“Her own way into the bargain,” said Ned. Whereupon Tom Spooner winked, and suggested that that might be as things turned out after the marriage. He was quite willing to run his chance for that.
But how was he to get at her to prosecute his suit? As to writing to her direct—he didn’t much believe in that. “It looks as though one were afraid of her, you know;—which I ain’t the least. I stood up to her before, and I wasn’t a bit more nervous than I am at this moment. Were you nervous in that affair with Miss Maxwell?”
“Ah;—it’s a long time ago. There wasn’t much nervousness there.”
“A sort of milkmaid affair?”
“Just that.”
“That is different, you know. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll just drive slap over to Harrington and chance it. I’ll take the two bays in the phaeton. Who’s afraid?”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” said Ned.
“Old Chiltern is such a d⸺ cantankerous fellow, and perhaps Lady C. may say that I oughtn’t to have taken advantage of her absence. But, what’s the odds? If she takes me there’ll be an end of it. If she don’t, they can’t eat me.”
“The only thing is whether they’ll let you in.”
“I’ll try at any rate,” said Tom, “and you shall go over with me. You won’t mind trotting about the grounds while I’m carrying on the war inside? I’ll take the two bays, and Dick Farren behind, and I don’t think there’s a prettier got-up trap in the county. We’ll go tomorrow.”
And on the morrow they did start, having heard on that very morning of the arrest of Phineas Finn. “By George, don’t it feel odd,” said Tom just as they started—“a fellow that we used to know down here, having him out hunting and all that, and now he’s—a murderer! Isn’t it a coincidence?”
“It startles one,” said Ned.
“That’s what I mean. It’s such a strange thing that it should be the man we know ourselves. These things always are happening to me. Do you remember when poor Fred Fellows got his bad fall and died the next year? You weren’t here then.”
“I’ve heard you speak of it.”
“I was in the very same field, and should have been the man to pick him up, only the hounds had just turned to the left. It’s very odd that these coincidences always are happening to some men and never do happen to others. It makes one feel that he’s marked out, you know.”
“I hope you’ll be marked out by victory today.”
“Well;—yes. That’s more important just now than Mr. Bonteen’s murder. Do you know, I wish you’d drive. These horses are pulling, and I don’t want to be all in a flurry when I get to Harrington.” Now it was a fact very well known to all concerned with Spoon Hall, that there was nothing as to which the Squire was so jealous as the driving of his own horses. He would never trust the reins to a friend, and even Ned had hardly ever been allowed the honour of the whip when sitting with his cousin. “I’m apt to get red in the face when I’m overheated,” said Tom as he made himself comfortable and easy in the left hand seat.
There were not many more words spoken during the journey. The lover was probably justified in feeling some trepidation. He had been quite correct in suggesting that the matter between him and Miss Palliser bore no resemblance at all to that old affair between his cousin Ned and Polly Maxwell. There had been as little trepidation as money in that case—simply love and kisses, parting, despair, and a broken heart. Here things were more august. There was plenty of money, and, let affairs go as they might, there would be no broken heart. But that perseverance in love of which Mr. Spooner intended to make himself so bright an example does require some courage. The Adelaide Pallisers of the world have a way of making themselves uncommonly unpleasant to a man when they refuse him for the third or fourth time. They allow themselves sometimes to express a contempt which is almost akin to disgust, and to speak to a lover as though he were no better than a footman. And then the lover is bound to bear it all, and when he has borne it, finds it so very difficult to get out of the room. Mr. Spooner had some idea of all this as his cousin drove him up to the door, at what he then thought a very fast pace. “D⸺ it all,” he said, “you needn’t have brought them up so confoundedly hot.” But it was not of the horses that he was really thinking, but of the colour of his own nose. There was something working within him which had flurried him, in spite of the tranquillity of his idle seat.
Not the less did he spring out of the phaeton with a quite youthful jump. It was well that everyone about Harrington Hall should know how alert he was on his legs; a little weather-beaten about the face he might be; but he could get in and out of his saddle as quickly as Gerard Maule even yet; and for a short distance would run Gerard Maule for a ten-pound note. He dashed briskly up to the door, and rang the bell as though
