Chapter One

Sir Tristram Shield, arriving at Lavenham Court in the wintry dusk, was informed at the door that his great-uncle was very weak, not expected to live many more days out. He received these tidings without comment, but as the butler helped him to take off his heavy-caped driving coat, he inquired in an unemotional voice: “Is Mr Lavenham here?”

“At the Dower House, sir,” replied the butler, handing the coat and the high-crowned beaver hat to a footman. He nodded austere dismissal to this underling, and added with a slight cough: “His lordship has been a little difficult, sir. So far his lordship has not received Mr Lavenham.”

He paused, waiting for Sir Tristram to inquire after Mademoiselle de Vauban. Sir Tristram, however, merely asked to be conducted to his bedchamber, that he might change his dress before being admitted to his great-uncle’s presence.

The butler, as well aware as everyone else at the Court of the reason of Sir Tristram’s sudden arrival, was disappointed at this lack of interest, but reflected that Sir Tristram, after all, had never been one to show what he was thinking. He led the way in person across the hall to the oak stairway and went with Sir Tristram up to the Long Gallery. Here, on one side, portraits of dead Lavenhams hung, and, on the other, tall, square-headed mullioned windows looked south over a well-timbered park to the Downs. The silence of the house was disturbed by the rustle of a skirt and the hasty closing of a door at one end of the Gallery. The butler had a shrewd suspicion that Mademoiselle de Vauban, more curious than Sir Tristram, had been waiting in the Gallery to obtain a glimpse of him. As he opened the door into one of the bedchambers he cast a glance at Shield, and said: “His lordship has seen no one but the doctor, sir—once, and Mamzelle Eustacie, of course.”

That dark, harsh face told him nothing. “Yes?” said Shield.

It occurred to the butler that perhaps Sir Tristram might not know why he had been summoned into Sussex. If that were so there was no saying how he might take it. He was not an easy man to drive, as his great-uncle had found more than once in the past. Ten to one there might be trouble.

Sir Tristram’s voice interrupted these reflections. “Send my man up to me, Porson, and inform his lordship of my arrival,” he said.

The butler bowed and withdrew. Sir Tristram walked over to the window, and stood looking out over the formal gardens to the woods beyond, still dimly visible through the gathering twilight. There was a sombre frown in his eyes, and his mouth was compressed in a way that made it appear more grim than usual. He did not turn when the door opened to admit his valet, accompanied by one footman carrying his cloak-bag, and another bearing two gilded candelabra, which he set down on the dressing-table. The sudden candlelight darkened the prospect outside. After a moment Shield came away from the window to the fireplace and stood leaning his arm along the high mantelshelf, and looking down at the smouldering logs. The footman drew the curtains across the windows and went softly away. Jupp, the valet, began to unpack the contents of the cloak-bag, and to lay out upon the bed an evening coat and breeches of mulberry velvet, and a Florentine waistcoat. Sir Tristram stirred the logs in the grate with one top-booted foot. Jupp glanced at him sideways, wondering what was in the wind to make him look so forbidding. “You’ll wear powder, sir?” he suggested, setting the pounce-box and the pomatum down on the dressing-table.

“No.”

Jupp sighed. He had already learned of Mr Lavenham’s presence at the Dower House. It seemed probable that the Beau might come up to the Court to visit his cousin, and Jupp, knowing how skilled was Mr Lavenham’s gentleman in the arrangement of his master’s locks, would have liked for his pride’s sake to have sent his own master down to dinner properly curled and powdered. He said nothing, however, but knelt down to pull off Sir Tristram’s boots.

Half an hour later Shield, summoned by Lord Lavenham’s valet, walked down the Gallery to the Great Chamber, and went in unannounced.

The room, wainscoted with oak and hung with crimson curtains, was warmed by a leaping fire and lit by as many as fifty candles in branching candelabra. At the far end a vast fourposter bed was set upon a slight dais. In it, banked up with pillows, covered with a quilt of flaming brocade, wearing an exotic bedgown and the powdered wig without which no one but his valet could ever remember to have seen him, was old Sylvester, ninth Baron Lavenham.

Sir Tristram paused on the threshold, dazzled momentarily by the blaze of unexpected light. The grimness of his face was lessened by a slight sardonic smile as his eyes took in the magnificence and the colour about him. “Your deathbed, sir?” he inquired.

A thin chuckle came from the fourposter. “My deathbed,” corroborated Sylvester with a twinkle.

Sir Tristram walked across the floor to the dais. A wasted hand on which a great ruby ring glowed was held out to him. He took it, and stood holding it, looking down into his great-uncle’s parchment-coloured face, with its hawk-nose, and bloodless lips, and its deep-sunk brilliant eyes. Sylvester was eighty, and dying, but he still wore his wig and his patches, and clasped in his left hand his snuffbox and laced handkerchief.

Sylvester returned his great-nephew’s steady look with one of malicious satisfaction. “I knew you’d come,” he remarked. He withdrew his hand from the light clasp about it, and waved it towards a chair which had been set on the dais. “Sit down.” He opened his snuffbox and dipped in his finger and thumb. “When did I see you last?” he inquired, shaking away the residue of the snuff and holding an infinitesimal pinch to one nostril.

Sir Tristram sat down, full in the glare of a cluster of candles on a torchère pedestal. The golden light cast his profile into strong relief against the crimson velvet bed curtains. “It must have been about two years ago, I believe,” he answered.

Sylvester gave another chuckle. “A loving family, ain’t we?” He shut his snuffbox and dusted his fingers with his handkerchief. “That other great-nephew of mine is here,” he remarked abruptly.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Seen him?”

“No.”

“You will,” said Sylvester. “I shan’t.”

“Why not?” asked Shield, looking at him under his black brows.

“Because I don’t want to,” replied Sylvester frankly. “Beau Lavenham! I was Beau Lavenham in my day, but d’ye suppose that I decked myself out in a green coat and yellow pantaloons?”

“Probably not,” said Shield.

“Damned smooth-spoken fellow!” said Sylvester. “Never liked him. Never liked his father either. His mother used to suffer from the vapours. She suffered from them—whole series of ’em!—when she wanted me to let her have the Dower House.”

“Well, she got the Dower House,” said Shield dryly.

“Of course she did!” said Sylvester snappishly, and relapsed into one of the forgetful silences of old age. A log falling out on to the hearth recalled him. He opened his eyes again and said: “Did I tell you why I wanted you?”

Sir Tristram had risen and gone over to the fire to replace the smoking log. He did not answer until he had done so, and then he said in his cool, disinterested voice: “You wrote that you had arranged a marriage for me with your granddaughter.”

The piercing eyes gleamed. “It don’t please you much, eh?”

“Not much,” admitted Shield, coming back to the dais.

“It’s a good match,” offered Sylvester, “I’ve settled most of the unentailed property on her, and she’s half French, you know—understands these arrangements. You can go your own road. She’s not at all like her mother.”

“I never knew her mother,” said Shield discouragingly.

“She was a fool!” said Sylvester. “Never think she could be a daughter of mine. She eloped with a frippery Frenchman: that shows you. What was his damned name?”

“De Vauban.”

“So it was. The Vicomte de Vauban. I forget when he died. Marie died three years ago, and I went over to Paris—a year later, I think, but my memory’s not what it was.”

“A little more than a year later, sir.”

“I dare say. It was after—” He paused for a moment, and then added harshly: “—after Ludovic’s affair. I thought France was growing too hot for any grandchild of mine, and by God I was right! How long is it now since they sent the King to the guillotine? Over a month, eh? Mark me, Tristram, the Queen will go the same road before the year is out. I’m happy to think I shan’t be here to see it. Charming she was, charming! But you wouldn’t remember. Twenty years ago we used to wear her colour. Everything was Queen’s Hair: satins, ribbons, shoes. Now”—his lip curled into a sneer—“now I’ve a great-nephew who wears a green coat and yellow pantaloons, and a damned absurd sugar-loaf on his head!” He raised his heavy eyelids suddenly, and added: “But the boy is still my heir!”

Sir Tristram said nothing in answer to this remark, which had been flung at him almost like a challenge. Sylvester took snuff again, and when he next spoke it was once more in his faintly mocking drawl. “He’d marry Eustacie if he could, but she don’t like him.” He fobbed his snuffbox with a flick of his finger. “The long and the short of it is, I’ve a fancy to see her married to you before I die, Tristram.”

“Why?” asked Shield.

“There’s no one else,” replied Sylvester bluntly. “My fault, of course. I should have provided for her—taken her up to London. But I’m old, and I’ve never pleased anyone but myself. I haven’t been to London above twice in the last three years. Too late to think of that now. I’m dying, and damme, the chit’s my grandchild! I’ll leave her safely bestowed. Time you was thinking of marriage.”

“I have thought of it.”

Sylvester looked sharply at him. “Not in love, are you?”

Shield’s face hardened. “No.”

“If you’re still letting a cursed silly calf affair rankle with you, you’re a fool!” said Sylvester. “I’ve forgotten the rights of it, if ever I knew them, but they don’t interest me. Most women will play you false, and I never met one yet that wasn’t a fool at heart. I’m offering you a marriage of convenience.”

“Does she understand that?” asked Shield.

“Wouldn’t understand anything else,” replied Sylvester. “She’s a Frenchwoman.”

Sir Tristram stepped down from the dais, and went over to the fireplace. Sylvester watched him in silence, and after a moment he said: “It might answer.”

“You’re the last of your name,” Sylvester reminded him.

“I know it. I’ve every intention of marrying.”

“No one in your eye?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll marry Eustacie,” said Sylvester. “Pull the bell!”

Sir Tristram obeyed, but said with a look of amusement: “Your dying wish, Sylvester?”

“I shan’t live the week out,” replied Sylvester cheerfully. “Heart and hard living, Tristram. Don’t pull a long face at my funeral! Eighty years is enough for any man, and I’ve had the gout for twenty of them.” He saw his valet come into the room, and said: “Send Mademoiselle to me.”

“You take a great deal for granted, Sylvester,” remarked Sir Tristram, as the valet went out again.

Sylvester had leaned his head back against the pillows, and closed his eyes. There was a suggestion of exhaustion in his attitude, but when he opened his eyes they were very much alive, and impishly intelligent. “You would not have come here, my dear Tristram, had you not already made up your mind.”

Sir Tristram smiled a little reluctantly, and transferred his attention to the fire.

It was not long before the door opened again. Sir Tristram turned as Mademoiselle de Vauban came into the room, and stood looking at her under bent brows.

His first thought was that she was unmistakably a Frenchwoman, and not in the least the type of female he admired. She had glossy black hair, dressed in the newest fashion, and her eyes were so dark that it was hard to know whether they were brown or black. Her inches were few, but her figure was extremely good, and she bore herself with an air. She paused just inside the door, and, at once perceiving Sir Tristram, gave back his stare with one every whit as searching and a good deal more speculative.

Sylvester allowed them to weigh one another for several moments before he spoke, but presently he said: “Come here, my child. And you, Tristram.”

The promptness with which his granddaughter obeyed this summons augured a docility wholly belied by the resolute, not to say wilful, set of her pretty mouth. She trod gracefully across the room, and curtseyed to Sylvester before stepping up on to the dais. Sir Tristram came more slowly to the bedside, nor did it escape Eustacie’s notice that he had apparently looked his fill at her. His eyes, still sombre and slightly frowning, now rested on Sylvester.

Sylvester stretched out his left hand to Eustacie. “Let me present to you, my child, your cousin Tristram.”

“Your very obedient cousin,” said Shield, bowing.

“It is to me a great happiness to meet my cousin,” enunciated Eustacie with prim civility and a slight, not unpleasing French accent.

“I am a little tired,” said Sylvester. “If I were not I might allow you time to become better acquainted. And yet I don’t know: I dare say it’s as well as it is,” he added cynically. “If you want a formal offer, Eustacia, no doubt Tristram will make you one—after dinner.”

“I do not want a formal offer,” replied Mademoiselle de Vauban. “It is to me a matter quite immaterial, but my name is Eustacie, which is, enfin, a very good name, and it is not Eu-sta-ci-a, which I cannot at all pronounce, and which I find excessively ugly.”

This speech, which was delivered in a firm and perfectly self-possessed voice, had the effect of making Sir Tristram cast another of his searching glances at the lady. He said with a faint smile: “I hope I may be permitted to call you Eustacie, cousin?”

“Certainly; it will be quite convenable,” replied Eustacie, bestowing a brilliant smile upon him.

“She’s eighteen,” said Sylvester abruptly. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-one,” answered Sir Tristram uncompromisingly.

“H’m!” said Sylvester. “A very excellent age.”

“For what?” asked Eustacie.

“For marriage, miss!”

Eustacie gave him a thoughtful look, but volunteered no further remark.

“You may go down to dinner now,” said Sylvester. “I regret that I am unable to bear you company, but I trust that the Nuits I have instructed Porson to give you will help you to overcome any feeling of gêne which might conceivably attack you.”

“You are all consideration, sir,” said Shield. “Shall we go, cousin?”

Eustacie, who did not appear to suffer from gêne, assented, curtseyed again to her grandfather, and accompanied Sir Tristram downstairs to the dining-room.

The butler had set their places at opposite ends of the great table, an arrangement in which both tacitly acquiesced, though it made conversation a trifle remote. Dinner, which was served in the grand manner, was well chosen, well cooked, and very long. Sir Tristram noticed that his prospective bride enjoyed a hearty appetite, and discovered after five minutes that she possessed a flow of artless conversation, quite unlike any he had been used to listen to in London drawing-rooms. He was prepared to find her embarrassed by a situation which struck him as being fantastic, and was somewhat startled when she remarked : “It is a pity that you are so dark, because I do not like dark men in general. However, one must accustom oneself.”

“Thank you,” said Shield.

“If my grandpapa had left me in France it is probable that I should have married a Duke,” said Eustacie. “My uncle—the present Vicomte, you understand—certainly intended it.”

“You would more probably have gone to the guillotine,” replied Sir Tristram, depressingly matter of fact.

“Yes, that is quite true,” agreed Eustacie. “We used to talk of it, my cousin Henriette and I. We made up our minds we should be entirely brave, not crying, of course, but perhaps a little pale, in a proud way. Henriette wished to go to the guillotine en grande tenue, but that was only because she had a court dress of yellow satin which she thought became her much better than it did really. For me, I think one should wear white to the guillotine if one is quite young, and not carry anything except perhaps a handkerchief. Do you not agree?”

“I don’t think it signifies what you wear if you are on your way to the scaffold,” replied Sir Tristram, quite unappreciative of the picture his cousin was dwelling on with such evident admiration.

She looked at him in surprise. “Don’t you? But consider! You would be very sorry for a young girl in a tumbril, dressed all in white, pale, but quite unafraid, and not attending to the canaille at all, but—”

“I should be very sorry for anyone in a tumbril, whatever their age or sex or apparel,” interrupted Sir Tristram.

“You would be more sorry for a young girl—all alone, and perhaps bound,” said Eustacie positively.

“You wouldn’t be all alone. There would be a great many other people in the tumbril with you,” said Sir Tristram.

Eustacie eyed him with considerable displeasure. “In my tumbril there would not have been a great many other people,” she said.

Perceiving that argument on this point would be fruitless, Sir Tristram merely looked sceptical and refrained from speech.

“A Frenchman,” said Eustacie, “would understand at once.”

“I am not a Frenchman,” replied Sir Tristram.

“ Ça se voit! ” retorted Eustacie.

Sir Tristram served himself from a dish of mutton steaks and cucumber.

“The people whom I have met in England,” said Eustacie after a short silence, “consider it very romantic that I was rescued from the Terror.”

Her tone suggested strongly that he also ought to consider it romantic, but as he was fully aware that Sylvester had travelled to Paris some time before the start of the Terror, and had removed his granddaughter from France in the most unexciting way possible, he only replied: “I dare say.”

“I know a family who escaped from Paris in a cart full of turnips,” said Eustacie. “The soldiers stuck their bayonets into the turnips, too.”

“I trust they did not also stick them into the family?”

“No, but they might easily have done so. You do not at all realize what it is like in Paris now. One lives in constant anxiety. It is even dangerous to step out of doors.”

“It must be a great relief for you to find yourself in Sussex.”

She fixed her large eyes on his face, and said: “Yes, but—do you not like exciting things, mon cousin?”

“I do not like revolutions, if that is what you mean.”

She shook her head. “Ah no, but romance, and—and adventure!”

He smiled. “When I was eighteen I expect I did.”

A depressed silence fell. “Grandpère says that you will make me a very good husband,” said Eustacie presently.

Taken by surprise, Shield replied stiffly: “I shall endeavour to do so, cousin.”

“And I expect,” said Eustacie, despondently inspecting a dish of damson tartlets, “that he is quite right. You look to me like a good husband.”

“Indeed?” said Sir Tristram, unreasonably annoyed by thisremark. “I am sorry that I cannot return the compliment by telling you that you look like a good wife.”

The gentle melancholy which had descended on Eustacie vanished. She dimpled delightfully, and said: “No, I don’t, do I? But do you think that I am pretty?”

“Very,” answered Shield in a damping tone.

“Yes, so do I,” agreed Eustacie. “In London I think I might have a great success, because I do not look like an Englishwoman, and I have noticed that the English think that foreigners are very épatantes.”

“Unfortunately,” said Sir Tristram, “London is becoming so full of French emigrés that I doubt whether you would find yourself in any way remarkable.”

“I remember now,” said Eustacie. “You do not like women.”

Sir Tristram, uncomfortably aware of the footman behind his chair, cast a glance at his cousin’s empty plate, and got up. “Let us go into the drawing-room,” he said. “This is hardly the place to discuss such—er—intimate matters!”

Eustacie, who seemed to regard the servants as so many pieces of furniture, looked round in a puzzled way, but made no objection to leaving the dining-table. She accompanied Sir Tristram to the drawing-room, and said, almost before he had shut the door: “Tell me, do you mind very much that you are to marry me?”

He answered in an annoyed voice: “My dear cousin, I do not know who told you that I dislike women, but it is a gross exaggeration.”

“Yes, but do you mind?”

“I should not be here if I minded.”

“Truly? But everybody has to do what Grandpère tells them.”

“Not quite everybody,” said Shield. “Sylvester knows, however, that—”

“You should not call your great-uncle Sylvester!” interrupted Eustacie. “It is not at all respectful.”

“My good child, the whole world has called him Sylvester for the past forty years!”

“Oh!” said Eustacie doubtfully. She sat down on a sofa upholstered in blue-and-gold-striped satin, folded her hands, and looked expectantly at her suitor.

