“But I have done something,” said Archie, thinking of his seventy pounds.
“You may as well give it up, for she means to marry Harry.”
“No!”
“But I tell you she does. While you’ve been thinking he’s been doing. From what I hear he may have her tomorrow for the asking.”
“But he’s engaged to that girl whom they had with them down at the rectory,” said Archie, in a tone which showed with what horror he should regard any inconstancy towards Florence Burton on the part of Harry Clavering.
“What does that matter? You don’t suppose he’ll let seven thousand a year slip through his fingers because he had promised to marry a little girl like her? If her people choose to proceed against him they’ll make him pay swinging damages; that is all.”
Archie did not like this idea at all, and became more than ever intent on his own matrimonial prospects. He almost thought that he had a right to Lady Ongar’s money, and he certainly did think that a monstrous injustice was done to him by this idea of a marriage between her and his cousin. “I mean to ask her as I’ve gone so far, certainly,” said he.
“You can do as you like about that.”
“Yes; of course I can do as I like; but when a fellow has gone in for a thing, he likes to see it through.” He was still thinking of the seventy pounds which he had invested, and which he could now recover only out of Lady Ongar’s pocket.
“And you mean to say you won’t come to Norway?”
“Well; if she accepts me—”
“If she accepts you,” said Hugh, “of course you can’t come; but supposing she don’t?”
“In that case, I might as well do that as anything else,” said Archie. Whereupon Sir Hugh signified to Jack Stuart that Archie would join the party, and went down to Clavering with no misgiving on that head.
Some few days after this there was another little dinner at the military club, to which no one was admitted but Archie and his friend Doodles. Whenever these prandial consultations were held, Archie paid the bill. There were no spoken terms to that effect, but the regulation seemed to come naturally to both of them. Why should Doodles be taken from his billiards half-an-hour earlier than usual, and devote a portion of the calculating powers of his brain to Archie’s service without compensation? And a richer vintage was needed when so much thought was required, the burden of which Archie would not of course allow to fall on his friend’s shoulders. Were not this explained, the experienced reader would regard the devoted friendship of Doodles as exaggerated.
“I certainly shall ask her tomorrow,” said Archie, looking with a thoughtful cast of countenance through the club window into the street. “It may be hurrying the matter a little, but I can’t help that.” He spoke in a somewhat boastful tone, as though he were proud of himself and had forgotten that he had said the same words once or twice before.
“Make her know that you’re there; that’s everything,” said Doodles. “Since I fathomed that woman in Mount Street, I’ve felt that you must make the score off your own bat, if you’re to make it at all.”
“You did that well,” said Archie, who knew that the amount of pleasing encouragement which he might hope to get from his friend, must depend on the praise which he himself should bestow. “Yes; you certainly did bowl her over uncommon well.”
“That kind of thing just comes within my line,” said Doodles, with conscious pride. “Now, as to asking Lady Ongar downright to marry me—upon my word I believe I should be half afraid of doing it myself.”
“I’ve none of that kind of feeling,” said Archie.
“It comes more in your way, I daresay,” said Doodles. “But for me, what I like is a little bit of management—what I call a touch of the diplomatic. You’ll be able to see her tomorrow?”
“I hope so. I shall go early—that is, as soon as I’ve looked through the papers and written a few letters. Yes, I think she’ll see me. And as for what Hugh says about Harry Clavering, why, d⸺ it, you know, a fellow can’t go on in that way; can he?”
“Because of the other girl, you mean?”
“He has had her down among all our people, just as though they were going to be married tomorrow. If a man is to do that kind of thing, what woman can be safe?”
“I wonder whether she likes him?” asked the crafty Doodles.
“She did like him, I fancy, in her calf days; but that means nothing. She knows what she’s at now, bless you, and she’ll look to the future. It’s my son who’ll have the Clavering property and be the baronet, not his. You see what a string to my bow that is.”
When this banquet was over, Doodles made something of a resolution that it should be the last to be eaten on that subject. The matter had lost its novelty, and the price paid to him was not sufficient to secure his attention any longer. “I shall be here tomorrow at four,” he said, as he rose from his chair with the view of retreating to the smoking-room, “and then we shall know all about it. Whichever way it’s to be, it isn’t worth your while keeping such a thing as that in hand any longer. I should say give her her chance tomorrow, and then have done with it.” Archie in reply to this declared that those were exactly his sentiments, and then went away to prepare himself in silence and solitude for the next day’s work.
On the following day at two o’clock Lady Ongar was sitting alone in the front room on the ground-floor in Bolton Street. Of Harry Clavering’s illness she had as yet heard nothing, nor of his absence from London.
