* * * * *
On the door being opened, a room too large to be comfortable, lit by the best branch-candlesticks of the hotel, was disclosed, before the fire of which apartment the truant couple were sitting, very innocently looking over the hotel scrap-book and the album containing views of the neighbourhood. No sooner had the old man entered than the young lady—who now showed herself to be quite as young as described, and remarkably prepossessing as to features—perceptibly turned pale. When the nephew entered, she turned still paler, as if she were going to faint. The young man described as an opera-singer rose with grim civility, and placed chairs for his visitors.
‘Caught you, thank God!’ said the old gentleman breathlessly.
‘Yes, worse luck, my lord!’ murmured Signor Smithozzi, in native London-English, that distinguished alien having, in fact, first seen the light in the vicinity of the City Road. ‘She would have been mine to-morrow. And I think that under the peculiar circumstances it would be wiser—considering how soon the breath of scandal will tarnish a lady’s fame—to let her be mine to-morrow, just the same.’
‘Never!’ said the old man. ‘Here is a lady under age, without experience—child-like in her maiden innocence and virtue—whom you have plied by your vile arts, till this morning at dawn—’
‘Lord Quantock, were I not bound to respect your gray hairs—’
‘Till this morning at dawn you tempted her away from her father’s roof. What blame can attach to her conduct that will not, on a full explanation of the matter, be readily passed over in her and thrown entirely on you? Laura, you return at once with me. I should not have arrived, after all, early enough to deliver you, if it had not been for the disinterestedness of your cousin, Captain Northbrook, who, on my discovering your flight this morning, offered with a promptitude for which I can never sufficiently thank him, to accompany me on my journey, as the only male relative I have near me. Come, do you hear? Put on your things; we are off at once.’
‘I don’t want to go!’ pouted the young lady.
‘I daresay you don’t,’ replied her father drily. ‘But children never know what’s best for them. So come along, and trust to my opinion.’
Laura was silent, and did not move, the opera gentleman looking helplessly into the fire, and the lady’s cousin sitting meditatively calm, as the single one of the four whose position enabled him to survey the whole escapade with the cool criticism of a comparative outsider.