He found this wide, innocent gaze a trifle disconcerting, but after a moment he said with a gleam of amusement: “There is an awkwardness in this situation, cousin, which I, alas, do not seem to be the man to overcome. You must forgive me if I appear to you to be lacking in sensibility. Sylvester has arranged a marriage of convenience for us, and allowed neither of us time to become in the least degree acquainted before we go to the altar.”

“In France,” replied Eustacie, “one is not acquainted with one’s betrothed, because it is not permitted that one should converse with him alone until one is married.”

This remark certainly seemed to bear out Sylvester’s assurance that his granddaughter understood the nature of his arrangements. Sir Tristram said: “It would be absurd to pretend that either of us can feel for the other any of those passions which are ordinarily to be looked for in betrothed couples, but—”

“Oh yes, it w ould! ” agreed Eustacie heartily.

“Nevertheless,” pursued Sir Tristram, “I believe such marriages as ours often prosper. You have accused me of disliking females, but believe me—”

“I can see very well that you dislike females,” interrupted Eustacie. “I ask myself why it is that you wish to be married.”

He hesitated, and then answered bluntly: “Perhaps if I had a brother I should not wish it, but I am the last of my name, and I must not let it die with me. I shall count myself fortunate if you will consent to be my wife, and so far as it may lie in my power I will promise that you shall not have cause to regret it. May I tell Sylvester that we have agreed to join hands?”

“ Qu’importe? It is his command, and naturally he knows we shall be married. Do you think we shall be happy?”

“I hope so, cousin.”

“Yes, but I must tell you that you are not at all the sort of man I thought I should marry. It is very disheartening. I thought that in England one was permitted to fall in love and marry of one’s own choice. Now I see that it is just the same as it is in France.”

He said with a touch of compassion: “You are certainly very young to be married, but when Sylvester dies you will be alone, and your situation would be awkward indeed.”

“That is quite true,” nodded Eustacie. “I have considered it well. And I dare say it will not be so very bad, our marriage, if I can have a house in town, and perhaps a lover.”

“Perhaps a what?” demanded Shield, in a voice that made her jump.

“Well, in France it is quite comme il faut— in fact, quite à la mode —to have a lover when one is married,” she explained, not in the least abashed.

“In England,” said Sir Tristram, “it is neither comme il faut nor à la mode.”

“ Vraiment, I do not yet know what is the fashion in England, but naturally if you assure me it is not à la mode, I won’t have any lover. Can I have a house in town?”

“I don’t think you know what you are talking about,” said Sir Tristram, on a note of relief. “My home is in Berkshire, and I hope you will grow to like it as I do, but I can hire a house in town for the season if your heart is set on it.”

Eustacie was just about to inform him that her heart was irrevocably set on it when the butler opened the door and announced the arrival of Mr Lavenham. Eustacie broke off in mid-sentence, and said under her breath: “Well, I would much rather be married to you than to him, at all events!”

Her expression did not lead Sir Tristram to set undue store by this handsome admission. He frowned reprovingly at her, and went forward to greet his cousin.

Beau Lavenham, who was two years younger than Shield, did not resemble him in the least. Sir Tristram was a large, lean man, very dark, harsh-featured, and with few airs or graces; the Beau was of medium height only, slim rather than lean, of a medium complexion and delicately-moulded features, and his graces were many. Nothing could have been more exquisite than the arrangement of his powdered curls, or the cut of his brown-spotted silk coat and breeches. He wore a waistcoat embroidered with gold and silver, and stockings of palest pink, a jewel in the snowy folds of his cravat, knots of ribbons at his knees, and rings on his slender white fingers. In one hand he carried his snuffbox and scented handkerchief; in the other he held up an ornate quizzing-glass that hung on a riband round his neck. Through this he surveyed his two cousins, blandly smiling and quite at his ease. “Ah, Tristram!” he said in a soft, languid voice, and, letting fall his quizzing-glass, held out his hand. “How do you do, my dear fellow?”

Sir Tristram shook hands with him. “How do you do, Basil? It’s some time since we met.”

The Beau made a gesture of deprecation. “But, my dear Tristram, if you will bury yourself in Berkshire what is one to do? Eustacie—!” He went to her, and bowed over her hand with incomparable grace. “So you have been making Tristram’s acquaintance?”

“Yes,” said Eustacie. “We are betrothed.”

The Beau raised his brows, smiling. “Oh la, la! so soon? Did Sylvester call this tune? Well, you are, both of you, very obedient, but are you quite, quite sure that you will deal well together?”

“Oh, I hope so!” replied Sir Tristram bracingly.

“If you are determined—and I must warn you, Eustacie, that he is the most determined fellow imaginable—I must hope so too. But I do not think I expected either of you to be so very obedient. Sylvester is prodigious—quite prodigious! One cannot believe that he is really dying. A world without Sylvester! Surely it must be impossible!”

“It will seem odd, indeed,” Shield said calmly.

Eustacie looked disparagingly at the Beau. “And it will seem odd to me when you are Lord Lavenham—very odd!”

There was a moment’s silence. The Beau glanced at Sir Tristram, and then said: “Ah yes, but, you see, I shall not be Lord Lavenham. My dear Tristram, do, I beg of you, try some of this snuff of mine, and let me have your opinion of it. I have added the veriest dash of Macouba to my old blend. Now, was I right?”

“I’m not a judge,” said Shield, helping himself to a pinch. “It seems well enough.”

Eustacie was frowning. “But I don’t understand! Why will you not be Lord Lavenham?”

The Beau turned courteously towards her. “Well, Eustacie, I am not Sylvester’s grandson, but only his great-nephew.”

“But when there is no grandson it must surely be you who are the heir?”

“Precisely, but there is a grandson, dear cousin. Did you not know that?”

“Certainly I know that there was Ludovic, but he is dead after all!”

“Who told you Ludovic was dead?” asked Shield, looking at her under knit brows.

She spread out her hands. “But, Grandpère, naturally! And I have often wanted to know what it was that he did that was so entirely wicked that no one must speak of him. It is a mystery, and, I think, very romantic.”

“There is no mystery,” said Shield, “nor is it in the least romantic. Ludovic was a wild young man who crowned a series of follies with murder, and had in consequence to fly the country.”

“Murder!” exclaimed Eustacie. “ Voyons, do you mean he killed someone in a duel?”

“No. Not in a duel.”

“But, Tristram,” said the Beau gently, “you must not forget that it was never proved that Ludovic was the man who shot Matthew Plunkett. For my part I did not believe it possible then, and I still do not.”

“Very handsome of you, but the circumstances were too damning,” replied Shield. “Remember that I myself heard the shot that must have killed Plunkett not ten minutes after I had parted from Ludovic.”

“But I,” said the Beau, languidly polishing his quizzing-glass, “prefer to believe Ludovic’s own story, that it was an owl he shot at.”

“Shot—but missed!” said Shield. “Yet I have watched Ludovic shoot the pips out of a playing-card at twenty yards.”

“Oh, admitted, Tristram, admitted, but on that particular night I think Ludovic was not entirely sober, was he?”

Eustacie struck her hands together impatiently. “But tell me, one of you! What did he do, my cousin Ludovic?”

The Beau tossed back the ruffles from his hand, and dipped his finger and thumb in his snuffbox. “Well, Tristram,” he said with his glinting smile. “You know more about it than I do. Are you going to tell her?”

“It is not an edifying story,” Shield said. “Why do you want to hear it?”

“Because I think perhaps my cousin Ludovic is of this family the most romantic person!” replied Eustacie.

“Oh, romantic!” said Sir Tristram, turning away with a shrug of the shoulder.

The Beau fobbed his snuffbox. “Romantic?” he said meditatively. “No, I do not think Ludovic was romantic. A little rash, perhaps. He was a gamester—whence the disasters which befell him. He lost a very large sum of money one night at the Cocoa-Tree to a man who lived at Furze House, not two miles from here.”

“No one lives at Furze House,” interrupted Eustacie.

“Not now,” agreed the Beau. “Three years ago Sir Matthew Plunkett lived there. But Sir Matthew—three years ago—was shot in the Longshaw Spinney, and his widow removed from the neighbourhood.”

“Did my cousin Ludovic shoot him?”

“That, my dear Eustacie, is a matter of opinion. You will get one answer from Tristram, and another from me.”

“But why?” she demanded. “Not just because he had lost money to him! That, after all, is not such a great matter—unless perhaps he was quite ruined?”

“Oh, by no means! He did lose a large sum to him, however, and Sir Matthew, being a person of—let us say indifferent—breeding—was ill-mannered enough to demand a pledge in security before he would continue playing. Of course, one should never play with Cits, but poor dear Ludovic was always so headstrong. The game was piquet, and both were in their cups. Ludovic took from his finger a certain ring, and gave it to Sir Matthew as a pledge—to be redeemed, naturally. It was a talisman ring of great antiquity which had come to Ludovic through his mother, who was the last of a much older house than ours.”

Eustacie stopped him. “Please, I do not know what is a talisman ring.”

“Just a golden ring with figures engraved upon it. This of Ludovic’s was, as I have said, very old. The characters on it were supposed to be magical. It should, according to ancient belief, have protected him from any harm. More important, it was an heirloom. I don’t know its precise value. Tristram, you are a judge of such things—you must make him show you his collection, Eustacie—what was the value of the ring?”

“I don’t know,” answered Shield curtly. “It was very old—perhaps priceless.”

“Such a rash creature, poor Ludovic!” sighed the Beau. “I believe there was no stopping him—was there, Tristram?”

“No.”

Eustacie turned towards Shield. “But were you there, then?”

“Yes, I was there.”

“But no one, not even Tristram, could manage Ludovic in his wilder moods,” explained the Beau. “He pledged the ring, and continued to lose. Sir Matthew, with what one cannot but feel to have been a lamentable want of taste, left the Cocoa-Tree with the ring upon his finger. To redeem it Ludovic was forced to go to the Jews—ah, that means moneylenders, my dear!”

“There was nothing new in that,” said Shield. “Ludovic had been in the Jews’ hands since he came down from Oxford—and before.”

“Like so many of us,” murmured the Beau.

“And did he get the money from the Jews?” asked Eustacie.

“Oh yes,” replied the Beau, “but the matter was not so easily settled. When Ludovic called upon Plunkett to redeem the ring our ingenious friend pretended that the bargain had been quite misunderstood, that he had in fact staked his guineas against the ring, and won it outright. He would not give it up, nor could anyone but Tristram be found who had been sober enough to vouch for the truth of Ludovic’s version of the affair.”

Eustacie’s eyes flashed. “I am not at all surprised that Ludovic killed this canaille! He was without honour!”

The Beau played with his quizzing-glass. “People who collect objects of rarity, my dear Eustacie, will often, so I believe, go to quite unheard-of lengths to acquire the prize they covet.”

“But you!” said Eustacie, looking fiercely at Sir Tristram. “You knew the truth!”

“Unfortunately,” replied Sir Tristram, “Plunkett did not wait for my ruling. He retired into the country—to Furze House, in fact—and somewhat unwisely refused to see Ludovic.”

“Did Grandpère know of this?” Eustacie asked.

“Dear me, no!” said the Beau. “Sylvester and Ludovic were so rarely on amicable terms. And then there was that little matter of Ludovic’s indebtedness to the Jews. One can hardly blame Ludovic for not taking Sylvester into his confidence. However, Ludovic came home to this house, bringing Tristram, with the intention of confronting Plunkett with the one—er—reliable witness to the affair. But Plunkett was singularly elusive—not unnaturally, of course. When Ludovic called at Furze House he was never at home. One must admit that Ludovic was not precisely the man to accept such treatment patiently. And he was drinking rather heavily at that time, too. Discovering that Plunkett was to dine at a house in Slaugham upon the very day that he had been refused admittance to Furze House for the third time, he conceived the plan of waylaying him upon his return home, and forcing him to accept bills in exchange for the ring. Only Tristram, finding him gone from here, guessed what he would be at, and followed him.”

“The boy was three parts drunk!” said Sir Tristram over his shoulder.

“I have no doubt he was in a very dangerous humour,” agreed the Beau. “It has always been a source of wonderment to me how you persuaded him to relinquish his purpose and return home.”

“I promised to see Plunkett in his stead,” replied Shield. “Like a fool I let him take the path through the spinney.”

“My dear fellow, no one could have expected you to have foreseen that Plunkett would return by that path,” said the Beau gently.

“On the contrary, if he came from Slaugham it was the most natural way for him to take,” retorted Shield.: ’And we knew he was riding, not driving.”

“So what happened?” breathed Eustacie.

It was Shield who answered her. “Ludovic rode back through the Longshaw Spinney, while I went on towards Furze House. Not ten minutes after we had parted I heard a shot fired in the distance. At the time I made nothing of it: it might have been a poacher. Next morning Plunkett’s body was discovered in the spinney with a shot through the heart, and a crumpled handkerchief of Ludovic’s lying beside it.”

“And the ring?” Eustacie said quickly.

“The ring was gone,” said Shield. “There was money in Plunkett’s pockets, and a diamond pin in his cravat, but of the talisman ring no sign.”

“And it has never been seen since,” added the Beau.

“By us, no!” said Sir Tristram.

“Yes, yes, I know that you think Ludovic has it,” said the Beau, “but Ludovic swore he did not meet Plunkett that night, and I for one do not think that Ludovic was a liar. He admitted freely that he carried a pistol in his pocket, he even admitted that he had fired it—at an owl.”

“Why should he not shoot this Plunkett?” demanded Eustacie. “He deserved to be shot! I am very glad that he was shot!”

“Possibly,” said Sir Tristram in his driest tone, “but in England, whatever it may be in France, murder is a capital offence.”

“But they did not hang him just for killing such a one as this Plunkett?” said Eustacie, shocked.

“No, because we got him out of the country before he could be arrested,” Shield answered.

The Beau lifted his hand. “Sylvester and you got him out of the country,” he corrected. “I had no hand in that, if you please.”

“Had he stayed to face a trial nothing could have saved his neck.”

“There I beg to differ from you, my dear Tristram,” said the Beau calmly. “Had he been permitted to face his trial the truth might have been found out. When you—and Sylvester, of course—smuggled him out of the country you made him appear a murderer confessed.”

Sir Tristram was spared the necessity of answering by the entrance of Sylvester’s valet, who came to summon him to his great-uncle’s presence again. He went at once, a circumstance which provoked the Beau to murmur as the door closed behind him: “It is really most gratifying to see Tristram so complaisant.”

Eustacie paid no heed to this, but said: “Where is my cousin Ludovic now?”

“No one knows, my dear. He has vanished.”

“And you do not do anything to help him, any of you!” she said indignantly.

“Well, dear cousin, it is a little difficult, is it not?” replied the Beau. “After that well-meaning but fatal piece of meddling, what could one do?”

“I think,” said Eustacie with a darkling brow, “that Tristram did not like my cousin Ludovic.”

The Beau laughed. “How clever of you, my dear!”

She looked at him. “What did you mean when you said he must show me his collection?” she asked directly.

He raised his brows in exaggerated surprise. “Why, what should I mean? Merely that he has quite a notable collection. I am not a judge, but I have sometimes felt that I should like to see that collection myself.”

“Will he not let you, then?”

“Oh, but with the greatest goodwill in the world!” said the Beau, smiling. “But one has to remember that collectors do not always show one quite all their treasures, you know!”

Chapter Two

Sir Tristram, standing once more beside Sylvester’s bed, was a little shocked to perceive already a change in him. Sylvester was still propped up by a number of pillows, and he still wore his wig, but he seemed suddenly to have grown frailer and more withdrawn. Only his eyes were very much alive, startlingly dark in his waxen face.

Sir Tristram said in his deep voice: “I’m sorry, sir: I believe my visit has too much exhausted you.”

“Thank you, I am the best judge of what exhausts me,” replied Sylvester. “I shan’t last much longer, I admit, but by God, I’ll last long enough to settle my affairs! Are you going to marry that chit?”

“Yes, I’ll marry her,” said Shield. “Will that content you?”

“I’ve a fancy to see the knot well tied,” said Sylvester. “Fortunately, she’s not a Papist. What do you make of her?”

Sir Tristram hesitated. “I hardly know. She’s very young.”

“All the better, as long as her husband has the moulding of her.”

“You may be right, but I wish you had broached this matter earlier.”

“I’m always right. What did you want to do? Come a-courting her?” jibed Sylvester. “Poor girl!”

“You are forcing her to a marriage she may easily regret. She is romantic.”

“Fiddledeedee!” said Sylvester. “Most women are, but they get the better of it in time. Is that damned mincing puppy-dog downstairs?”

“Yes,” said Shield.

“He’ll put you in the shade if he can,” said Sylvester warningly.

Sir Tristram looked contemptuous. “Well, if you expect me co vie with his graces you’ll be disappointed, sir.”

“I expect nothing but folly from any of my family!” snapped Sylvester.

Sir Tristram picked up a vinaigrette from the table by the bed and held it under his great-uncle’s nose. “You’re tiring yourself, sir.”

“Damn you!” said Sylvester faintly. He lifted his hand with a perceptible effort and took the bottle, and lay in silence for a time, breathing its aromatic fumes. After a minute or two his lips twitched in a wry smile, and he murmured: “I would give much to have been able to see the three of you together. What did you talk of?”

“Ludovic,” replied Shield with a certain cool deliberation.

Sylvester’s hand clenched suddenly; the smile left his face. He said scarcely above a whisper: “I thought you knew his name is never to be mentioned in this house! Do you count me dead already that you should dare?”

“You’re not a greater object of awe to me on your deathbed, Sylvester, than you have ever been,” said Shield.

Sylvester’s eyes flashed momentarily, but his sudden wrath vanished in a chuckle. “You’re an impudent dog, Tristram. Did you ever care for what I said?”

“Very rarely,” said Shield.

“Quite right,” approved Sylvester. “Damme, I always liked you for it! What have you been saying about the boy?”

“Eustacie wanted to hear the story. Apparently you told her he was dead.”

“He is dead to me,” said Sylvester harshly. “Of what use to let her make a hero of him? You may depend upon it she would. Did you tell her?”

“Basil told her.”

“You should have stopped him.” Sylvester lay frowning, his fingers plucking a little at the gorgeous coverlet. “Basil believed the boy’s story,” he said abruptly.

“I have never known why, sir.”

Sylvester flashed a glance at him. “You didn’t believe it, did you?”

“Did any of us, save only Basil?”

“He said we should have let him stand his trial. I wonder. I wonder.”

“He was wrong. We did what we could for Ludovic when we shipped him to France. Why tease yourself now?”

“You never liked him, did you?”

“You have only to add that I am something of a collector of antique jewellery, Sylvester, and you will have said very much what Basil has been saying, far more delicately, below stairs.”

