave him credit for. Still, he deserves a sound wigging and he shall have it.” But his frown had lightened perceptibly, a fact which Luigi’s furtively glancing eyes did not fail to note.
“Even granting what you say, sir, that is no excuse for allowing yourself to become inebriated as, by your own admission, you were last evening. Be careful not to let it happen again, or you will find that I shall deal with it much more severely. But I have not done with you yet. I have been very much grieved and annoyed to find that on two or three afternoons a week you have taken to frequenting a certain billiard-saloon in the town, and there consorting with a number of young men whose society can be neither creditable nor beneficial to you in any way. I am willing to believe that, in some measure, you have erred through ignorance, through lack of a clear conception of what is due to your position as my grandson. Still, even that excuse can scarcely avail you in the case of Snell, the groom, whom I discharged a few days ago. That you should steal out of the house when you were supposed to be abed and go to the fellow’s room and there sit smoking and drinking with him, making him thereby your equal for the time being, seems to me nothing less than disgraceful; indeed, I can scarcely trust myself to say what I think of it. After this warning, however, there will be no excuse for you—none whatever, if you do not keep strictly within the lines of conduct laid down for you. Snell has gone; and as regards the billiard-room, I must ask you to give me your word not to enter it again, nor, indeed, any other, without having obtained my sanction beforehand. Are you prepared to give me the promise I ask?”
“Certainly, sir—most fully and willingly. I give you my word to have no more to do with public billiards after to-day, and I shall be very careful about the class of people I mix with in time to come.” Nothing came easier to Luigi than to make promises; the difficulty with him, as with so many of us, lay in the keeping of them. “This is another specimen of Lisle’s dirty work,” he reflected. “He’s been playing the double part of spy and informer. But a day of reckoning will come for him.”
“Keep to your promise and you will find yourself no loser by it in the long run,” resumed Sir Gilbert. “And now you may go for the present,” he said after a minute or two. “But I cannot conceal that I am grievously disappointed in you.”
Luigi needed no second bidding. He had “pulled through” the scrape far better than he had expected, and was now inclined to be jubilant. “Grievously disappointed in me, is he?” he said with a short laugh. “What did the old fool expect? A grandson made to pattern, I suppose. Well, Granddad will just have to put up with me and make the best of me as I am.”