“I’ve told you. See, now,” his hands dripping, “here,” plunging one of them into the breast-pocket of his coat, which was lying on a bed—“here’s a ten-pound note; spend every shilling of it in cablegrams. You have my own, you have my father’s address. Wire him, wire anybody you like, you’ll have your reply to-morrow. My story will be corroborated in every particular. That ought to satisfy you.”
I shook my head.
“Time with me is money. This fellow, Grey Seymour, is to meet her to-morrow at a garden-party at Mrs. Dyke Howell’s. His millions will come into play, and such heavy artillery will sweep my rusty flint-locks into ash-barrels. A duel with artillery is all very well, but when the batteries are all on one side one side wins. My chances depend on what running I can make to-night. I can talk to women as few men can. It is my faculty. I know where to reach them, and how. It is nascitur non fit with me. I don’t go on Doctor Johnson’s idea of making an idiot of a girl’s understanding by flattery. That is false in theory, false in practice. Now, you are not half bad. Stand by me,” placing his hand on my shoulder, “and, by George! I’ll do something for you yet.”
He was thoroughly in earnest, and hang me if I could refuse him. I suppose it was my bounden duty to have done so. Common sense and common prudence nudged me ere I took his proffered hand, but, heedless of the whisperings of still, small voices, I permitted myself to go with the tide. It was treating my friend Finche badly; it was placing myself in a false, if not a worse, position; and yet—I could not utter that absurdly small word “no.”
The morrow would tell its own tale, for I had resolved upon telegraphing without the assistance of Mr. Price’s ten-pound note, and a few hours could do no possible harm. If Miss Finche were to lose her heart in the space of an evening, she would prove a very noteworthy exception to the great sisterhood to which she belonged.
The addition to her dinner table did not seem to please Mrs. Finche, an emaciated, waspish, red-nosed lady, whose thin lips had an unpleasant twitch in them, and whose bright, beady black eyes darted angrily hither and thither like a pair of beetles in search of prey.
I sat next to her; opposite to me Miss Neville; Finche was at the foot of the table; on his right my friend Price, on his left the heiress.
“What brings you to this fashionable place, Mr. Crosse?” asked mine hostess, the inference being “plain to the naked eye.”
“Well, I thought I’d like to take a peep at the gay goings-on.”
“Ah!” an icy chill in the monosyllable.