“Don’t be a fool!” said Sylvester irritably. “I told you he’d do what he could to spoil your chances. Send him about his business!”

“You will have to excuse me, sir. This is not my house.”

“No, by God, and nor is it his! “ said Sylvester, shaken by a gust of anger. “The estate will be in ward when I die, and I have not made him a trustee!”

“Then you are doing him an injustice, sir. Who are your trustees?”

“My lawyer, Pickering, and yourself,” answered Sylvester.

“Good God, what induced you to name me?” said Shield. “I have not the smallest desire to manage your affairs!”

“I trust you, and I don’t trust him,” said Sylvester. “Moreover,” he added with a spark of malice, “I’ve a fancy to make you run in my harness even if I can only do it by dying. Pour me out a little of that cordial.”

Sir Tristram obeyed his behest, and held the glass to Sylvester’s lips. Perversely, Sylvester chose to hold it himself, but it was apparent that even this slight effort was almost too great a tax on his strength.

“Weak as a cat!” he complained, letting Shield take the glass again. “You’d better go downstairs before that fellow has time to poison Eustacie’s mind. I’ll have you married in this very room just as soon as I can get the parson here. Send Jarvis to me; I’m tired.”

When Sir Tristram reached the drawing-room again the tea table had been brought in. Beau Lavenham inquired after his great-uncle, and upon Sir Tristram’s saying that he found him very much weaker, shrugged slightly, and said: “I shall believe Sylvester is dead when I see him in his coffin. I hope you did not forget to tell him that I am dutifully in attendance?”

“He knows you are here,” said Shield, taking a cup and saucer from Eustacie, “but I doubt whether he has strength enough to see any more visitors tonight.”

“My dear Tristram, are you trying to be tactful?” inquired the Beau, amused. “I am quite sure Sylvester said that he would be damned if he would see that frippery fellow Basil.”

Shield smiled. “Something of the sort. You should not wear a sugarloaf hat.”

“No, no; it cannot be my taste in dress which makes him dislike me so much, for that is almost impeccable,” said the Beau, lovingly smoothing a wrinkle from his satin sleeve. “I can only think that it is because I stand next in the succession to poor Ludovic, and that is really no fault of mine.”

“For all we know you may be further removed than that,” said Tristram. “Ludovic may be married by now.”

“Very true,” agreed the Beau, sipping his tea. “And in some ways a son of Ludovic’s might best solve the vexed question of who is to reign in Sylvester’s stead.”

“The estate is left in trust.”

“From your gloomy expression, Tristram, I infer that you are one of the trustees,” remarked the Beau. “Am I right?”

“Oh yes, you’re right. Pickering is joined with me. I told Sylvester he should have named you.”

“You are too modest, my dear fellow. He could not have made a better choice.”

“I am not modest,” replied Shield. “I don’t want the charge of another man’s estate; that is all.”

The Beau laughed, and setting down his tea cup turned to Eustacie. “It has occurred to me that I am here merely in the role of chaperon to a betrothed couple,” he said. “I do not feel that I am cut out for such a role, so I shall go away now. Dear cousin!—” He raised her hand to his lips. “Tristram, my felicitations. If we do not meet before we shall certainly meet at Sylvester’s funeral.”

There was a short silence after he had gone. Sir Tristram snuffed a candle which was guttering, and glanced down at Eustacie, sitting still and apparently pensive by the fire. As though aware of his look, she raised her eyes and gazed at him in the intent, considering way which was so peculiarly her own.

“Sylvester wants to see us married before he dies,” Shield said.

“Basil does not think he will die.”

“I believe he is nearer to it than we know. What did the doctor say?”

“He said he was very irreligious, and altogether insupportable,” replied Eustacie literally.

Sir Tristram laughed, surprising his cousin, who had not imagined that his countenance could lighten so suddenly. “I dare say he might, but was that all he said?”

“No, he said also that it was useless for him to come any more to see Grandpère, because when he said he should have gruel Grandpère at once sent for a green goose and a bottle of burgundy. The doctor said that it would kill him, and du vrai, I think he is piqued because it did not kill Grandpère at all. So perhaps Grandpère will not die, but on the contrary get quite well again.”

“I am afraid it is only his will which keeps him alive.” Shield moved towards the fire and said, looking curiously down at Eustacie: “Are you fond of him? Will it make you unhappy if he dies?”

“No,” she replied frankly. “I am a little fond of him, but not very much, because he is not fond of anybody, he. It is not his wish that one should be fond of him.”

“He brought you out of France,” Shield reminded her.

“Yes, but I did not want to be brought out of France,” said Eustacie bitterly.

“Perhaps you did not then, but you are surely glad to be in England now?”

“I am not at all glad, but, on the contrary, very sorry,” said Eustacie. “If he had left me with my uncle I should have gone to Vienna, which would have been not only very gay, but also romantic, because my uncle fled from France with all his family, in a berline just like the King and Queen.”

“Not quite like the King and Queen if he succeeded in crossing the frontier,” said Shield.

“I will tell you something,” said Eustacie, incensed. “Whenever I recount to you an interesting story you make me an answer which is like—which is like those snuffers— enfin! ”

“I’m sorry,” said Shield, rather startled.

“Well, I am sorry too,” said Eustacie, getting up from the sofa, “because it makes it very difficult to converse. I shall wish you good night, mon cousin.”

If she expected him to try to detain her she was disappointed. He merely bowed formally and opened the door for her to pass out of the room.

Five minutes later her maid, hurrying to her bedchamber in answer to a somewhat vehement tug at the bellrope, found her seated before her mirror, stormily regarding her own reflection.

“I will undress, and I will go to bed,” announced Eustacie.’

“Yes, miss.”

“And I wish, moreover, that I had gone to Madame Guillotine in a tumbril, alone! ”

Country-bred Lucy, a far more appreciative audience than Sir Tristram, gave a shudder, and said: “Oh, miss, don’t speak of such a thing! To think of you having your head cut off, and you so young and beautiful!”

Eustacie stepped out of her muslin gown, and pushed her arms into the wrapper Lucy was holding. “And I should have worn a white dress, and even the sans-culottes would have been sorry to have seen me in a tumbril!”

Lucy had no very clear idea who the sans-culottes might be, but she assented readily, and added, in all sincerity, that her mistress would have looked lovely.

“Well, I think I should have looked nice,” said Eustacie candidly. “Only it is no use thinking of that, because instead I am going to be married.”

Lucy paused on her task of taking the pins out of her mistress’s hair to clasp her hands, and breathe ecstatically: “Yes, miss, and if I may make so bold as I do wish you so happy!”

“When one is forced into a marriage infinitely distasteful one does not hope for happiness,” said Eustacie in a hollow voice.

“Good gracious, miss, his lordship surely isn’t a-going to force you?” gasped Lucy. “I never heard such a thing!”

“Oh!” said Eustacie. “Then it is true what I have heard in France, that English ladies are permitted to choose for themselves whom they will marry!” She added despondently: “But I have not seen anyone whom I should like to have for my husband, so it does not signify in the least.”

“No, miss, but—but don’t you like Sir Tristram, miss? I’m sure he’s a very nice gentleman, and would make anyone a good husband.”

“I do not want a good husband who is thirty-one years old and who has no conversation!” said Eustacie, her lip trembling.

Lucy put down the hairbrush. “There, miss, you’re feeling vapourish, and no wonder, with everything come upon you sudden, like it has! No one can’t force you to marry against your true wishes—not in England, they can’t, whatever they may do in France, which everyone knows is a nasty murdering place!”

Eustacie dried her eyes and said: “No, but if I do not marry my cousin I shall have to live with a horrid chaperon when my grandpapa dies, and that would be much, much worse. One must resign oneself.”

Downstairs Sir Tristram had just reached the same conclusion. Since, sooner or later, he would have to marry someone, and since he had determined never again to commit the folly of falling in love, his bride might as well be Eustacie as another. She seemed to be tiresomely volatile, but no sillier than any other young woman of his acquaintance. She was of good birth (though he thought her French blood to be deplored) , and in spite of the fact that if he had a preference it was for fair women, he was bound to admit that she was very pretty. He could have wished she were older, but it was possible that Sylvester, whose experience was undoubtedly wide, knew what he was talking about when he said that her extreme youth was in her favour. In fact, one must resign oneself.

Upon the following morning the betrothed couple met at the breakfast-table and took fresh stock of each other. Sir Tristram, whose mulberry evening dress had not met with Eustacie’s approval, had had the unwitting tact to put on a riding-suit, in which severe garb he looked his best; and Eustacie, who had decided that, if she must marry her cousin, it was only proper that he should be stimulated to admiration of her charms, had arrayed herself in a bergere gown of charming colour and design. Each at first glance felt moderately pleased with the other, a complacent mood which lasted for perhaps ten minutes, at the end of which time Sir Tristram was contemplating with grim misgiving the prospect of encountering vivacity at the breakfast-table for the rest of his life, and Eustacie was wondering whether her betrothed was capable of uttering anything but the most damping of monosyllables.

During the course of the morning, Sir Tristram was sent for to Sylvester’s bedroom. He found his great-uncle propped up very high in bed, and alarmingly brisk, and learned from him that his nuptials would be celebrated upon the following day. When he reminded Sylvester that marriages could not be performed thus out of hand, Sylvester flourished a special licence before his eyes, and said that he was not so moribund that he could not still manage his affairs. Sir Tristram, who liked being driven as little as most men, found this instance of his great-uncle’s forethought so annoying that he left him somewhat abruptly, and went away to cool his temper with a gallop over the Downs. When he returned it was some time later, and he found the doctor’s horse being walked up and down before the Court, and the household in a state of hushed expectancy. Sylvester, having managed his affairs to his own satisfaction, drunk two glasses of Madeira, and thrown his snuffbox at his valet for daring to remonstrate with him, had seemed suddenly to collapse. He had sunk into a deep swoon from which he had been with difficulty brought round, and the doctor, summoned post-haste, had announced that the end could not now be distant more than a few hours.

Regaining consciousness, Sylvester had, in a painful but determined whisper, declined the offices of a clergyman, recommended the doctor to go to hell, forbidden the servants to open his doors to his nephew Basil, announced his intention of dying without a pack of women weeping over him, and demanded the instant attendance of his nephew Tristram.

Sir Tristram, hearing these details from the butler, stayed only to cast his hat and coat on a chair, and went quickly up the stairs to the Great Chamber.

Both the valet and the doctor were in the room, the valet looking genuinely grieved and the doctor very sour. Sylvester was lying flat in the huge bed with his eyes shut, but when Tristram stepped softly on to the dais, he opened them at once, and whispered: “Damn you, you have kept me waiting!”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“I did not mean to die until tomorrow,” said Sylvester, labouring for breath. “Damme, I’ve a mind to make a push to last the night if only to spite that snivelling leech!... Tristram!”

“Sir?”

Sylvester grasped his wrist with thin, enfeebled fingers. “You’ll marry that child?”

“I will, Sylvester: don’t tease yourself!”

“Always meant Ludovic to have her ... damned young scoundrel! Often wondered. Do you think he was telling the truth—after all?”

Shield was silent. Sylvester’s pale lips twisted. “Oh, you don’t eh? Well, you can give him my ring if ever you see him again—and tell him not to pledge it! Take it: I’ve done with it.” He slid the great ruby from his finger as he spoke, and dropped it into Shield’s hand. “That Madeira was a mistake. I ought to have kept to the Burgundy. You can go now. Don’t let there be any mawkish sentiment over my death!”

“Very well, sir,” said Shield. He bent, kissed Sylvester’s hand, and without more ado turned and went out of the room.

Sylvester died an hour later. The doctor who brought the news to Shield, and to Beau Lavenham, both waiting in the library, said that he had only spoken once more before the end.

“Indeed, and what did he say?” inquired the Beau.

“He made a remark, sir—I may say, a gross remark!—derogatory to my calling!” said the doctor. “I shall not repeat it!”

Both cousins burst out laughing. The doctor cast a look of shocked dislike at them and went away, disgusted but not surprised by their behaviour. A wild, godless family he thought. They were not even profitable patients, these Lavenhams: he was glad to be rid of them.

“I suppose we shall never know what it was that he said,” remarked the Beau. “I am afraid it may have been a trifle lewd.”

“I should think probably very lewd,” agreed Shield.

“But how right, how fitting that Sylvester should die with a lewd jest on his lips!” said the Beau. He patted his ruffles. “Do you still mean to be married tomorrow?”

“No, that must be postponed,” Shield answered.

“I expect you are wise. Yet one cannot help suspecting that Sylvester would enjoy the slightly macabre flavour of a bridal presided over by his mortal remains.”

“Possibly, but I never shared Sylvester’s tastes,” said Shield.

The Beau laughed gently, and bent to pick up his hat and cane from the chair on which he had laid them. “Well, I do not think I envy you the next few days, Tristram,” he said. “If I can be of assistance to you, do by all means call upon me! I shall remain at the Dower House for some little time yet.”

“Thank you, but I don’t anticipate the need. I rely on Pickering. The charge of the estate would be better borne by him than by me. God knows what is to be done, with the succession in this accursed muddle!”

“There is one thing which ought to be done,” said the Beau. “Some effort should be made to find Ludovic.”

“A good deal easier said than done!” replied Sir Tristram. “He could not set foot in England if he were found, either. If he stayed in France he may have lost his head for all we know. It would be extremely like him to embroil himself in a revolution which was no concern of his.”

“Well,” said the Beau softly, “I do not want to appear unfeeling, but if Ludovic has lost his head, it would be of some slight interest to me to hear of it.”

“Naturally. Your position is most uncertain.”

“Oh, I am not repining,” smiled the Beau. “But I still think you ought—as trustee—to find Ludovic.”

During the next few days, however, Sir Tristram had enough to occupy him without adding a search for the heir to his duties. Upon the arrival of the lawyer, Sylvester’s will was read, a document complicated enough to try the temper of a more patient man than Shield. A thousand and one things had to be done, and in addition to the duties attendant upon the death of Sylvester there was the problem of Eustacie to worry her betrothed.

She accepted both her bereavement and the postponement of her wedding day with perfect fortitude, but when Sir Tristram asked her to name some lady living in the neighbourhood in whose charge she could for the present remain, she declared herself quite unable to do so. She had no acquaintance in Sussex, Sylvester having quarrelled with one half of the county and ignored the other half. “Besides,” she said, “I do not wish to be put in charge of a chaperon. I shall stay here.”

Sir Tristram, feeling that Sylvester had in his time created enough scandal in Sussex, was strongly averse from giving the gossips anything further to wag their tongues over. Betrothed or not, his and Eustacie’s sojourn under the same roof was an irregularity which every virtuous dame who thought the Lavenhams a godless family would be swift to pounce upon. He said: “Well, it is confoundedly awkward, but I don’t see what I can do about it. I suppose I shall have to let you stay.”

“I shall stay because I wish to,” said Eustacie, bristling. “I do not have to do what you say yet!”

“Don’t be silly!” said Sir Tristram, harassed, and therefore irritable.

“I am not silly. It is you who have a habit which I find much more silly of telling me what I must do and what I must not do. I am quite tired of being bien elevèe, and I think I will now arrange my own affairs.”

“You are a great deal too young to manage your own affairs, I am afraid.”

“That we shall see.”

“We shall, indeed. Have you thought to order your mourning clothes? That must be done, you know.”

“I do not know it,” said Eustacie. “Grandpère said I was not to mourn for him, and I shall not.”

“That may be, but this is a censorious world, my child, and it will be thought very odd if you don’t accord Sylvester’s memory that mark of respect.”

“Well, I shan’t,” said Eustacie simply.

Sir Tristram looked her over in frowning silence.

“You look very cross,” said Eustacie.

“I am not cross,” said Sir Tristram in a somewhat brittle voice, “but I think you should know that while I am prepared to allow you all the freedom possible, I shall expect my wife to pay some slight heed to my wishes.”

Eustacie considered this dispassionately. “Well, I do not think I shall,” she said. “You seem to me to have very stupid wishes—quite absurd, in fact.”

“This argument is singularly pointless,” said Sir Tristram, quelling a strong desire to box her ears. “Perhaps my mother will know better how to persuade you.”

Eustacie pricked up her ears at that. “I did not know you had a mother! Where is she?”

“She is in Bath. When the funeral is over I am going to take you to her, and put you in her care until we can be married.”

“As to that, it is not yet decided. Describe to me your mother! Is she like you?”

“No, not at all.”

“ Tant mieux! What, then, is she like?”

“Well,” said Sir Tristram lamely, “I don’t think I know how to describe her. She will be very kind to you, I know.”

“But what does she do?” demanded Eustacie. “Does she amuse herself at Bath? Is she gay?”

“Hardly. She does not enjoy good health, you see.”

“Oh!” Eustacie digested this. “No parties?”

“I believe she enjoys card parties.”

Eustacie grimaced expressively. “Me, I know those card parties. I think she plays Whist, and perhaps Commerce.”

“I dare say she does. I know of no reason why she should not,” said Shield rather stiffly.

“There is not any reason, but I do not play Whist or Commerce, and I find such parties quite abominable.”

“That need not concern you, for whatever Sylvester’s views may have been, I feel sure that my mother will agree that it would be improper for you to go out in public immediately after his death.”

“But if I am not to go to any parties, what then am I to do in Bath?”

“Well, I suppose you will have to reconcile yourself to a period of quiet.”

“Quiet?” gasped Eustacie. “ More quiet? No, and no, and no!”

He could not help laughing, but said: “Is it so terrible?”

“Yes, it is!” said Eustacie. “First I have to live in Sussex, and now I am to go to Bath—to play backgammon! And after that you will take me to Berkshire, where I expect I shall die.”

“I hope not!” said Shield.

“Yes, but I think I shall,” said Eustacie, propping her chin in her hands and gazing mournfully into the fire. “After all, I have had a very unhappy life without any adventures, and it would not be wonderful if I went into a decline. Only nothing that is interesting ever happens to me,” she added bitterly, “so I dare say I shall just die in childbed, which is a thing anyone can do.”

Sir Tristram flushed uncomfortably. “Really, Eustacie!” he protested.

Eustacie was too much absorbed in the contemplation of her dark destiny to pay any heed to him. “I shall present to you an heir,” she said, “and then I shall die.” The picture suddenly appealed to her; she continued in a more cheerful tone: “Everyone will say that I was very young to die, and they will fetch you from the gaming hell where you—”

“Fetch me from where?” interrupted Sir Tristram, momentarily led away by this flight of imagination.

“From a gaming hell,” repeated Eustacie impatiently. “Or perhaps the Cock Pit. It does not signify; it is quite unimportant! But I think you will feel great remorse when it is told to you that I am dying, and you will spring up and fling yourself on your horse, and ride ventre a terre to come to my deathbed. And then I shall forgive you, and—”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?” demanded Sir Tristram. “Why should you forgive me? Why should—What is this nonsense?”

