“What the plague! Is this rusty old last year’s pippin an evidence against me? Rot me, he’s a pretty scrub on which to father a charge against a gentleman, Lud, his face is a lie. No less!”
“May I ask your name, sir, and your business in this part of the country?” said the lieutenant.
Some impulse—perhaps the fact that I was wearing his clothes—put it into my head to borrow Volney’s name. There was risk that the lad might have met the baronet, but that was a contingency which must be ventured. It brought him to like a shot across a lugger’s bows.
“Sir Robert Volney, the friend of the Prince,” he said, patently astonished.
“The Prince has that honour,” I smiled.
“Pray pardon my insistence. Orders from headquarters,” says he apologetically.
I waved aside his excuses peevishly.
“Sink me, Sir Robert Volney should be well enough known not to be badgered by every country booby with a king’s commission. Lard, I vow I’ll have a change when Fritz wears the crown.”
With that I turned on my heel in a simulation of petty anger, offered my arm to Aileen, and marched up the stairs with her. My manner and my speech were full of flowered compliments to her, of insolence to the young gentleman below, for there is nothing more galling to a man’s pride than to be ignored.
“’Twas the only way,” I said to Aileen when the door was closed on us above. “’Tis a shame to flout an honest young gentleman so, but in such fashion the macaroni would play the part. Had I stayed to talk with him he might have asked for my proof. We’re well out of the affair.”