Miss Brandon going up suddenly to Captain Bowood, flung her arms round his neck and kissed him impulsively. ‘You dear, crusty, cantankerous, kind-hearted old thing, I can’t help loving you!’ she cried.
‘Go along, you baggage. As bad as he is—every bit. Go along.’
‘Au revoir, uncle,’ said Mr Summers with his most courtly stage bow. ‘We shall meet again—at Philippi.’
A moment later, Captain Bowood found himself alone. ‘There’s impudence!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s worse than that; it’s cheek—downright cheek. Never bamboozled like it before. Handcuffed! What an old nincompoop I must have looked! Good thing Sir Frederick or any of the others didn’t see me. I should never have heard the last of it.’ With that, the last trace of ill-humour vanished, and he burst into a hearty, sailor-like guffaw. ‘Just the sort of trick I should have gloried in when I was a young spark!’ He rose from his chair, took his cane in his hand, and limped as far as the window, his gout being rather troublesome this afternoon. ‘So, so. There they go, arm in arm. Who would have thought of Don Carlos falling in love with Miss Saucebox? But I don’t know that he could do better. She’s a good girl—a little flighty just now; but that will cure itself by-and-by—and she will have a nice little property when she comes of age. Must pretend to set my face against it, though, and that will be sure to make them fonder of one another. Ha, ha! we old sea-dogs know a thing or two.’ And with that the Captain winked confidentially to himself two or three times and went about his business.
When Sir Frederick Pinkerton followed Mrs Bowood and Mrs Boyd out of the room where the interview had taken place, and left Lady Dimsdale sitting there alone, he quitted the house at once, and sauntered in his usual gingerly fashion through the flower-garden to an unfrequented part of the grounds known as the Holly Walk, where there was not much likelihood of his being interrupted. Like Lady Dimsdale, he wanted to be alone. Just then, he had much to occupy his thoughts. To and fro he paced the walk slowly and musingly, his hands behind his back, his eyes bent on the ground.
‘What tempts me to do this thing?’ he asked himself, not once, but several times. ‘That I dislike the man is quite certain; why, then, take upon myself to interfere between this woman and him? Certainly I have nothing to thank Oscar Boyd for; why, then, mix myself up in a matter that concerns me no more than it concerns the man in the moon? If he had not appeared on the scene just when he did, I might perhaps have won Lady Dimsdale for my wife. But now? Too late—too late! Even when he and this woman shall have gone their way, he will live in my lady’s memory, never probably to be forgotten. He is her hero of romance. That he made love to her in years gone by, when they were young together, there is little doubt; that he made love to her again this morning, and met with no such rebuff as I did, seems equally clear; and though she knows now that he can never become her husband, yet she on her side will never forget him. In what way, then, am I called upon to interfere in his affairs? Should I not be a fool for my pains? And yet to let that woman claim him as her own, when a word from me would—— No! Noblesse oblige. What should I think of myself in years to come, if I were to permit this man’s life to be blasted by so cruel a fraud? The thought would hardly be a pleasant one on one’s deathbed.’ He shrugged his shoulders, and went on slowly pacing the Holly Walk. At length he raised his head and said half aloud: ‘I will do it, and at once; but it shall be on my own conditions, Lady Dimsdale—on my own conditions.’
There was a gardener at work some distance away. He called the man to him, and sent him with a message to the house. Ten minutes later, Lady Dimsdale entered the Holly Walk.
Sir Frederick approached her with one of his most elaborate bows.
‘You wish to see me, Sir Frederick?’ she said inquiringly, but a little doubtfully. She hoped that he was not about to re-open the subject that had been discussed between them earlier in the day.
‘I have taken the liberty of asking you to favour me with your company for a few minutes—here, where we shall be safe from interruption. The matter I am desirous of consulting you upon admits of no delay.’