Eustacie, thus rudely awakened from her pleasant dream, sighed and abandoned it. “It is just what I thought might happen,” she explained.

Sir Tristram said severely: “ It seems to me that you indulge your fancy a deal too freely. Let me assure you that I don’t frequent gaming hells or cockpits! Nor,” he added, with a flicker of humour, “am I very much in the habit of flinging myself upon my horses.”

“No, and you do not ride ventre a terre. It does not need that you should tell me so. I know!”

“Well, only on the hunting-field,” said Sir Tristram.

“Do you think you might if I were on my deathbed?” asked Eustacie hopefully.

“Certainly not. If you were on your deathbed it is hardly likely that I should be from home. I wish you would put this notion of dying out of your head. Why should you die?”

“But I have told you!” said Eustacie, brightening at this sign of interest. “I shall—”

“Yes, I know,” said Sir Tristram hastily. “You need not tell me again. There will be time enough to discuss such matters when we are married.”

“But I thought it was because you must have an heir that you want to marry me?” said Eustacie practically. “Grandpère explained it to me, and you yourself said—”

“Eustacie,” interposed Sir Tristram, “if you must talk in this extremely frank vein, I’ll listen, but I do beg of you not to say such things to anyone but me! It will give people a very odd idea of you.”

“Grandpère,” said Eustacie, with the air of one quoting a major prophet, “told me not to mind what I said, but on no account to be a simpering little innocente.”

“It sounds to me exactly the kind of advice Sylvester would give you,” said Shield.

“And you sound to me exactly the kind of person I do not at all wish to have for my husband!” retorted Eustacie. “It will be better, I think, if we do not marry!”

“Possibly!” said Sir Tristram, nettled. “But I gave my word to Sylvester that I would marry you, and marry you I will!”

“You will not, because I shall instantly run away!”

“Don’t be a little fool!” said Sir Tristram unwisely, and walked out of the room, leaving her simmering with indignation.

Her wrath did not last long, for by the time she had taken a vow to put her threat into execution, all the adventurous possibilities of such a resolve struck her so forcibly that Sir Tristram’s iniquities were quite ousted from her mind. She spent a pleasurable hour in thinking out a number of plans for her future. These were varied, but all of them impracticable, a circumstance which her common sense regretfully acknowledged. She was forced in the end to take her handmaiden into her confidence, having abandoned such attractive schemes as masquerading in male attire, or taking London by storm by enacting an unspecified tragic role at Drury Lane. It was a pity, but if one had the misfortune to be a person of Quality one could not become an actress; and although the notion of masquerading as a man appealed strongly to her, she was quite unable to carry her imagination farther than the first chapter of this exciting story. One would naturally leap into the saddle and ride off somewhere, but she could not decide where, or what to do.

Lucy, at first scandalized by the idea of a young lady setting out into the world alone, was not a difficult person to inspire. The portrait drawn for her edification of a shrinking damsel condemned to espouse a tyrant of callous instincts and brutal manners profoundly affected her mind, and by the time Eustacie had graphically described her almost inevitable demise in childbed, she was ready to lend her support to any plan her mistress might see fit to adopt. Her own brain, though appreciative, was not fertile, but upon being adjured to think of some means whereby a lady could evade a distasteful marriage and arrange her own life, she had the happy notion of suggesting a perusal of the advertisements in the Morning Post.

Together mistress and maid pored over the columns of this useful periodical. It was not, at first glance, very helpful, for most of its advertisements appeared to be of Well-matched Carriage Horses, or Superb Residences to be Hired for a Short Term. Further study, however, enlarged the horizon. A lady domiciled in Brook Street required a Governess with a knowledge of Astronomy, Botany, Water-Colour Painting, and the French Tongue to instruct her daughters. Dismissing the first three requirements as irrelevancies, Eustacie triumphantly pointed to the last, and said that here was the very thing.

That a governess’s career was unlikely to prove adventurous was a consideration that did not weigh with her for more than two minutes, for it did not take her longer than this to realize that her young charges would possess a handsome brother, who would naturally fall in love with his sisters’ governess. Persecution from his Mama was to be expected but after various vicissitudes it would be discovered that the humble governess was an aristocrat and an heiress, and all would end happily. Lucy, in spite of never having read any of the romances which formed her mistress’s chief study, saw nothing improbable in this picture, but doubted whether Sir Tristram would permit his betrothed to leave the Court.

“He will know nothing about it,” said Eustacie, “because I shall escape very late at night when he thinks I am in bed, and ride to Hand Cross to catch the mail coach to London.”

“Oh, miss, you couldn’t do that, not all by yourself!” said Lucy. “It wouldn’t be seemly!”

Paying no heed to this poor-spirited criticism, Eustacie clasped her hands round her knees, and began to ponder the details of her flight. The scheme itself might be fantastical, but there was a streak of French rationality in her nature which could be trusted to cope with the intricacies of the wildest escapade. She said: “We shall need the stable keys.”

“ We, miss?” faltered Lucy.

Eustacie nodded. “But yes, because I have never saddled a horse, and though I think it would be a better adventure if I did everything quite by myself, one must be practical, after all. Can you saddle a horse?”

“Oh yes, miss!” replied Lucy, a farmer’s daughter, “but—”

“Very well, then, that is arranged. And it is you, moreover, who must steal the stable keys. That will not be a great matter. And you will pack for me two bandboxes, but not any more, because I cannot carry much on horseback. And when I reach Hand Cross I shall let Rufus go, and it is certain that he will find his way home, and that will put my cousin Tristram in a terrible fright when he sees my horse quite riderless. I dare say he will think I am dead.”

“Miss, you don’t really mean it?” said Lucy, who had been listening open-mouthed.

“But of course I mean it,” replied Eustacie calmly. “When does the night mail reach Hand Cross?”

“Just before midnight, miss, but they do say we shall be having snow, and that would make the mail late as like as not. But, miss, it’s all of five miles to Hand Cross, and the road that lonely, and running through the Forest—oh, I’d be afeard!”

“I am not afraid of anything,” said Eustacie loftily.

Lucy sank her voice impressively. “Perhaps you haven’t ever heard tell of the Headless Horseman, miss?”

“No!” Eustacie’s eyes sparkled. “Tell me at once all about him!”

“They say he rides the Forest, miss, but never on a horse of his own,” said Lucy throbbingly. “You’ll find him up behind you on the crupper with his arms round your waist.”

Even in the comfortable daylight this story was hideous enough to daunt the most fearless. Eustacie shuddered, but said stoutly: “I do not believe it. It is just a tale!”

“Ask anyone, miss, if it’s not true!” said Lucy.

Eustacie, thinking this advice good, asked Sir Tristram at the first opportunity.

“The Headless Horseman?” he said. “Yes, I believe there is some such legend.”

“But is it true?” asked Eustacie breathlessly.

“Why, no, of course not!”

“You would not then be afraid to ride through the Forest at night?”

“Not in the least. I’ve often done so, and never encountered a headless horseman, I assure you!”

“Thank you,” said Eustacie. “Thank you very much!”

He looked a little surprised, but as she said nothing more very soon forgot the episode.

“My cousin Tristram,” Eustacie told Lucy, “says that it is nothing but a legend. I shall not regard it.”

Chapter Three

Had Sir Tristram been less preoccupied he might have found something to wonder at in his cousin’s sudden docility. As it was, he was much too busy unravelling the intricacies of Sylvester’s affairs with Mr Pickering to pay any heed to Eustacie’s change of front. If he thought about it at all he supposed merely that she had recovered from a fit of tantrums, and was heartily glad of it. He had half expected her to raise objections to his plan to convey her to Bath on the day after her grandfather’s burial, but when he broached the matter to her she listened to him with folded hands and downcast eyes, and answered never a word. A man more learned in female wiles might have found this circumstance suspicious; Sir Tristram was only grateful. He himself would be returning to Lavenham Court, but he told Eustacie that he did not expect to be obliged to remain for more than a week or two, after which time he would join the household in Bath, and set forward the marriage arrangements. Eustacie curtseyed politely.

She did not attend Sylvester’s funeral, which took place on the third day after his death, but busied herself instead with choosing from her wardrobe the garments she considered most suited to her new calling, and directing Lucy how to bestow them in the two bandboxes. Lucy, too devoted to her glamorous young mistress to think of betraying her, but very much alarmed at the idea of all the dangers she might encounter on her solitary journey, sniffed dolefully as she folded caracos and fichus and said that she would almost prefer to accompany Miss, braving the terror of the Headless Horseman, than be left behind to face Sir Tristram’s wrath. Eustacie, feeling that to take her maid with her would be to destroy at a blow all the romance of the adventure, told her to pretend the most complete ignorance of the affair, and promised that she would send for her to London at the first opportunity.

The forlorn sight of snowflakes drifting down from a leaden sky affected Lucy with a sense of even deeper foreboding, but only inspired her mistress to say she would wear her fur-lined cloak after all, and the beaver hat with the crimson plume.

Her actual escape from the Court was accomplished without the least difficulty, the servants having gone to bed, and Sir Tristram being shut up in the library with Beau Lavenham, who had come over from the Dower House to dine with his cousins. Eustacie had excused herself from their company soon after dinner, and gone up to her bedchamber. At eleven o’clock, looking quite enchanting in her riding-dress and crimson cloak and wide-brimmed beaver, with its red feather curling over to mingle with her dark, silky curls, she tiptoed down the back stairs, holding up her skirts in one hand and in the other grasping her whip and gloves. Behind her tottered the shrinking Lucy, carrying the two bandboxes and a lantern.

Halfway down the stairs Eustacie stopped. “I ought to have a pistol!”

“Good gracious sakes alive, miss!” whispered Lucy. “Whatever would you do with one of them nasty, dangerous things?”

“But, of course, I must have a pistol!” said Eustacie. “And I know where there is a pistol, too!” She turned, ignoring her abigail’s tearful protests, and ran lightly up the stairs again, and disappeared in the direction of the Long Gallery.

When she returned she was flushed and rather out of breath and carried in her right hand a peculiarly deadly-looking duelling pistol with a ten-inch barrel and silver sights. Lucy nearly dropped the bandboxes when she saw it, and implored her mistress in an agitated whisper to put it down.

“It is my cousin Ludovic’s,” said Eustacie triumphantly. “There were two of them in a case in the bedchamber that was his. How fortunate that I should have remembered! I saw them—oh, a long time ago!—when they put the new curtains in that room. Do you think it is loaded?”

“Oh, mercy, miss, I hope not!”

“I must be careful,” decided Eustacie, handling the weapon somewhat gingerly. “I think it has a hair-trigger, but I do not properly understand guns. Hurry, now!”

The snow had stopped falling some time before, but a light covering of it lay upon the ground, and there was a sharp, frosty nip in the air. The two females, one of them in high fettle and the other shivering with mingled cold and fright, trod softly down the drive that led from the house to the stables. No light showed in the coachman’s cottage, nor in the grooms’ quarters, and no one appeared to offer the least hindrance to Eustacie’s escape. She unlocked the door of the harness-room, pulled Lucy in after her, and setting the lantern down on the table, selected a bridle from the wall, and pointed out her saddle to the abigail. The next thing was to unlock the stable door, and to saddle and bridle Rufus, who seemed sleepy but not displeased to see his mistress. Lucy, dreading the consequences of this exploit, had begun to weep softly, but was told in a fierce whisper to saddle Rufus and to stop being a fool. She was an obedient girl, so she gulped down her tears, and heaved the saddle up on to Rufus’s back. The girths having been pulled tight, the headstall removed and the bridle put on, it only remained to attach the two bandboxes to the saddle. This called for a further search in the harness-room for a pair of suitable straps, and by the time these had been found and the bandboxes suspended from them, Eustacie had decided that the only possible way to carry a pistol was in a holster. A lady’s saddle not being equipped with this necessary adjunct, one had to be removed from a saddle of Sylvester’s, and buckled rather precariously on to the strap that held one of the bandboxes. It seemed to be far too large a holster for the slender pistol that was pushed into it, but that could not be helped. Eustacie remarked that it was fortunate there was snow upon the ground, since it would muffle the sound of Rufus’s hooves on the cobblestones, and led him out to the mounting-block. Once safely in the saddle, she reminded Lucy to lock all the doors again and to replace the keys, gave her her hand to kiss, and set off, not by way of the avenue leading to the closed lodge gates, but across the park to a farm track with an unguarded gate at the end of it which could be opened without dismounting.

This feat presently accomplished, Eustacie urged Rufus to a trot, and set off down the lane towards the rough road that ran north through Warninglid to join the turnpike road from London to Brighton at Hand Cross.

She knew the way well, but to one wholly unaccustomed to being abroad after nightfall, the countryside looked oddly unfamiliar in the moonlight. Everything was very silent, and the trees, grown suddenly to preposterous heights, cast black, distorted shadows that might, to those of nervous disposition, seem almost to hold a menace. Eustacie was glad to think that she was a de Vauban, and therefore afraid of nothing, and wondered why a stillness unbroken by so much as the crackle of a twig should, instead of convincing her that she was alone, have the quite opposite effect of making her imagine hidden dangers behind every bush or thicket. She was enjoying herself hugely, of course—that went without saying—but perhaps she would not be entirely sorry to reach Hand Cross and the protection of the mail coach. Moreover, the bandboxes bobbed up and down in a tiresome way, and one of them showed signs of working loose from its strap. She tried to rectify this, but only succeeded in making things worse.

The lane presently met the road to Hand Cross, and here the country began to be more thickly wooded, and consequently darker, for there were a good many pines and hollies which had not shed their foliage and so obscured the moonlight. It was very cold, and the carpet of snow made it sometimes difficult to keep to the road. Once Rufus stumbled almost into the ditch, and once some creature (only a fox, Eustacie assured herself) slipped across the road ahead of her. It began to seem a very long way to Hand Cross. A thorn bush beside the road cast a shadow that was unpleasantly like that of a misshapen man. Eustacie’s heart gave a sickening bump, and all at once she remembered the Headless Horseman and for one dreadful moment felt positive that he was close behind her. Every horrid story she had heard of St Leonard’s Forest now came unbidden to her mind, and she discovered that she could even recall with painful accuracy the details of A Discourse relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered and yet living, which she had found in a musty old volume in Sylvester’s library.

Past Warninglid the country grew more open, but although it was a relief to get away from the trees Eustacie knew, because Sylvester had told her, that the Forest had once covered all this tract of ground, and she was therefore unable to place any reliance on the Headless Horseman keeping to the existing bounds. She began to imagine moving forms in the hedges, and when, about a mile beyond the Slaugham turning, her horse suddenly put forward his ears at a flutter of white seen fleetingly in the gloom of a thicket and shied violently across the road, she gave a sob of pure fright, and was nearly unseated. She pulled Rufus up, but his plunge had done all that was necessary to set the troublesome bandbox free. It slipped from the strap and went rolling away over the snow, and came to rest finally quite close to the thicket at the side of the road.

Eustacie, patting Rufus’s neck with a hand which, though meant to convey reassurance, was actually trembling more than he was, looked after her property with dismay. She did not feel that she could abandon it (which she would have liked to have done), for in spite of being afraid of nothing, she was extremely loth to dismount and pick it up. She sat still for a few minutes, intently staring at the thicket. Rufus stared, too, with his head up and his ears forward. Nothing seemed to be stirring, however, and Eustacie, telling herself that the Headless Horseman was only a legend, and that the monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) had flourished nearly two hundred years ago and must surely be dead by now, gritted her teeth, and dismounted. She was disgusted to find that her knees were shaking, so to give herself more courage she pulled the duelling pistol out of the holster and grasped it firmly in her right hand.

Rufus, though suspicious of the thicket, allowed her to lead him up to the bandbox. She had just stooped to pick it up when the shrill neigh of a pony not five yards distant startled her almost out of her wits. She gave a scream of terror, saw something move in the shadow, and the next minute was struggling dementedly in the hold of a man who had seemed to pounce upon her from nowhere. She could not scream again because a hand was clamped over her mouth, and when she pulled the trigger of her pistol nothing happened. A sinewy arm was round her; she was half lifted, half dragged into the cover of the thicket; and heard a rough voice behind her growl: “Hit her over the head, blast the wench!”

Her terrified eyes, piercing the gloom, saw the dim outline of a face above her. Her captor said: “I’ll be damned if I do!” in the unmistakable accents of a gentleman, and bent over her, and added softly: “I’m sorry, but you mustn’t screech. If I take my hand away, will you be quiet—quite quiet?”

She nodded. At the first sound of his voice, which was oddly attractive, a large measure of her fright had left her. Now, as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she saw that he was quite a young man, and, judging from the outline of his profile against the moonlit sky, a very personable young man.

The voice of the man behind her spoke again. “Adone do! She’ll be the ruin o’ we! Let me shut her mouth for her!”

Eustacie made a strangled sound in her throat and tried to bring her hands up to clutch at the young man’s arm. The barrel of her pistol, which she was still clutching, gleamed in the moonlight, and caught the attention of her captor, who said under his breath: “If you let that pistol off I’ll murder you! Ned, take the gun away from her!”

A heavy hand wrenched it out of her grasp; the rough voice said: “It ain’t loaded. If you won’t do more, tie her up with a gag in her mouth!”

“No, no, she’s much too pretty,” said the young man, taking the pistol and slipping it into the pocket of his frieze coat “You won’t squeak, will you, darling?”

As well as she could Eustacie shook her head. The hand left her mouth and patted her cheek. “Good girl! Don’t be frightened: I swear I won’t hurt you!”

Eustacie, who had been almost suffocated, gasped thankfully: “I thought you were the Headless Horseman!”

“You thought I was what?”

“The Headless Horseman.”

He laughed. “Well, I’m not.”

“No. I can see you are not. But why did you seize me like that? What are you doing here?”

“If it comes to that, what are you doing here?”

“I am going to London,” replied Eustacie.

“Oh!” said the young man, rather doubtfully. “It’s no concern of mine, of course, but it’s a plaguey queer time to be going to London, isn’t it?”

“No, because I am going to catch the night mail at Hand Cross. You must instantly let me go, or I shall be too late.”

The other man, who had been listening in scowling silence, muttered: “She’ll have the pack of them down on us!”

“Be damned to you, don’t croak so!” said the young man. “Tether that nag of hers!”

“If you let her go—”

“I’m not going to let her go. You keep a look-out for Abel, and stop spoiling sport!”

“But certainly you are going to let me go!” interposed Eustacie in an urgent undertone. “I must go!”

