"Always sport my oak, you know," said the young man with a laugh and a wink, as he locked the door behind him. "Pater might see 'em, and then there would be a time of it. Awful old muff, the pater; good sort, you know, but he'd have this lot in the fire in less than no time if he knew. Fearful old fossil. Flowers, fruits, rubber at whist, pipe, and an old army friend—that's his idea of life."
Cleek felt like taking him by the back of the neck and kicking him. He didn't, however. He had other fish to fry; and he succeeded so well that before he left that room he had an invitation to stop the night, and as he had brought no evening clothes with him, the offer of a suit to meet the emergency.
"Look here, I'll tell you what, Barch," said Raynor when this invitation and this offer were accepted, turning round as he spoke—he was at a window which overlooked the drive up from the gates of the Grange "chaps like us don't want to sit in a drawing-room and waste time with a pair of prunes and prisms like Lady Katharine Fordham and that prig of a Lorne girl. If you're in for a lark, we'll slip out and I'll show you a bit of life on the sly. I like you— I'm blest if I don't; so if you're game for a kick up, I'll let you into a secret and give you the time of your life. Now, then, listen here, old chap."
He stopped abruptly as a sudden grating sound of wheels rose from the drive, and looking down, he saw that a vehicle had swung in through the gates and was advancing toward the house.
"Oh Lord! that settles it; now we're in for a visitation!" he said with an expression of deep disgust. "There's that prig of a chap, Geoff Clavering, driving in. Can't stick that fellow at any price!"
Geoff Clavering! Cleek rose as he heard the name, walked to the window, and looked out. So, then, he had not been so far out in his reckoning after all. Geoff Clavering had come at last to seek an interview with the girl of his heart.
Why the boy had delayed until now Cleek could not guess, unless it was because of a shrinking dread of going abroad anywhere at such a time; but that he had nerved himself to come at last for something more than a mere call was apparent at first glance; for his face was white and strained, and it was evident, even from this distance, that he was labouring under strong excitement.
Undoubtedly there would be, as he had surmised, a private interview arranged between those two people, and undoubtedly he must manage to overhear it. What a pity that this should have happened at this particular time, that young Clavering should have arrived while he was up here, out of the way of seeing what happened when Geoff and Lady Katharine first met!
A glance, a movement, a hundred different things, might tell him what he wanted to know if he were there at that moment of first meeting. But perhaps it was not yet too late. The carriage hadn't reached the entrance of the house as yet; perhaps, if he hurried, if he went at once——
"I say, let's go down, Raynor," he said desperately. "I don't know what's come over me, but my head's suddenly begun to swim, and I'm afraid I shall keel over if I don't get out in the air. We can let the lark you were speaking of rest until afterward. Come on, will you? By Jove! you know, I'm in a fearful way."