to make him worse. I begged Worth to intervene, but he declined doing it, and I daresay he was right.'
'Worth!' he said. 'No, it is not for him to speak to Peregrine. I am the one who is concerned in this, and what I have to say to Peregrine I can assure you he will pay heed to!' He glanced at the clock over the fireplace. and added: 'I am going to call at his house now. Don't look so anxious, there is not the least need.'
She stretched out her hand to him. 'If I look anxious it is on your account. Dear Charles, I am so sorry this should have happened! Don't let it vex you: it was all mischief, nothing else!'
He grasped her hand for a moment, and said in a low voice: 'Unpleasant mischief.It is the fault of that wretched up-bringing! Sometimes I fear - But the heart is unspoiled. Try to believe that: I know it!'
She could only press his fingers understandingly. He held her hand an instant longer, then, with a brief smile, let it go and walked out of the room.
Peregrine was not to be found at his house, but Colonel Audley sent up his card to Lady Taverner, and was presently admitted into her salon.
She received him with evident agitation. She looked frightened, and greeted him with nervous breathlessness, trying to seem at ease, but failing miserably.
He shook hands with her, and put her out of her agony of uncertainty by coming straight to the point. 'Lady Taverner, we are old friends,' he said in his pleasant way. 'You need not be afraid to trust me, and I need not, I know, fear to be frank with you. I have come about this nonsensical affair of Peregrine's. Shall we sit down and talk it over sensibly together?'
She said faintly: 'Oh! How can I -You - I do not know how to -'
'You will agree that I am concerned in it as much as you are,' he said. 'Judith has been telling me the whole. What a tangle it is! And all arising out of my stupidity in allowing Peregrine to be my deputy that evening! Can you forgive me?'
She sank down upon the sofa, averting her face. 'I'm sure you never dreamed - Judith says it is my own fault, that I brought it on myself by my folly!'
'I think the hardest thing of all is to be wise in our dealings with the people we love,' he said. 'I know I have found it so.'
She ventured to turn her head towards him. 'Perhaps I was a fool. Judith will have told you that I was rude and ill-bred. It is true! I do not know what can have possessed me, only when she came up to me, so beautiful, and - oh, I cannot explain! I am sorry: this is very uncomfortable for you!'
Her utterance became choked by tears; she groped for her handkerchief among the sofa cushions, and was startled by finding a large one put into her hand. Her drenched eyes flew upwards to the Colonel's face; a sound between a sob and a laugh escaped her, and she said unsteadily: 'Thank you! You are very obliging! Oh dear, how can you be so - so - I am sure I don't kwow why I am laughing when my heart is broken!'
Colonel Audley watched her dry her cheeks, and said 'But your heart isn't broken.'
Harriet emerged from his handkerchief to say with a good deal of indignation: 'I don't see how you could know whether my heart is broken or not!'
'Of course I can know, for I know mine is not.'
This seemed unanswerable. Harriet could only look helplessly at him, and wait for more.
He smiled at her, and took his handkerchief back 'Crying won't mend matters. I rely on you to help me in this business.'
The idea was so novel that she blinked at him surprise. 'How can I?'
'By behaving like the sensible woman I know you to be. Confess! Didn't you mishandle Peregrine shockingly?'
'Yes, perhaps I did, but how could he be so faithless. I thought he loved me!'
'So he does. But he is very young. In general, a boy goes through a number of calf loves before he marries, but in your case it was different. I expect you were his first love.'
'Yes,' whispered Harriet.
'Well, that was charming,' he said cheerfully. 'Only you see, this was bound to happen.'
'Bound to happen?'
'Yes, certainly. You have not been very well; he has been left to his own devices, and in circumstances where it would have been wonderful indeed if, at twenty-three, he had kept his head. This life we are all leading in Brussels is ruinous. Are you not conscious of it?'
'Oh yes, a thousand times yes! I wish I were safely at home!'
'I am glad to hear you say so, for that is what, if you will let me, I am going to advise you to do. Go home, end forget all this.'
'He won't go home!'
'Yes, he will. Only you mustn't reproach him just yet. Later, if you like, and still want to, but not now. He will be very much ashamed of himself presently, and wonder how he can have been such a fool.'
'How can you know all this?'
He smiled. 'I have been twenty-three myself. Of course I know. You may believe me when I tell you that this doesn't signify. No, I know you cannot quite see how that may be true, but I pledge you my word it is.'
She sighed. 'How kind you are! You make me feel such a goose! How shall I prevail upon Perry to take me home? What shall I say to him?'
'Nothing. I am going to have a talk with him, and I think you will find him only too ready to take you home.' He rose, and took out his card case, and, extracting a card, wrote something on the back of it with a pencil picked up from Harriet's escritoire. 'I'll leeve this with your butler,' he said. 'It is just to inform Peregrine that I am coming to call on him after dinner tonight. You need not mention that you have seen me.'
'Oh no! But he is sure to be going out,' she said mournfully.
'Don't worry! He won't go out,' replied the Colonel.
She looked doubtful, but it seemed that the Colonal knew what he was talking about, for Peregrine, the card with its curt message in his waistcoat pocket, retired after dinner to his study on the ground floor. Dinner had been an uncomfortable meal. When the servants were in the room a civil interchange of conversation had to be maintained; when they left it, Harriet sat with downcast eyes and a heavy heart, while Peregrine making a pretence of eating what had been put before him, wondered what Colonel Audley was going to say to him, and what he was to reply.
The Colonel, who had dined at the Duke's table, did not arrive until after nine o'clock, and by that time Peregrine had reached a state of acute discomfort .When the knock at last fell on the front door, he got up out of his chair and nervously straightened his cravat. When the Colonel was shown into the room, he way standing with his back to the empty fireplace, looking rather pale and feeling a trifle sick.
One glance at his visitor's face was enough to confirm his worst fears. This was going to be an extremely unpleasant interview. He wondered whether Audley would insist on satisfaction. He was not a coward, but the knowledge of having behaved vey shabbily towards Audley set him at a disadvantage, and made him hope very much that the affair was not going to culminate in a meeting outside the ramparts in the chill dawn.
He tried, from sheer nervousness, to carry the thing off with a high hand, advancing with a smile, and saying with as much heartiness as he could muster: 'Well, Charles! How do you do?'
The Colonel ignored both the greeting and the outstretched hand. He laid his hat and gloves down on the table, saying in a voice that reminded Peregrine unpleasantly of Worth's: 'What I have to say to you, Peregrine, will not take me long. I imagine you have a pretty fair notion why I am here.'
'I -' Peregrine stopped, and then said defiantly: 'I suppose I have. Well, say it, then!'
'I'm going to,' said the Colonel grimly.
Peregrine squared his shoulders and set his teeth. At the end of three minutes he was bitterly regretting having invited the Colonel to speak his mind, and at the end of ten he would have been very glad if the ground had miraculously opened and swallowed him. The Colonel spoke with appalling fluency, and in the most biting of voices. What he said was so entirely unanswerable that after two stumbling attempts to defend himself Peregrine relapsed into silence, and listened with a white face to an exposition of his caracter which robbed him of every ounce of self-esteem.
When the Colonel at last stopped, Peregrine, who for ,some time had been standing by the window, with his back to him, cleared his throat, and said: 'I am aware of how my conduct must strike you. If you want satisfaction, of course I am ready to meet you.'