The young man said apologetically: “The devil’s in it that I can’t let you go. I would if I could, but to tell you the truth—”

“There’s no call to do that!” growled his companion. “Dang me, master, if I don’t think you’re unaccountable crazed!”

Eustacie, who had had time by now to take stock of her surroundings, discovered that the darker shadows a little way off were not shadows at all, but ponies. There seemed to be about a dozen of them, and as she peered at them she was gradually able to descry what they were carrying. She had been living in Sussex for two years, and she was perfectly familiar with the appearance of a keg of brandy. She exclaimed: “You are smugglers, then!”

“Free traders, my dear, free traders!” replied the young man cheerfully. “At least, I am. Ned here is only what we call a land smuggler. You need not heed him.”

Eustacie was so intrigued that for the moment she forgot all about the mail coach. She had heard a great deal about smugglers, but although she knew that they were in general a desperate, cut-throat set of outlaws, she was so accustomed to her grandfather and most of his neighbours having dealings with them that she did not think their illicit trade in the least shocking. She said: “Well, you need not be afraid of me, I assure you. I do not at all mind that you are smug—free traders.”

“Are you French?” asked the young man.

“Yes. But tell me, why are you hiding here?”

“Excisemen,” he replied. “They’re on the watch. You know, the more I think of it the more it seems a very odd thing to me that you should be riding about by yourself in the middle of the night.”

“I have told you: I am going to London.”

“Well, it still seems very odd to me.”

“Yes, but, you see, I am running away,” explained Eustacie. “That is why I have to catch the night mail. I am going to London to be a governess.”

She had the impression that he was laughing, but he said quite gravely: “You’ll never do for a governess. You don’t look like one. Besides, you’re not old enough.”

“Yes, I am, and I shall look just like a governess.”

“You can’t know anything about governesses if that’s what you think.”

“Well, I don’t, but I thought it would be a very good thing to become.”

“I dare say you know best, but to my mind you’re making a mistake. From all I’ve heard, they have a devilish poor time of it.”

“I wish I could be a smuggler,” said Eustacie wistfully. “I think I should like that.”

“You wouldn’t do for a smuggler,” he replied, shaking his head. “We don’t encourage females in the trade. It’s too dangerous.”

“Well, I do not think it is fair that just because one is a female one should never be allowed to have any adventures!”

“You seem to me to be having a deal of adventure,” he pointed out. “I might easily have choked the life out of you—in fact, I may still if you don’t behave yourself. You’re in a mighty tight corner.”

“Yes, I know I am having an adventure now,” agreed Eustacie, “and, of course, I am enjoying it, but I should like to continue having adventures, which is a thing not at all easy to arrange.”

“No, I suppose it’s not,” said the free trader thoughtfully.

“You see, if I were a man I could be a highwayman, or a smuggler like you. I expect you have had many, many adventures.”

“I have,” said the young man rather ruefully. “So many that I’m devilish tired of ’em.”

“But I have had only this one small adventure, and I am not yet tired. That is why I am going to London.”

“If you take my advice,” said the young man, “you’ll give up this notion of being a governess. Try something else!”

“Well, perhaps I will be a milliner,” said Eustacie. “When I get to London I shall consider carefully what is best for me to do.”

“Yes, but you aren’t going to London tonight,” he said.

“I am going tonight! You do not understand! If I do not go tonight I shall be found, and then I shall have to go to Bath to play backgammon, and be married to a person without sensibility!”

He seemed to be much struck by this, and said seriously: “No, that would be too bad. We must think of something. You’ll have to stay with me, at least till Abel reports all clear, of course, but there’s bound to be a London coach through Hand Cross in the morning.”

“And I tell you that in the morning it will be too late!” said Eustacie crossly. “I find that you are quite abominable! You spoil everything, and, what is more, I think you are excessively impertinent, because you have taken my horse away and stolen my pistol!”

“No, I haven’t,” he replied. “I’ve only had your horse tethered so that he can’t stray. As for your pistol, you can have that back now if you wish,” he added, diving his hand into his pocket and pulling out the weapon. “Though what in the world you want with an unloaded duelling pistol—”

He stopped suddenly, feeling the balance of the gun, and stepped into the moonlight to examine it more closely. Eustacie saw that he was very tall and fair, dressed in a common frieze coat and breeches, with a coloured handkerchief round his neck, and his pale gold hair loosely tied back from his face. He looked up from the pistol in his hand, and said sharply: “How did you come by this?”

“Well, it is not precisely my own,” said Eustacie. “It—”

“I know that. Who gave it to you?”

“Nobody gave it to me!”

“Do you mean you stole it?”

“Of course I did not steal it! I have just borrowed it because I thought it would be a good thing to take a pistol with me. Du vrai, it belongs to my cousin Ludovic, but I feel very certain that he would not mind lending it to me, because he is of all my family the most romantic.”

The free trader came back to her side in two quick strides. “Who the devil are you?” he demanded.

“I do not see what concern it is—”

He put his hands on her shoulders and shook her. “Never mind that! Who are you?”

“I am Eustacie de Vauban,” she answered, with dignity.

“Eustacie de Vauban ... Oh yes, I have it! But how do you come to be in England?”

“Well, my grandpapa thought that they would send me to the guillotine if I stayed in France, so he fetched me away. But if I had known that he would make me marry my cousin Tristram, who is not amusing, I should have preferred infinitely to have gone to the guillotine.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said. “Is he at the Court? If you’re running way from him I’ll do what I can to help you!”

“Do you know him, then?” asked Eustacie, surprised.

“Do I know him! I’m your romantic cousin Ludovic!”

She gave a small shriek, which had the effect of making him clap his hand over her mouth again. “Fiend seize you, don’t make that noise! Do you want to bring the Excisemen down on me?”

She pulled his hand down and stood clasping it between both her own. “No, no, I promise I will be entirely quiet! I am so enchanted to meet you! I thought I never should, because Tristram said you could not set foot in England any more.”

“ I dare say he did,” replied Ludovic. “But here I am for all that. You’ve only to breathe one word and I shall have Bow Street Runners as well as Excisemen on my trail.”

She said fiercely: “I shall not breathe any word at all, and I think you are quite insulting to say that!”

He put his other hand over hers. “Did they tell you why I can’t set foot in England?”

“Yes, but I do not care. Did you kill that person whose name I have forgotten?”

“No, I did not.”

“ Bon! Then we must at once discover who did do it,” said Eustacie briskly. “I see now that this is a much better adventure than I thought.”

“Do you believe me, then?” he asked.

“But certainly I believe you!”

He laughed, and pulling her to him, kissed her cheek. “Well, save for Basil, you’re the only person who does.”

“Yes,” said Eustacie. “But me, I do not like Basil.”

He was about to answer her when Ned Bundy loomed up through the darkness and twitched his sleeve. “Abel,” he said laconically.

Eustacie heard the crunch of a pony’s hooves on the snow and the next moment saw the pony, with a short, thick-set man sitting astride the pack-saddle. Ludovic took her hand and led her up to the newcomer. “Well?” he said.

“There’s a dunnamany Excisemen out. We’ll have to make back to Cowfold—if we can,” said Mr Bundy, dismounting. He became aware of Eustacie, and favoured her with a long dispassionate look. “Where did that dentical wench come from?” he inquired.

“She’s my cousin. Can’t we win through to Hand Cross?”

Mr Bundy accepted Eustacie’s identity without comment and apparently without interest. “We’m not likely to win to Cowfold,” he replied. “They’re on to us.”

At this gloomy pronouncement his brother Ned, pulling him a little apart, broke into urgent, low-voiced speech. Ludovic strode over to join in the discussion, and returned in a few minutes to Eustacie’s side, saying briskly: “Well, I’m sorry for it, but I can’t let you go to London tonight. You’ll have to come with us.”

“Oh, I would much rather come with you,” Eustacie assured him. “Where are we going?”

“South,” he replied briefly. “Those damned riding-officers must have got wind of this convoy. There may be some rough work done before the night’s out, I warn you. Come along!”

He seized her by the wrist again and strode off with her to where her horse had been tethered, and without ceremony tossed her up into the saddle. Eustacie, seeing the two Bundys busy with the laden ponies, said emulatively: “Can I help to lead them, please?”

“No. Keep quiet.”

“But what can I do?”

“Nothing.”

Ned Bundy said something under his breath.

“I dare say, but I’m not going to have a cousin of mine hit over the head,” said Ludovic. “Ready, Abel?”

A grunt answered him; the train began to move southward, Abel at its head. Ludovic mounted a rough pony and brought up the rear, still holding Eustacie’s bridle. She took instant exception to this, and after a short but pungent argument he let her go free, much against the advice of Ned Bundy, who was ranging alongside the convoy, whipping up the stragglers.

Eustacie interrupted Mr Bundy’s muttered suggestions for the disposal of her person by announcing calmly that she was quite tired of him, a remark which surprised that ferocious gentleman so much that he could think of nothing to say, and retired towards the head of the train. “Why does he want to hit me on the head?” asked Eustacie, looking critically after him. “He seems to me entirely stupid.”

“Well, he don’t hold with women being mixed up in these affairs,” explained Ludovic. “You’re devilish in the way, you know.”

“But you do not mind having me with you, do you?” asked Eustacie anxiously.

“Lord, no, I like it!” replied Ludovic light-heartedly. “Only you won’t care for it if there’s any shooting done.”

“Yes, I shall,” said Eustacie. “In fact, I wish very much that you will load my pistol for me and give it back to me, because if there is to be shooting I should like to shoot, too.”

“It’s not your pistol,” retorted Ludovic. “It’s mine, and let me tell you that I don’t lend my duelling pistols to anyone. Where is the other?”

“I left it in the case. I think you should be glad to lend it to me.”

“Well, I’m not. Where did you get this notion I was romantic?”

“But you have had a very romantic life; of course, I knew you were romantic!”

“I’ve had a damned uncomfortable life. Tell me more about this marriage of yours. Why must you marry Tristram if you don’t want to? Is it Sylvester’s doing?”

“Yes, he made for me a mariage de convenance, but he is dead now, and I am going to arrange my own affairs.”

“What! is Sylvester dead?” exclaimed Ludovic.

“Yes, since three days. So now it is you who are Lord Lavenham.”

“Much good will that do me!” said Ludovic. “Where’s Basil?”

“He is at the Dower House, of course, and Tristram is at the Court.”

“I must try to see Basil. Something will have to be done about the succession. I can’t wear Sylvester’s shoes.”

“Well, I do not want him to wear them, and I think it would be better if you did not see him,” said Eustacie.

“Oh, there’s no harm in the Beau!” He broke off suddenly as the convoy halted, and grasped Rufus’s bridle above the bit, pulling him to a standstill. “Quiet, now!” He sat still, intently listening. Eustacie, straining her ears, caught faintly the sound of horses’ hooves in the distance. “Stay where you are!” ordered Ludovic, and went forward to the head of the train.

Eustacie, though she would have liked to have taken part in the council which was being held between the three men, thought it as well to obey. Her Cousin Ludovic seemed to be of an autocratic disposition, reminding her strongly of his grandfather.

He came back to her side after a short colloquy with the Bundys and said in his quick, authoritative way: “We shall have to try and lead these damned Excisemen off the trail. I don’t know what the devil to do with you, so you’d better come with me. After all, you wanted an adventure, and I can’t let you jaunt about the countryside alone at this hour of night.”

That a solitary journey to London might conceivably be attended by fewer dangers than a night spent hand-in-glove with a party of smugglers apparently did not occur to him. He dismounted from his pony, adding: “Besides, I want your horse.”

“Am I to ride the pony, then?” asked Eustacie, willing but dubious.

“No, I’m going to take you up before me,” he replied. “I can look after you better that way. Moreover the pony couldn’t keep up.” He gave the animal into the elder Bundy’s care as he spoke, and said: “Good luck to you, Abel. Don’t trouble your head on my account!”

“You’d best be careful,” said Mr Bundy gloomily. “You never had no sense and never will have.”

Ludovic had got up behind Eustacie by this time, and settled her in the crook of his arm. “It beats me how you can ride with a saddle like this,” he remarked, wheeling Rufus about. “And what in thunder is this thing?”

“It is a bandbox, of course!”

“Well, it’s devilishly in the way,” said Ludovic. “Do you mind if I cut it loose?”

“No, certainly I do not mind. I, too, am quite tired of it,” replied Eustacie blithely. “Besides, I have already lost the other one.”

The bandbox was soon got rid of. Eustacie watched it bounce to the ground, and remarked with a giggle that if Tristram found it he would be sure to think she had been murdered.

Ludovic had urged Rufus to a canter. He seemed to Eustacie to be heading straight in the direction of the pursuing Excisemen. She pointed this out to him, and he replied: “Of course I am. I told you I was going to lead them off the trail. If I can get them to chase me Abel will have time to reach a hiding-place he knows of. We’ll lead them into the Forest.”

“And when we have done that what shall we do?”

“Oh, give ’em the slip!” said Ludovic carelessly. “I shall have to think what’s to be done with you after that, but there’s no time to waste on that now.” He reined in as he spoke, and Eustacie saw that they had retraced their steps almost to the thicket where she had first encountered the train. She could hear movement somewhere near at hand, and the faint sound of voices. Ludovic rode softly forward, off the road into the shelter of the trees. “I thought as much,” he said. “They’re searching the thicket. Mustn’t give ’em time to find the pony tracks. Now keep quiet, and hold on to that pommel.”

His gyrations after that were bewildering, but apparently purposeful. It seemed to Eustacie, dutifully grasping the pommel, that they were circling round the thicket to the north. She could now hear plainly the sound of trampling hooves and snapping twigs.

“We must give the poor devils something to think about,” said Ludovic in her ear. “Don’t screech now!”

It was as well that he uttered this warning, for the immediate explosion of his pistol made Eustacie jump nearly out of her skin. She managed by the exercise of heroic self-control not to scream, but when a shot almost at once answered Ludovic’s she could not forbear a gasp of fright.

“I thought that would tickle them up,” said Ludovic. “Now fork!”

He wheeled the snorting, trembling Rufus, and let him have his head. Rufus plunged forward, crashing through the undergrowth with the maximum amount of noise and alarm; a shout sounded somewhere in the rear; another shot was fired; and Eustacie had the satisfaction of knowing that she was now fairly embroiled with His Majesty’s Excise Office. She removed one hand from the pommel and took a firm grasp of Ludovic’s coat, which seemed to her to afford a safer hold. He glanced down at her, smiling. “Frightened?”

“No!”

“Well, we’re going to have a trifle of a gallop now, so cling tight!”

They came out from the cover of the trees as he spoke on to a tract of more open ground. The moon was momentarily obscured by a drifting cloud, but there was light enough for the flying horse to be seen by its pursuers. Two shots cracked almost simultaneously, and Eustacie felt the arm that cradled her give a queer jerk, and heard her cousin catch his breath sharply. “Winged, by Gad!” he said. “Now, who’d have thought an Exciseman could shoot as straight as that?”

“Are you hurt?” Eustacie cried.

“Devil a bit!” was the cheerful response. He looked fleetingly back over his shoulder. “Four of ’em, I think. Riding hard, too. You can always trust an Exciseman to follow his nose ... That’s better.”

They were under cover again, and he let Rufus slacken his pace to a trot, bending him easily this way and that through the outskirts of the Forest. Eustacie, after a very little of this erratic progress, began to feel quite lost, but it was evident that her cousin knew the Forest like the palm of his hand, for they steadily penetrated farther into its darkness. Behind them the pursuit sounded as though it were in difficulties, but they had not yet outstripped it, and once Ludovic reined in altogether to give it time to come nearer, and, since it showed signs of abandoning the chase, fired his second pistol invitingly. This had the required effect; the Forest reverberated with shots, and they moved forward again, heading northward.

It was fully half an hour later before they finally lost the Excisemen, and Ludovic was swaying in the saddle.

“You are hurt!” Eustacie said, alarmed.

“Oh no, only a scratch!” he murmured. “Anyway, we’ve led them in such circles they’ll be hunting one another till daylight.”

Eustacie put her hands over his, and pulled Rufus up. “Where are you hurt?” she demanded.

“Left shoulder. I think we’d better take the risk and make Hand Cross.”

“Yes, but first I will bind up your shoulder. Are you bleeding very much?”

“Like a pig,” said Ludovic.

She slid to the ground, stiff and somewhat bruised, and said imperatively: “Get down! If you bleed like a pig you will die, and I do not at all want you to die.”

He laughed, but dismounted, and found himself steadied by two small but capable hands. He reeled and sank on his knees, saying: “Damme, I must be worse hit than I knew! You’d best take the horse and leave me.”

“I shall not leave you,” replied Eustacie, busily ripping the flounce off her petticoat. “I shall take you to Hand Cross.”

Receiving no answer, she looked closely at him and found to her dismay that he had fainted. For a moment she was at a loss to know what to do, but when she touched him and brought her hand away wet with blood, she decided that the most urgent need was to bind up his wound, and promptly set about the task of extricating him from his coat. It was by no means easy, but she accomplished it at last, and managed as well as she could for the lack of light to twist the strips of her petticoat round his shoulder. He regained consciousness while she was straining her bandage as tight as possible, and lay for a moment blinking at her.

“What in—oh, I remember!” he said faintly. “Give me some brandy. Flask in my coat.”

She tied a firm knot, found the brandy, and, raising his head, held the flask to his lips. He recovered sufficiently to struggle up and to put on his coat again. “You know, you’d be wasted on Tristram,” he told her. “Help me into the saddle, and we’ll make Hand Cross yet.”

“Yes, but this time it is I who will take the reins,” said Eustacie.

“Just as you say, my dear,” he replied meekly.

“And you will put your arms round me and not fall off.”

“Don’t worry, I shan’t fall off.”

Eustacie, finding a conveniently fallen tree trunk, led her weary horse to it, and by using it as a mounting-block contrived to get into the saddle. She then rode back to Ludovic, and adjured him to mount behind her. He managed to do this, but the effort very nearly brought on another swooning fit. He had recourse to the brandy again, which cleared his head sufficiently to enable him to say: “Follow this track; it’ll bring us out on to the pike road, north of Hand Cross. If you can wake old Nye at the Red Lion he’ll take me in.”

“What shall I do if I see an Exciseman?” inquired Eustacie.

“Say your prayers,” he replied irrepressibly.

No Exciseman, however, was encountered on the track that led through the Forest, and by the time they came out on to the turnpike road, a mile from Hand Cross, Eustacie was far too anxious about her cousin to have much thought to spare for a questing Excise-officer. Ludovic seemed to stay in the saddle more by instinct than by any conscious effort. Eustacie dared not urge Rufus even to a trot. She had drawn Ludovic’s sound arm round her waist, and held it there, clasping his slack hand. It seemed an interminable way to Hand Cross, but at last the lonely inn came into sight, a dark huddle against the sky. It was by now long after midnight, and no light shone behind the shuttered windows. Eustacie pulled Rufus up before the door and let go of Ludovic’s hand. It fell nervelessly to his side; she realized that he must have swooned again; he was certainly sagging against her very heavily; she hoped he would not fall out of the saddle when she dismounted. She slid down, and was relieved to find that he only fell forward across Rufus’s neck. The next moment she had grasped the bellpull and sent an agitated peal ringing through the silent inn.

It was answered so speedily that Eustacie, who had heard rumours that Joseph Nye, of the Red Lion, knew more about the free traders that he would admit, instantly suspected that he had been waiting up for the very convoy she had met. He opened the door in person, fully dressed, and holding a lantern, and looking a good deal startled. When he saw Eustacie he stared as though he could not believe his eyes, and gasped: “Miss! Why, Miss! ”

Eustacie grasped his arm urgently. “Please help me at once! I have brought my cousin Ludovic, and he said you would take him in, but he is wounded, and I think dying!” With which, because she had been through a great deal of excitement and was quite worn out by it, she burst into tears.

Chapter Four

The landlord took an involuntary step backward.

“Miss, have you gone mad?”

“No!” sobbed Eustacie.

He looked incredulously out into the moonlight, but when he saw the sagging figure on Rufus’s back he gave an exclamation of horror, thrust his lantern into Eustacie’s hand, and strode out. He was a big man, with mighty muscles, and he lifted Ludovic down from the saddle with surprising ease, and carried him into the inn, and lowered him on to a wooden settle by the fireplace. “My God, what’s come to him? What’s he doing here?” he demanded under his breath.

“An Exciseman shot him. Oh, do you think he will die?”

“Die! No! But if he’s found here—!” He broke off. “I must get that horse stabled and out of sight. Stay you here, miss, and don’t touch him! Lordy, lordy, this is a pretty kettle of fish!” He took a taper from the high mantelpiece, kindled it at the lantern’s flame, and gave it to Eustacie. “Do you light them candles, miss, and keep as quiet as you can! I’ve people putting up in the house.” He took up the lantern as he spoke and went out of the inn, softly closing the door behind him.

A branch of half-burned candles was standing on the table. Eustacie lit them, and turned to look fearfully down at her cousin.

He was lying with one arm hanging over the edge of the settle, and his face alarmingly pale. Not knowing what to do for him, she sank down on her knees beside him and lifted his dangling hand, and held it between her own. For the first time she was able to see him clearly; she thought that had she met him in daylight she must have known him for a Lavenham, for here was Sylvester’s hawk-nose and humorous mouth, softened indeed by youth but unmistakable. He was lean and long-limbed, taller than Sylvester had been, but with the same slender hands and arched feet, and the same cleft in his wilful chin.

He seemed to Eustacie scarcely to breathe; she laid his arm across his chest and loosened the handkerchief about his neck. “Oh, please, Cousin Ludovic, don’t die!” she begged.

She heard a slight movement on the stairs behind her, and, turning her head, beheld a tall woman in a dressing-gown standing on the top step with a candle in her hand, looking down at her. She sprang up and stood as though defending the unconscious Ludovic, staring up at the newcomer in a challenging way.

The lady with the candle said with a twinkle in her grey eyes: “Don’t be alarmed! I’m no ghost, I assure you. You woke me with your ring at the bell, and because I’m of a prying disposition, I got up to see what in the world was going forward.” She came down the stairs as she spoke, and saw Ludovic. Her eyebrows went up, but she said placidly:

“I see I’ve thrust myself into an adventure. Is he badly hurt?”

“I think he’s dying,” answered Eustacie tragically. “He has bled, and bled, and bled!”

The lady put down her candle and came to the settle. “That sounds very bad, certainly, but perhaps it is not desperate after all,” she said. “Shall we see where he is hurt?”

“Nye said I was not to touch him,” replied Eustacie doubtfully.

“Oh, he’s a friend of Nye’s, is he?” said the lady.

“No—at least, yes, in a way he is. He is my cousin, but you must not ask me anything about him, and you must not tell anyone that you have ever seen him!”

“Very well, I won’t,” said the lady imperturbably.

At that moment the landlord came into the coffee-room from the back of the house, followed by a little man with a wizened leathery face and thin legs. When he saw the tall woman, Nye looked very much discomfited, and said in his deep, rough voice: “I beg your pardon, ma’am: you’ve been disturbed. It’s nothing—naught but a lad I know who’s been getting into trouble through a bit of poaching.”

“Of course, he would be poaching in the middle of February,” agreed the lady. “You had better get him to bed and take a look at his hurt.”

“It’s what I’m going to do, ma’am,” returned Nye in a grim voice. “Take his legs, Clem!”

Eustacie watched the two men carefully lift her cousin from the settle and begin to carry him upstairs, and turned her attention to the tall woman, who was regarding her with a kind of amused interest. “I dare say it seems very odd to you,” she said austerely, “but you should not have come downstairs.”

“I know,” apologized the lady, “but pray don’t tell me to go to bed again, for I couldn’t sleep a wink with an adventure going on under my very nose! Let me present myself to you: I’m one Sarah Thane, a creature of no importance at all, travelling to London with my brother, whom you may hear snoring upstairs.”

“Oh!” said Eustacie. “Of course, if you quite understand that this is a very secret affair—”

“Oh, I do!” said Miss Thane earnestly.

“But I must warn you that there is a great deal of danger.”

“Nothing could be better!” declared Miss Thane. “You must know that I have hitherto led the most humdrum existence.”

“Do you, too, like adventure?” asked Eustacie, looking her over with a more lenient eye.

“My dear ma’am, I have been looking for adventure all my life!”

“Well,” said Eustacie darkly, “this is an adventure of the most romantic, and it is certain that my cousin Tris—that people will come to search for me. You must promise not to betray me, and in particular not my cousin Ludovic, who is not permitted to set foot in England, you understand.”

“No power on earth shall ring a syllable from me,” Miss Thane assured her.

“Then perhaps I will let you help me to conceal my cousin Ludovic,” said Eustacie handsomely. “Only I think it will be better if I do not tell you anything at all until I have spoken with him, because I do not know him very well, and perhaps he would prefer that you should know nothing.”

“Oh no, don’t tell me anything!” said Miss Thane. “I feel it would almost spoil it for me if you explained it. You’re not eloping with your cousin, by any chance?”

“But, of course, I am not eloping with him! Voyons, how could I elope with him when I have only just met him? It would be quite absurd!”

“Oh, if you have only just met him, I suppose it would,” agreed Miss Thane regretfully. “It is a pity, for I have often thought that I should like to assist an elopement. However, one can’t have everything. You know, I feel very strongly that we ought to see what can be done for that wound of his. Not that I wish to interfere, of course.”

“You are entirely right,” said Eustacie. “I shall immediately go up to him. You may come with me if you like.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Thane meekly.

Joseph Nye had carried Ludovic to a little bedchamber at the back of the house and laid him upon his side on the chintz-hung bed. The tapster was kindling a fire in the grate, and Nye had just taken off Ludovic’s coat and laid bare his shoulder when the two women came into the room.

Eustacie shuddered at the sight of the ugly wound, still sluggishly bleeding, but Miss Thane went up to the bed and watched what Nye was about. In spite of their size, his hands were deft enough. Miss Thane nodded, as though satisfied, and said: “Can you get the bullet out, do you think?”

“Ay, but I’ll want water and bandages. Clem! leave that and fetch me a bowl and all the linen you can find!”

“You had better bring some brandy as well,” added Miss Thane, taking the bellows out of the tapster’s hands and beginning to ply them.

Eustacie, standing at the foot of the bed, watched Nye draw from his pocket a clasp-knife and open it, and somewhat hastily quitted her post. “I think,” she said in a rather faint voice, “that it will be better if it is I who attend to the fire, mademoiselle, and you who assist Nye. It is not that I do not like blood,” she explained, “but I find that I do not wish to watch him dig bullets out of my cousin Ludovic.”

Miss Thane at once surrendered the bellows into her charge, saying that such scruples were readily understandable. Clem came back in a few minutes with a bowl and a quantity of old linen, and for quite some time Eustacie kept her attention strictly confined to the fire.

Miss Thane, finding that the landlord knew what he was about, silently did what he told her, offering no criticism. Only when he had extracted the bullet and was bathing the wound did she venture to inquire in a low voice whether he thought any vital spot had been touched. Nye shook his head.

“I’ll get some Basilicum Powder,” said Miss Thane, and went softly away to her own room.

By the time the powder had been applied and the shoulder bandaged, Ludovic was showing signs of recovering consciousness. Miss Thane’s hartshorn held under his nose made his eyelids flutter, and a little neat brandy administered by Nye brought him fully to his senses. He opened a pair of dazed blue eyes, and blinked uncomprehendingly at the landlord.

“Eh, Mr Ludovic, that’s better!” Nye said.

Ludovic’s gaze wandered past him to Miss Thane, dwelt on her for a frowning moment, and returned to the contemplation of Nye’s square countenance. A look of recognition dawned. “Joe?” said Ludovic in a faint, puzzled voice.

“Ay, it’s Joe, sir. Do you take it easy, now!”

Remembrance came back to Ludovic. He struggled up on his sound elbow. “Damn that Exciseman! The child—a cousin of mine—where is she?”

Eustacie at the first sound of his voice had dropped the bellows and flown to the bedside. “I’m here, mon cousin! ” she said, dropping on her knees beside him.

He put out his sound hand and took her chin in it, turning her face up that he might scrutinize it. “I’ve been wanting to look at you, my little cousin,” he said. A smile hovered round his mouth. “I thought as much! You’re as pretty as any picture.” He saw a tear sparkling on her cheek, and said at once: “What are you crying for? Don’t you like your romantic cousin Ludovic?”

“Oh yes, but I thought you were going to die!”

“Lord, no!” he said cheerfully. He let Nye put him back on to the pillows, and drew Eustacie’s hand to his lips, and kissed it. “You must promise me you’ll not go further with this trip of yours to London. It won’t do.”

“Oh no, of course I shall not! I shall stay with you.”

“Egad, I wish you could!” he said.

“But certainly I can. Why should I not?”

“ Les convenances,” murmured Ludovic.

“Ah bah, I do not regard them! When one is engaged upon an adventure it is not the time to be thinking of such things. Besides, if I do not stay with you, I shall have to marry Tristram, because I have lost both my bandboxes, which makes it impossible that I should any longer go to London.”

“Oh well, you can’t marry Tristram, that’s certain!” said Ludovic, apparently impressed by this reasoning.

Nye interposed at this point. “Mr Ludovic, what be you doing here?” he demanded. “Have you gone crazy to come into the Weald? Who shot you?”

“Some damned Exciseman. We landed a cargo of brandy and rum two nights ago, and I’d a fancy to learn what’s been going forward here. I came up with Abel.”

Nye laid a quick hand across his lips and glanced warningly in Miss Thane’s direction.

“You needn’t regard me,” she said encouragingly. “I am pledged to secrecy.”

Ludovic turned his head to look at her. “I beg pardon, but who in thunder are you?” he said.

“It’s Miss Thane, sir, who’s putting up in the house.”

“Yes,” interrupted Eustacie, “and I think she is truly very sensible, mon cousin, and she would like infinitely to help us.”

“But we don’t want any help!”

“Certainly we want help, because Tristram will search for me, and perhaps the Excisemen for you, and you must be hidden.”

“And that’s true, too,” muttered Nye. “You’ll stay where you are tonight, sir, but it ain’t safe for longer. I’ll have you where you can slip into the cellar if the alarm’s raised.”

“I’ll be damned if I’ll be put in any cellar!” said Ludovic. “I’ll be off as soon as I can stand on my feet.”

“No, you will not,” said Eustacie. “I have quite decided that you must stop being a free trader and become instead Lord Lavenham.”

“That seems to me a most excellent idea,” remarked Miss Thane. “I suppose it will be quite easy?”

“If Sylvester’s dead, I am Lord Lavenham, but it don’t help me. I can’t stay in England.”

“But we are going to discover who it was who killed that man whose name I cannot remember,” explained Eustacie.

“Oh, are we?” said Ludovic. “I’m agreeable, but how are we going to set about it?”

“Well, I do not know yet, but we shall arrange a plan, and I think perhaps Miss Thane might be very useful, because she seems to me to be a person of large ideas, and when it is shown to her that she holds your life in her hands, she will be interested, and wish to assist us.”

“Do I really hold his life in my hands?” inquired Miss Thane. “If that’s so, of course I’m much interested. I will certainly assist you. In fact, I wouldn’t be left out of this for the world.”

Ludovic moved on his pillows, and said with a grimace of pain: “You seem to know so much, ma’am, that you may as well know also that I am wanted by the Law for murder!”

“Are you?” said Miss Thane, gently removing one of the pillows. “How shocking! Do you think you could get a little sleep if we left you?”

He looked up into her face and gave a weak laugh. “Ma’am, take care of my cousin for me till morning, and I shall be very much in your debt.”

“Why, certainly!” said Miss Thane in her placid way.

Ten minutes later Eustacie was ensconced in a chair by the fire in Miss Thane’s bedchamber, gratefully sipping a cup of hot milk. Miss Thane sat down beside her, and said with her friendly smile: “I hope you mean to tell me all about it, for I’m dying of curiosity, and I don’t even know your name.”

Eustacie considered her for a moment. “Well, I think I will tell you,” she decided. “I am Eustacie de Vauban, and my cousin Ludovic is Lord Lavenham of Lavenham Court. He is the tenth Baron.”

Miss Thane shook her head. “It just shows how easily one may be mistaken,” she said. “I thought he was a smuggler.”

“He prefers,” said Eustacie, with dignity, “that one should call him a free trader.”

“I’m sorry,” apologized Miss Thane. “Of course, it is a much better title. I should have known. What made him take to s—free trading? It seems a trifle unusual.”

“I see that I must explain to you the talisman ring,” said Eustacie, and drew a deep breath.

Miss Thane, a sympathetic listener, followed the story of the talisman ring with keen interest, only interpolating a question when the tale became too involved to be intelligible. She accepted Ludovic’s innocence without the smallest hesitation, and said at the end of the recital that nothing would give her greater pleasure than to assist in unmasking the real culprit.

“Yes,” said Eustacie, “and me, I think that it was perhaps my cousin Tristram, for he has a collection of jewellery, and, besides, he is a person who might murder people—except that he is not at all romantic,” she added.

“He sounds very disagreeable,” said Miss Thane.

“He is—very! And, do you know, I have suddenly thought that perhaps I had better marry him, because then he would have to show me his collection, and if I found the talisman ring it would make everything right for Ludovic.”

Miss Thane bent down to poke the fire. She said with a slight tremor in her voice: “But then if you did not find the ring it would be tiresome to have married him all to no purpose. And one has to consider that he might not wish to marry you.”

“Oh, but he does!” said Eustacie. “In fact, we are betrothed. That is why I have run away. He has no conversation. Moreover, he said that if I went to London, I should not find myself in any way remarkable.”

“He was wrong,” said Miss Thane with conviction.

“Yes, I think he was wrong, but you see he is not sympathique, and he does not like women.”

Miss Thane blinked at her. “Are you sure?” she said. “I mean, if he wants to marry you—”

“But he does not want to marry me! It is just that he must have an heir, and because Grandpère made for us a mariage de convenance. Only Grandpère is dead now, and I am not going to marry a person who says that he would not care if I went to the guillotine in a tumbril!”

“Did he really say that?” inquired Miss Thane. “He must be a positive Monster!”

“Well, no, he did not say exactly that,” admitted Eustacie. “But when I asked him if he would not be sorry to see me, a jeune fille, in a tumbril, and dressed all in white, he said he would be sorry for anyone in a tumbril, ‘whatever their age or sex or—or apparel’!”

“You need say no more; I can see that he is a person of no sensibility,” said Miss Thane. “I am not surprised that you ran away from him to join your cousin Ludovic.”

“Oh, I didn’t!” replied Eustacie. “I mean, I never knew I was going to meet Ludovic. I ran away to become a governess.”

“Forgive me,” said Miss Thane, “but have you then just met your cousin Ludovic by chance, and for the first time?”

“But yes, I have told you! And he said I should not do for a governess.” She sighed. “I wish I could think of something to be which is exciting! If only I were a man!”

“Yes,” agreed Miss Thane. “I feel very strongly that you should have been a man and gone smuggling with your cousin.”

Eustacie threw her a glowing look. “That is just what I should have liked! But Ludovic says they never take females with them.”

“How wretchedly selfish!” said Miss Thane in accents of disgust.

“Yes, but I think it is not perhaps entirely Ludovic’s fault, for he said he liked to have me with him. But the others did not like it at all, in particular Ned, who wanted to hit me on the head.”

“Is Ned a s—free trader too?”

“Yes, and Abel. But they are not precisely free traders, but only land smugglers, which is, I think, a thing inferior.”

“It sounds quite inferior,” said Miss Thane. “Did you meet your cousin Ludovic, and Ned, and Abel on your way here?”

“Yes, and when he seized me of course I thought Ludovic was the Headless Horseman!”

Miss Thane was regarding her as one entranced. “Of course!” she echoed. “I suppose you were expecting to meet a headless horseman?”

“Well,” replied Eustacie judicially, “my maid told me that he rides the Forest, and that one finds him up on the crupper behind one, but my cousin Tristram said that it was only a legend.”

“The more I hear about your cousin Tristram,” said Miss Thane, “the more I am convinced he is not at all the husband for you.”

“No, and what is more he is thirty-one years old, and he does not frequent gaming hells or cockpits, and when I asked him if he would ride ventre a terre to come to my deathbed, he said ‘Certainly not’!”

“This is more shocking than all the rest!” declared Miss Thane. “He must be quite heartless!”

“Yes,” said Eustacie bitterly. “He says I am not in the least likely to die.”

“A man like that,” pronounced Miss Thane, “would be bound to say the Headless Horseman was only a legend.”

“That is what I thought, but my cousin Ludovic was not after all the Headless Horseman, and I must admit that I have not yet seen him—or the Dragon which was once in the Forest.”

“Really, you have had a very dull ride when one comes to think of it.”

“Yes, until I met my cousin Ludovic, and after that it was not dull, because when he discovered who I was Ludovic said I must go with him, and I helped to lead the Excisemen into the Forest. He mounted behind me on Rufus, you see. That was when I lost the other bandbox.”

“Oh, you had a bandbox?”

“But yes, I had two, for one must be practical, you understand. But one I dropped just before I met Ludovic, and I forgot about that one. We threw the other away.”

Miss Thane bent over the fire again rather hastily. “I expect it was the right thing to do,” she said in an unsteady voice.

“Well, it was in the way,” explained Eustacie. “But I must say it now becomes awkward a little because all my things were in it.”

“Don’t let a miserable circumstance like that worry you!” said Miss Thane. “I will lend you a nightdress, and tomorrow we will decide whether to go and look for the bandboxes (though I feel that would be a spiritless thing to do) or whether to break into your home at dead of night and steal some more clothes for you.”

This suggestion appealed instantly to Eustacie. While she got ready for bed she discussed with Miss Thane the various ways in which it might be possible to break into the Court. Miss Thane entered into every plan with an enthusiasm which made Eustacie say as she blew out the candle: “I am very glad I have met you. I shall tell my cousin Ludovic that he must permit you to share the adventure.”

The excitements of the night had quite worn her out, and it was not long before she fell asleep, curled up beside Miss Thane in, the big fourposter.

Sarah Thane lay awake for some little time. It seemed to her that, she had undertaken a responsibility that would keep her well occupied during the immediate future. What would be the outcome of it all she had not the smallest idea; but she was fully determined, being entered into the adventure, to remain in it to the finish.

She was twenty-eight years old, an orphan, and for the past ten years had been living with her brother, an easy-going baronet some six or seven years her senior. Having been left in his ward, she considered, upon leaving school, that her proper place was at his side. Sir Hugh had not the least objection, so in defiance of several female relatives who one and all expressed the most complete disapproval she assumed control of the old manor-house in Gloucestershire, and when Sir Hugh took it into his head to travel (which was often) packed her trunks and went with him. For the first few years she had consented to take an elderly cousin with her as chaperone; the elderly cousin was indeed still nominally her chaperone, but she had long since ceased to accompany Sir Hugh and his sister upon their erratic journeys. For no one could deny that Sarah Thane was very well able to take care of herself, and the elderly cousin had not in the least enjoyed wandering about Europe in the wake of Sir Hugh’s vague fancy. Sarah, on the other hand, enjoyed it so much that she had never yet been tempted to exchange the companionship of a brother for that of a husband.

She and Sir Hugh were, at the moment, on their way to town, having been visiting friends in the neighbourhood of Brighton. They had spent a dull fortnight, and were now intending to spend two or three months in London. Their presence at the Red Lion was attributable to two causes, the first being an incipient cold in Sir Hugh’s head, and the second the excellence of Mr Nye’s brandy. Their original intention had been to stop only for a change of horses, but by the time they had arrived at Hand Cross it had begun to snow, and Sir Hugh had sneezed twice. While the horses were being taken out of the shafts, Sir Hugh, regarding the weather with a jaundiced eye, had let down the chaise-window to call for some brandy. It had been brought to him; he had taken one sip, and announced his intention of putting up at the Red Lion for the night.

“Just as you wish,” had said Miss Thane, most admirable of sisters. “But I don’t fancy the snow will amount to much.”

“Snow?” said Sir Hugh. “Oh, the snow! I believe I’m going to have a demmed bad cold, Sally.”

“Then we had better push on to London,” said Miss Thane.

“This brandy,” said Sir Hugh earnestly, “is some of the best I’ve tasted.”

“Oh!” said Miss Thane, instantly comprehending the situation, “I see!”

That the excellence of the brandy was not a matter of interest to her was an objection she did not dream of putting forward. She was far too well used to Sir Hugh’s vagaries not to accept them with equanimity, and she had followed him into the inn, resigning herself to a spell of inaction.

From this she seemed to have been miraculously saved. Sir Hugh might not know it, but there was now small chance of his journey being resumed upon the morrow. His sister had stumbled upon an adventure which appealed forcibly to her ever-lively sense of humour, and she had no intention of abandoning it.

In the morning she awoke before Eustacie, and got up out of bed without disturbing her. As soon as she was dressed she went along the passage to her brother’s room, and found him sitting up in bed, with his night-cap still on, being waited on by the tapster, who seemed to combine his calling with the duties of a general factotum. A tray piled high with dishes was placed on a table by the bed: Sir Hugh was breakfasting.

He gave his sister a sleepy smile as she entered the room, and, of habit rather than of necessity, picked up his quizzing-glass, and through it inspected a plate of grilled ham and eggs from which Clem had lifted the cover. He nodded, and Clem heaved a sigh of relief.

Miss Thane, taking in at a glance the proportions of this breakfast, shook her head, and said: “My dear, you must be very unwell indeed! Only one plate of ham, and those few wretched slices of beef to follow! How paltry!”

Sir Hugh, accustomed like so many large men to being a butt, received this sally with unruffled placidity, and waved Clem away. The tapster went out, and Miss Thane thoughtfully handed her brother the mustard. “What are your engagements in town, Hugo?”

Sir Hugh reflected while masticating a mouthful of ham. “Have I any?” he asked after a pause.

“I don’t know, Should you mind remaining here for a time?”

“Not while the Chambertin lasts,” replied Sir Hugh simply. He consumed another mouthful, and added: “It’s my belief the liquor in this place never paid duty at any port.”

“No, I think it was probably all smuggled,” agreed Miss Thane. “I met a smuggler last night, when you had gone to bed.”

“Oh, did you?” Sir Hugh washed down the ham with a draught of ale, and emerged from the tankard to say, as a thought occurred to him: “You ought to be more careful. Where did you meet him?”

“He arrived at the inn, very late, and wounded. He’s here now.”

A faint interest gleamed in Sir Hugh’s eye. He lowered his fork. “Did he bring anything with him?”

“Yes, a lady,” said Miss Thane.

“No sense in that,” said Sir Hugh, his interest fading. He went on eating, but added in a moment: “Couldn’t have been a smuggler.”

“He is a smuggler, a nobleman, and one of the most handsome young men I have ever clapped eyes on,” said Miss Thane. “Tell me now, did you ever hear of one Ludovic Lavenham?”

“No,” said Sir Hugh, exchanging his empty plate for one covered with slices of cold beef.

“Are you sure, Hugo? He was used to play cards at the Cocoa-Tree—rather a wild youth, I apprehend.”

“They fuzz the cards at the Cocoa-Tree,” said Sir Hugh. “It’s full of Greeks. Foulest play in town.”

“This boy lost a valuable ring at play there, and was afterwards accused of having shot the man he played against,” persisted Miss Thane.

“I was very nearly done-up myself there once,” said Sir Hugh reminiscently. “Found a regular Captain Sharp at the table, thought the dice ran devilish queerly—”

“Yes, dear, but do you remember?”

“Of course I remember. Sent for a hammer, split the dice, and found they were up-hills, just as I’d expected.”

“No, not that,” said Miss Thane patiently. “Do you recall this other affair?”

“What other affair?”

Miss Thane sighed, and began painstakingly to recount all that Eustacie had told her. Sir Hugh listened to her with an expression of considerable bewilderment, and at the end shook his head. “It sounds a demmed silly story to me,” he said. “You shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

When it was conveyed to him that his sister had pledged herself to assist these strangers in whatever perilous course they might decide to adopt he at first protested as forcibly as a man of his natural indolence could be expected to, and finally begged her not to embroil him in any crazy adventure.

“I won’t,” promised Miss Thane. “But you must swear an oath of secrecy, Hugh!”

Sir Hugh laid down his knife and fork. “Sally, what the deuce is all this about?” he demanded.

She laughed. “My dear, I’ve scarcely any more notion than you have. But I am quite sure of my clear duty, which is to chaperone the little heroine. Moreover, I admit to a slight feeling of curiosity to see the wicked cousin. I am at present at a loss to decide whether Sir Tristram Shield is the villain of the piece or merely a plain man goaded to madness.”

“Shield?” repeated Sir Hugh. “Member of Brooks’s?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“If he’s the man I’m thinking of he hunts with the Quorn. Bruising rider to hounds. Good man in a turn-up, too.”

“This sounds very promising,” said Miss Thane.

“Spars with Mendoza,” pursued Sir Hugh. “If he’s the man, I’ve met him at Mendoza’s place. But I dare say I’m thinking of someone else.”

“What is he like?” inquired Miss Thane.

“I’ve told you,” said Sir Hugh, buttering a slice of bread. “He’s got a right,” he added helpfully.

Miss Thane gave it up, and went back to her own bedchamber to see how her protégée did.

Eustacie, not a whit the worse for her adventure, was trying to arrange her hair before the mirror. As she had never attempted anything of the kind before the result was not entirely successful. Miss Thane laughed at her, and took the brush and the pins out of her hand. “Let me do it for you,” she said. “How do you feel this morning?”

Eustacie announced buoyantly that she had never felt better. Her first and most pressing desire was to see how her cousin did, so as soon as Miss Thane had finished dressing her hair they went off to the little back bedchamber.

Nye was with Ludovic, apparently trying to induce him to descend into the cellar. Ludovic, whose eyes were a trifle too bright and whose cheeks were rather flushed, was sitting up in bed with a bowl of thin gruel. As the two ladies came into the room he was saying carelessly: “Don’t croak so, Joe! I tell you I have it all fixed.” He looked up and greeted his visitors with a smile of pure mischief. “Good morning, my cousin! Ma’am, your very obedient! Have you seen any Excisemen below stairs yet?”

“Mr Ludovic, I tell you your tracks lead right to my door, and there’s blood on the snow!”

“You’ve told me that twice already,” said Ludovic, quite unmoved. “Why don’t you send Clem to clear the snow away?”

“I have sent him to clear it away, sir, but don’t you realize they’ll be able to trace you all the way from the Forest?”

“Of course I realize it! Haven’t I made my plans? Eustacie, my sweet cousin, will you have me for your groom?”

“But yes, I will have you for anything you wish!” said Eustacie instantly.

His eyes danced. “Will you so? Begad, if I can settle my affairs creditably I’ll remind you of that!”

“Sir, will you listen to reason?” implored Nye.

An imperious finger admonished him. “Quiet, you! I’ll thank you to remember I’m in the saddle now, Joe.”

“Are you indeed, Mr Ludovic? Well, I’ll do no pillion-riding behind you, for well I know what will come of it!”

“Take away this gruel!” commanded Ludovic. “And get it into your head that I’m not Mr Ludovic! I’m mademoiselle’s groom, whom the wicked smugglers fired at.” He cocked his head, considering. “I think I’ll be called Jem,” he decided. “Jem Brown.”

“No!” said Eustacie, revolted. “It is a name of the most undistinguished.”

“Well, grooms aren’t distinguished. I think it’s a good name.”

“It is not. It will be better if you are Humphrey.”

“No, I’ll be damned if I’ll be called Humphrey! If there’s one name I dislike that’s it.”

Miss Thane interposed placably. “Don’t argue with him, Eustacie. It’s my belief he’s in a high fever.”

He grinned at her. “I am,” he agreed. “But my head’s remarkably clear for all that.”

“Well, if it’s clear enough to grapple with the details of this story of yours, tell us what became of the groom’s horse,” said Miss Thane.

“The smugglers killed it,” offered Eustacie.

Ludovic shook his head. “No, that won’t do. No corpse. Damn the horse, it’s a nuisance! Oh, I have it! When I was shot the brute threw me, and made off home.”

“Maddened by fright,” nodded Miss Thane. “Well, I’m glad to have that point settled. I feel I can now face any number of Excisemen.”

“ Mon cousin,” interrupted Eustacie suddenly, “do you think it is Tristram who has your ring?”

The laugh vanished from Ludovic’s eyes. “I’d give something to know!”

“Well, but I must tell you that I thought of a very good plan last night,” said Eustacie. “I will marry Tristram, and then I can search in his collection for the ring.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” snapped Ludovic.

Nye said roughly: “For shame, Mr Ludovic! What’s this unaccountable nonsense? Sir Tristram’s no enemy of yours!”

“Is he not?” retorted Ludovic. “Will you tell me who, besides myself, was in the Longshaw Spinney that accursed night?”

Nye’s face darkened. “Are you saying it was Sir Tristram as did a foul murder all for the sake of a trumpery ring, my lord? Eh, you’re crazed!”

“I’m saying it was he who met me in the Spinney, he who would have given his whole collection for that same trumpery ring! Didn’t he always dislike me? Can you say he did not?”

“What I wish to say,” interrupted Miss Thane in a calm voice, “is that I want my breakfast.”

Ludovic sank back on to his pillows with a short laugh. Nye, reminded of his duty, at once led both ladies down to the parlour, apologizing as he went for there being no one but himself and Clem to wait upon them. “I’ve only my sister besides, who does the cooking,” he told them, “and a couple of ostlers, of course. We don’t get folk stopping here in the winter in the general way. Maybe it’s as well, seeing who’s under my roof, but I doubt it’s not what you’re accustomed to, ma’am.”

Miss Thane reassured him. He set a coffee-pot down on the table before her, and said gloomily: “It’s in my mind that no one in his senses would take Mr Ludovic for a groom, ma’am. If you could get him only to see reason—! But there, he never did, and I doubt he never will! As to this notion he’s taken into his head that ’tis Sir Tristram who has his ring, I never heard the like of it! It was Sir Tristram as got him out of England—ay, and in the very nick!”

“Yes, and my cousin Basil says that it was to make him a murderer confessed!” said Eustacie.

Nye looked at her from under his rugged brows. “Ay, does he so? Well, I’ve not had the gloves on with Mr Lavenham, miss, but I’ve sparred with Sir Tristram a-many times, and I say he’s a clean-hitting gentleman! With your leave, ma’am, I’ll go back to Mr Ludovic now.”

He went out, and Miss Thane, pouring out two cups of coffee, said cheerfully: “At all events there seems to be some doubt about Sir Tristram’s guilt. I think, if I were you, I would not marry him until we can be positive he is the murderer.”

Upon reflection Eustacie agreed to the wisdom of this course. She ate a hearty breakfast, and returned to Ludovic’s room, leaving Miss Thane in sole possession of the parlour. Miss Thane finished her meal in a leisurely fashion, and had gone out into the coffee-room, on her way to the stairs, when the sound of an arrival made her pause. An authoritative, not to say peremptory voice outside called the landlord by name, and the next moment the door was flung open and a tall gentleman in riding-dress strode in, carrying a somewhat battered bandbox in either hand. He checked at sight of Miss Thane, favouring her with a hard stare, and putting down the bandboxes, took off his hat, and bowed slightly. “I beg your pardon: do you know where I may find the landlord?” he asked.

Miss Thane, one hand on the banisters, one foot on the bottom stair, looked at him keenly. A pair of stern, rather frowning grey eyes met hers with an expression of the most complete indifference. Miss Thane let go of the banisters, and came forward. “Do tell me!” she said invitingly. “Are you ‘my cousin Tristram’?”

Chapter Five

Sir Tristram’s worried frown lightened. He stared at Miss Thane with an arrested look in his eyes, and his stern mouth relaxed a little. “Oh!” he said slowly, and seemed for the first time to take stock of Sarah Thane. He saw before him a tall, graceful woman, with a quantity of light, curling brown hair, a generous mouth, and a pair of steady grey eyes which held a distinct twinkle. He noticed that she was dressed fashionably but without furbelows in a caraco jacket over a plain blue gown, a habit as nearly resembling a man’s riding-dress as was seemly. She looked to be a sensible woman, and she was obviously gently born. Sir Tristram was thankful to think that his betrothed had (apparently) fallen into such unexceptionable hands, and said with a slight smile: “Yes, I am Tristram Shield, ma’am. I am afraid you have the advantage of me?”

Miss Thane saw her duty clear before her, and answered at once: “Let me beg of you to come into the parlour, Sir Tristram, and I will explain to you who I am.”

He looked rather surprised. “Thank you, but as you have no doubt guessed, I am come in search of my cousin, Mademoiselle de Vauban.”

“Of course,” agreed Miss Thane, “and if you will step into the parlour—”

“Is my cousin in the house?” interrupted Sir Tristram.

“Well, yes,” admitted Miss Thane, “but I am not at all sure that you can see her. Come into the parlour, and I will see what can be done.”

Sir Tristram cast a glance up the stairs, and said in a voice edged with annoyance: “Very well, ma’am, but why there should be any doubt about my seeing my cousin I am at a loss to understand.”

“I can tell you that too,” said Miss Thane, leading the way to the private parlour. She shut the door, and said cheerfully: “One cannot after all be surprised. You have behaved with a shocking lack of sensibility, have you not?”

“I was not aware of it, ma’am. Nor do I know why my cousin should leave her home at dead of night and undertake a solitary journey to London.”

“She was wishful to become a governess,” explained Sarah.

He stared at her in the blankest surprise. “Wishful to become a governess? Nonsense! Why should she wish anything of the kind?”

“Just for the sake of adventure,” said Miss Thane.

“I have yet to learn that a governess’s life is adventurous!” he said. “I should be grateful to you if you would tell me the truth!”

“Come, come, sir! “ said Miss Thane pityingly, “it must surely be within your knowledge that the eldest son of the house always falls in love with the governess, and elopes with her in the teeth of all opposition?”

Sir Tristram drew a breath. “ Does he?” he said.

“Yes, but not, of course, until he has rescued her from an oubliette, and a band of masked ruffians set on to her by his mother,” said Miss Thane matter-of-factly. “She has to suffer a good deal of persecution before she elopes.”

“I am of the opinion,” said Sir Tristram with asperity, “that a little persecution would do my cousin a world of good! Her thirst for romance is likely to lead her into trouble. In fact, I was very much afraid that she had already run into trouble when I found her bandboxes upon the road. Perhaps, since she appears to have told you so much, she has also told you how she came to lose them?”

Miss Thane, perceiving that this question would lead her on to dangerous ground, mendaciously denied all knowledge of the bandboxes. She then made the discovery that Sir Tristram Shield’s eyes were uncomfortably penetrating. She met their sceptical gaze with all the blandness she could summon to her aid.

“Indeed!” he said, politely incredulous. “But perhaps you can tell me why, if she was bound for London by the night mail, as her maid informed me, she is still in this inn?”

“Certainly!” said Sarah, rising to the occasion. “She arrived too late for the mail, and was forced to put up for the night.”

“What did she do for night gear?” inquired Shield.

“Oh, I lent her what she needed!”

“I suppose she did not think the loss of her baggage of sufficient interest to call for explanation?”

“To tell you the truth—” began Sarah confidingly.

“Thank you! I should like to hear the truth.”

“To tell you the truth,” repeated Sarah coldly, “she had a fright, and the bandboxes broke loose.”

“What frightened her?”

“A Headless Horseman,” said Sarah.

He was frowning again. “Headless Horseman? Fiddlesticks!”

“Very well,” said Sarah, as one making a concession, “then it was a dragon.”

“I think,” said Sir Tristram in a very level voice, “that it will be better if I see my cousin and hear her story from her own lips.”

“Not if you are going to approach it in this deplorable spirit,” replied Miss Thane. “I dare say you would tell her there are no such things as dragons or headless horsemen!”

“Well?”

Miss Thane cast down her eyes to hide the laughter in them, and replied in a saddened tone: “When she told me the whole I thought it impossible that anyone could be so devoid of all sensibility, but now that I have seen you I realize that she spoke no less than the melancholy truth. A man who could remain unaffected by the thought of a young girl, dressed in white, all alone, and in a tumbril—”

His brow cleared; he gave a short laugh. “Does that rankle? But really I am past the age of being impressed by such absurdities.”

Miss Thane sighed. “Perhaps that might be forgiven, but your heartlessness in refusing to ride ventre a terre to her deathbed—”

“Good God, surely she cannot have fled the house for such a ridiculous reason?” exclaimed Shield, considerably exasperated. “Why she should continually be harping on the notion of her own death passes my comprehension! She seems to me a perfectly healthy young woman.”

Miss Thane looked at him in horror. “You did not tell her that, I trust?”

“I don’t know what I told her. I might very easily.”

“If I were you,” said Miss Thane, “I would give up this idea you have of marrying your cousin. You would not suit.”

“I’m fast coming to that conclusion myself,” he said. “Moreover, Miss—What is your name?”

“Thane,” replied Sarah.

“Thane?” he repeated. “I fancy I have met someone of that name, but I do not immediately recall—”

“At Mendoza’s Saloon,” interpolated Sarah helpfully.

He looked a little amused. “Yes, possibly. But do you—”

“Or even at Brooks’s.”

“ I am certainly a member.”

“My brother,” said Sarah. “He is at present in bed, nursing a severe cold, but I dare say he will like to receive you.”

“It is extremely obliging of him, but my sole desire is to see my cousin, Miss Thane.”

Sarah, whose attention had been caught by the sound of an arrival, paid no heed to this hint, but peeped over the short window-blind. What she saw made her feel uneasy; she turned her head and requested Sir Tristram to come at once. “Tell me,” she commanded, “who are these two men in uniform?”

He came to the window. “Only a couple of Excisemen,” he answered, after a casual glance.

“Oh, is that all?” said Miss Thane in rather a hollow voice. “I expect they have come to see what Nye keeps in his cellars. My brother fancies it is all smuggled liquor.”

He looked at her in some perplexity. “They won’t find anything. May I remind you, ma’am, that I wish to see my cousin?”

Miss Thane, having watched one of the Excisemen dismount and go into the inn, was straining her ears to catch what was being said in the coffee-room. She heard the landlord’s deep voice, and wondered whether he had succeeded in persuading Ludovic to descend into the cellar. She looked at Sir Tristram, reflecting that he could not have chosen a more inopportune moment for his arrival. She ought to get rid of him, she supposed, but he did not seem to be the sort of man to be easily fobbed off. She said confidentially: “Do you know, I think it would be wisest if you were to leave your cousin with me for the present?”

“You are extremely good, ma’am, but I mean to carry her to my mother in Bath.”

“Backgammon?” said Miss Thane knowledgeably. “She won’t go. In fact, I hardly think it is worth your while to remain here, for she is set against seeing you.”

“Miss Thane,” said Sir Tristram dangerously, “it is quite evident to me that you are trying to prevent my seeing my cousin. I have not the smallest notion why she does not wish to see me. But I am going to see her. I trust I have made myself quite plain?”

“Yes, quite,” said Miss Thane, catching an echo of Eustacie’s voice joined with Nye’s in the coffee-room.

It seemed as though Shield had heard it too, for he turned his head towards the door, listening. Then he looked back at Sarah and said: “You had better tell me at once, ma’am: what scrape is she in?”

“Oh, none at all!” Miss Thane assured him, and added sharply: “Where are you going?”

“To find out for myself!” said Shield, opening the door, and striding off to the coffee-room.

Miss Thane, feeling that as an accomplice she had not been a success, followed him helplessly.

In the coffee-room were gathered the landlord, Mademoiselle de Vauban, an Excise officer, and the tapster. The Excise officer was looking suspiciously from Eustacie to Nye, and Eustacie was talking volubly and with a great deal of gesticulation. When she saw her cousin on the threshold she broke off, and stared at him in consternation. The landlord shot a look at Sir Tristram under his jutting brows, but said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” said Miss Thane, in answer to a reproachful glance from Eustacie. “I could not stop him.”

“You should have stopped him!” said Eustacie. “Now what are we to do?”

Miss Thane turned to Sir Tristram. “The truth is, my dear sir, that your cousin fell in with a band of smugglers last night upon the road here, and had a sad fright.”

“Smugglers?” repeated Shield.

“Yes,” averred Eustacie. “And I am just telling this stupid person that it was I who came here last night, and not a smuggler.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” said the riding-officer, “but the young lady’s telling me that she rid here last night to catch the mail coach.” His tone inferred that he found the story incredible, as well he might.

“I’ll have you know,” growled Nye, “that the Red Lion’s a respectable house! You’ll find no smugglers here.”

“And it’s my belief I’d find a deal you’d like to hide if I knew just where those cellars of yours are, Mr Nye!” retorted the Exciseman. “It’s a fine tale you’ve hatched, and Miss knowing no better than to back you up in it, but you don’t gammon me so easily! Ay, you’ve been careful to sweep the snow from your doorstep, but I’ve followed the trail down the road, and seen the blood on it!”

“Certainly you have seen the blood,” said Eustacie. “There was a great deal of blood.”

“Miss, do you ask me to believe that you went gallivanting about on horseback in the middle of the night? Come now, that won’t do!”

“Yes, but you do not understand. I was making my escape,” said Eustacie.

“Making your escape, miss?”

“Yes, and my cousin here will tell you that what I say is true. I am Mademoiselle de Vauban, and I am the granddaughter of Lord Lavenham, and he is Sir Tristram Shield.”

The Exciseman seemed to be a little impressed by this. He touched his hat to Sir Tristram, but still looked unconvinced. “Well, miss, and supposing you are, what call have you to go riding off in the night? I never heard of the Quality doing such!”

“I was running away from Sir Tristram,” said Eustacie.

“Oh!” said the Exciseman, looking more dubious than ever.

Sir Tristram stood like a rock. Miss Thane, taking one look at his outraged profile, was shaken by inward laughter, and said unsteadily: “This is a—a matter of no little delicacy, you understand?”

“I’m bound to say I don’t, ma’am,” said the Exciseman bluntly. “What for would the young lady want to run away from her cousin?”

“Because he would have forced me to marry him!” said Eustacie recklessly.

The Exciseman cast a glance of considerable respect at Sir Tristram, and said: “Well, but surely to goodness, miss—”

“My grandfather is dead, and I am quite in my cousin’s power,” announced Eustacie. “And when I was on my way here I met the smugglers. And I was naturally very much afraid, and they were too, because they fired at my groom, and wounded him, and he fell off his horse with both my bandboxes.”

Sir Tristram continued to preserve a grim silence, but at mention of the groom a slight frown knit his brows, and he looked intently at Eustacie.

“Indeed, miss?” said the Exciseman. “Then it queers me how there come to be only the tracks of one horse down the road!”

“The other horse bolted, of course,” said Eustacie. “It went back to its stable.”

“Maddened by fright,” murmured Miss Thane, and encountered a glance from Shield which spoke volumes.

“And may I inquire, miss, how you come to know that the horse went back to its stable?”

Miss Thane held Sir Tristram’s eyes with her own. “Why, Sir Tristram here has just been telling us!” she said with calm audacity. “When the riderless horse arrived at the Court he at once feared some mishap had overtaken his cousin, and set out to ride— ventre a terre —to the rescue. Is that not so, dear sir?”

Aware of one compelling pair of humorous grey eyes upon him, and one imploring pair of black ones, Sir Tristram said: “Just so, ma’am.”

The look he received from his cousin should have rewarded him. Eustacie said: “And then I must tell you that I took my poor groom up behind me on my own horse, but I did not know the way very well, and he was too faint to direct me, and so I was lost a long time in the Forest.”

The Exciseman scratched his chin. “I’ll take a look at this groom of yours, miss, if it’s all the same to you. I’m not saying I don’t believe your story, but what I do say is that ladies take queer notions into their heads when it comes to wounded men, and the late lord—begging your pardon, sir, and miss—was never one to help us officers against them pesky smugglers, any more than what most of the gentry hereabouts are!”

“Help a smuggler?” said Miss Thane in shocked accents “My good man, do you know that you are addressing the sister of a Justice of the Peace? Let me tell you that my brother, who is in the house at this moment, holds the strongest views on smugglers and smuggled goods!” This, after all, she reflected, was quite true, and ought to impress the Exciseman—provided, of course, that Sir Hugh did not take it into his head to appear suddenly and explain the nature of his views.

The Exciseman certainly seemed rather shaken. He looked uncertainly from Miss Thane to Eustacie, and said in a sulky voice that his orders were to search the house.

“Oh, they are, are they?” said Nye. “P’raps you’d like to go and tell Sir Hugh Thane yourself that you’re wishful to search his bedchamber? And him a Justice, like miss has told you! You get out of this before I lose my temper, that’s my advice to you!”

“You lay a hand on me and you’ll suffer for it, Mr Nye!” said the Exciseman, keeping a wary eye on the landlord’s massive form.

“Just a moment!” said Sir Tristram. “There is no need for all this to-do. If you suspect my cousin’s groom of being a smuggler—”

“Well, sir, we fired on one last night, and I’m ready to swear we hit him. And it can’t be denied that females is notably soft-hearted when it comes to a wounded man!”

“Possibly,” said Shield, “but I am not soft-hearted, nor am I in the habit of assisting smugglers, or any other kind of law-breaker.”

“No, sir,” said the Exciseman, abashed by Sir Tristram’s blighting tone. “I’m sure I didn’t mean—”

“If the wounded man is indeed a groom from the Court I shall recognize him,” continued Shield. “The affair can quite easily be settled by taking me to his room.”

There was one moment’s frozen silence. Sir Tristram was looking not at the Exciseman, but at Eustacie, who had turned as white as her fichu, and was staring at him in patent horror.

Nye’s voice broke the silence. “And that’s a mighty sound notion, sir!” he said deliberately. “I’ll lay your honour knows the lad as well as I do myself.”

Sir Tristram’s eyes narrowed. “Do I?” he said.

Eustacie said breathlessly: “You cannot see him! He is in a fever!”

“Never you fret, miss,” said Nye. “Sir Tristram’s not one to go blaming the lad for doing what you ordered him to, nor he won’t do anything to upset him. If you’ll come upstairs, sir, I’ll take you to him right away.”

“Begging your pardon, but I’d as lief come too,” said the Exciseman firmly.

“That’s it, Nosy, you come!” replied Nye. “No one ain’t stopping you.”

Eustacie moved swiftly to the foot of the stairs, as though she would bar the way, but before she could speak Miss Thane was at her side, and had swept her forward, up the stairs, with an arm round her waist. “Yes, my love, by all means let us go too, in case the lad should be alarmed at having to face Sir Tristram.”

“He must not see him! He must not!” whispered Eustacie, anguished

“In my back bedchamber, sir,” said Nye loudly. “I always house smugglers there to be handy for the riding-officers.”

This withering piece of sarcasm made the Exciseman say, defensively, that he was only trying to do his duty. Nye ignored him, and threw open the door of the back bedchamber, saying: “Step in, Sir Tristram: I know I needn’t warn you not to go for to startle a sick lad.”

A small, insistent hand grasped Sir Tristram’s coat-sleeve. He glanced down into Eustacie’s white face, saw in it entreaty and alarm, and shaking off her hand strode into the room.

Ludovic had raised himself on his elbow. Across the room his strained blue eyes met Shield’s hard grey ones. Shield checked for an instant on the threshold, while Miss Thane gave Eustacie’s hand a reassuring squeeze, and the Exciseman said hopefully: “Do you know him, sir?”

“Very well indeed,” replied Shield coolly. He went forward to the bed, and laid a hand on Ludovic’s shoulder. “Well, my lad, you have got yourself into trouble through this piece of folly. Lie down now: I’ll talk to you later.” He turned, addressing the Exciseman: “I can vouch for this fellow. He does not look very like a smuggler, do you think?”

“No, sir, I’m bound to say he don’t,” said the Exciseman slowly, staring at Ludovic. “I’d say he looked uncommon like the old Lord—from what I remember. It’s the nose. It ain’t a nose one forgets, somehow.”

“It is a nose often seen in these parts,” said Sir Tristram with dry significance.

The Exciseman blinked at him for a moment, and then, as light broke in on him, said hurriedly: “Oh, that’s the way it is! I beg pardon, I’m sure! No offence meant! If you can vouch for the young fellow of course I ain’t got no more to say, sir.”

“Then if you ain’t got no more to say you can take yourself off!” said Nye, thrusting him out of the room. “It don’t do the house any good having your kind in it. Next you’ll be telling me I’ve got smuggled liquor in my cellar!”

“And so you have!” rejoined the Exciseman immediately.

The door closed behind them; those in the little chamber could hear the altercation gradually growing fainter as Nye shepherded his unwelcome guest down the stairs.

No one moved or spoke until the voices had died away. Then Eustacie caught Sir Tristram’s hand, and pressed it to her cheek, saying simply: “I will do anything you wish. I will even marry you!”

“Oh no, you will not!” exploded Ludovic, struggling to sit up. “If this last don’t beat all! What the devil did you mean by telling that long-nosed tidesman that I’m one of Sylvester’s by-blows?”

“But no, Ludovic, no! I find that was very clever of him!” protested Eustacie. “Did you not think so, Sarah?”

Miss Thane said gravely: “I’m lost in admiration of so quick a wit. You never told me he was such an excellent conspirator.”

“Well, truly I did not think that he would be,” confessed Eustacie.

Sir Tristram, ignoring this interchange, said: “In God’s name, Ludovic, what are you doing here?”

“Free trading,” replied Ludovic, with complete sangfroid.

Shield’s face darkened. “Are you jesting?”

“No, no, he really is a smuggler, Cousin Tristram!” said Eustacie earnestly. “It is very romantic, I think. Do not you?”

“No, I do not!” said Shield. “Hasn’t your name been smirched enough, you young fool? Smuggling! And you can lie there and blandly tell me of it!”

“You see!” Eustacie made a disgusted face at Miss Thane.

“Yes, he seems to have no feeling for romance at all,” agreed Sarah.

Ludovic said savagely: “You may be thankful I can do nothing but lie here! Do you think I care whether I’m hanged for a free trader or a murderer? I’m ruined, aren’t I? Then, damn it, I’ll go to the devil my own way!”

“I don’t want to interrupt you,” said Miss Thane, “but you’ll find yourself with the devil sooner than you think for if that wound of yours starts bleeding again.”

“Ah, let be!” Ludovic said, his right hand clenching on the coverlet.

Sir Tristram was looking at that hand. He bent, and grasped Ludovic’s wrist, and lifted it, staring at the bare fingers. “Show me your other hand!” he said harshly.

Ludovic’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. He wrenched his wrist out of Shield’s hold, and put back the bedclothes to show his left arm in a sling. The fingers were as bare as those of his right hand.

Sir Tristram raised his eyes to that haggard young face. “If you had it it would never leave your finger!” he said. “Ludovic, where is the ring?”

“Famous!” mocked Ludovic. “Brazen it out, Tristram! Where is the ring indeed? You do not know, of course!”

“What the devil do you mean by that?” demanded Shield, in a voice that made Eustacie jump.

Ludovic flung off Miss Thane’s restraining hand, and sat up as though moved by a spring. “You know what I mean!” he said, quick and panting. “You laid your plans very skilfully, my clever cousin, and you took care to ship me out of England before I’d time to think who, besides myself, could want the ring more than anything on earth! Does it grace your collection now? Tell me, does it give you satisfaction when you look at it?”

“If you were not a wounded man I’d give you the thrashing of your life, Ludovic!” said Shield, very white about the mouth. “I have stood veiled hints from Basil, but not even he dare say to my face what you have said!”

“Basil—Basil believed in me!” Ludovic gasped. “It was you—you!”

Miss Thane caught him as he fell back, and lowered him on to his pillows. “Now see what you have done!” she said severely. “Hartshorn, Eustacie!”

“I would like very much to kill you!” Eustacie told her cousin fiercely, and bent over the bed, holding the hartshorn under Ludovic’s nose.

He came round in a minute or two, and opened his eyes. “Tristram!” he muttered. “My ring, Tristram!”

Shield brought a glass of water to the bed, and, raising Ludovic, held it to his lips. “Drink this, and don’t be a fool!”

“Damn you, take your hands off me!” Ludovic whispered.

Sir Tristram paid no heed to this, but obliged him to drink some of the water. He laid him down again, and handed the glass to Miss Thane. “Listen to me!” he said, standing over Ludovic. “I never had your ring in my hands in my life. Until this moment I would have sworn it was in your possession.”

Ludovic had averted his face, but he turned his head at that. “If you have not got it, who has?” he said wearily.

“I don’t know, but I’ll do my best to find out,” replied Shield.

Eustacie drew a deep breath. “I see that I have misjudged you, Cousin Tristram,” she said handsomely. “One must make reparation, enfin. I will marry you.”

“Thank you,” said Sir Tristram, “but the matter does not call for such a sacrifice as that, I assure you.” He saw a certain raptness steal into her eyes, and added: “Don’t waste time picturing yourself in the role of a martyred bride, I beg of you! I haven’t the smallest desire to marry you.”

Eustacie frowned. “But you must have an—”

“Yes, we won’t go into that again,” he said hastily.

“And I think,” continued Eustacie, visibly attracted by the vision of herself as a martyred bride, “that perhaps it is my duty to marry you.”

Ludovic raised his head from the pillows. “Well, you can’t marry him. I’m the head of the family now, and I forbid it.”

“Oh, very well!” submitted Eustacie. “I dare say I should not like always to be a sacrifice, after all.”

“Am I to understand,” inquired Miss Thane, “that Sir Tristram is to become one of us? If you are satisfied he is not the villain it is not for me to raise objections, of course, but I must say I am disappointed. We shall have to remake all our plans.”

“Yes, we shall,” agreed Eustacie. “And that reminds me that if Tristram truly did not steal Ludovic’s ring, there is not any need for me to marry him. I had forgotten.”

Sir Tristram looked rather startled, observing which, Miss Thane said kindly: “You must know that we had it all fixed that Eustacie was to marry you so as to be able to search in your collection for the missing ring.”

“What a splendid notion, to be sure!” said Sir Tristram sardonically.

“Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” said Eustacie. “But now we do not know who is the villain, so it is of no use.”