Devil’s Cub

Chapter XIV

Miss Marling partook of chocolate very late on the morning after the ball at the Hôtel Saint-Vire. It was after eleven when she awoke, and she did not look as though the long sleep had at all refreshed her. Her abigail noticed how woebegone was the little face under the night-cap of point-lace, and drew her own conclusions. Miss Marling was pettish over the choice of a morning wrapper, and complained that her chocolate was too sweet. She demanded to know whether any note had been left for her, or if anyone had called to see her, and on being told that she had neither a note nor a visitor, she pushed her chocolate away, and said she could not drink the stuff, it was so vile.

She was still in bed trying to make up her mind whether or no to write to Mr. Comyn, when a message was brought to her that the Marquis of Vidal was below, and wanted to see her immediately.

She was so disappointed that the visitor was not Mr. Comyn, as she had at first been sure it must be, that tears rose to her eyes, and she said in a tight, hard voice: “I can’t see him. I’m in bed, and I have the headache.”

The lackey’s footsteps retreated down the stairs, and in two minutes a far quicker step sounded, and a peremptory rap fell on the door. “Let me in, Ju; I must see you,” said Vidal’s voice.

“Oh, very well!” answered Juliana crossly.

The Marquis came in, much to the abigail’s disapproval, and signed to that damsel to leave the room. She went, sniffing loudly, and Vidal strode over to the big bed, and stood looking grimly down at Juliana. “The servants tell me Mary Challoner left the house early this morning, and is not yet returned,” he said, without preamble. “Where is she?”

“Good gracious, how should I know?” said Juliana indignantly. She hitched one of her lace-edged pillows up higher. “I dare say she has run away sooner than marry you, and I vow I don’t blame her, if you are in the habit of bursting in on ladies abed in this horrid way.”

“Oh, don’t be missish, Ju!” said his lordship, with an impatient frown. “I left her in your care.”

“Well, and what if you did? I can’t be for ever with her. She wouldn’t have me, I’ll be bound.”

Vidal looked at her rather sharply. “Oh? Have you quarrelled?”

“Pray do not imagine everyone to be like yourself and for ever being in a quarrel!” besought Miss Marling. “If people are only kind to me I’m sure I am the last person to quarrel with anyone.”

His lordship sat down on the edge of the bed. “Now come along, my girl: out with it!” he said. “What has happened between you?”

“Nothing at all!” snapped Juliana. “Though I’ve little doubt Mary thinks me as odious as she thinks you — not that I care a fig for what she or anyone else thinks.”

“I’ll shake you in a minute,” threatened the Marquis. “What’s between you two?”

Miss Marling raised herself on her elbow. “I won’t be bullied by you, Vidal, so pray don’t think it! I think men are the most hateful, cruel wretches imaginable, and I wish you would go away and find your provoking Mary yourself.”

There was a distinct break in her voice, and Vidal, who had a soft corner for her, put his arms round her, and said with unwonted cajolery: “Don’t cry, child. What’s to do?”

Miss Marling’s rigidity left her. She buried her face in Vidal’s blue coat, and said in muffled accents: “I want to go home! Everything is horrid in Paris, and I hope to heaven I never come here again!”

Vidal carefully removed his lace ruffle from her clutching fingers. “Quarrelled with Comyn, have you? You’re a fool, Ju. Stop crying! Has he gone off? Shall I bring him back to you?”

Miss Marling declined this offer with every evidence of loathing, and releasing his lordship, hunted under her pillow for a handkerchief, and fiercely blew her small nose.

“I wonder ...” Vidal stopped, and sat staring at the bedpost somewhat ominously.

Observing the darkling look in his eyes, Juliana said quickly: “What do you wonder? Please do not put on that murderous face, Dominic! It frightens me.”

He glanced down at her. “I wonder whether Mr. Frederick Comyn has anything to do with Mary’s disappearance?” he said.

“What a stupid notion!” commented Juliana. “Why in the world should he help Mary to escape?”

“From damned officiousness, belike,” said Vidal, scowling. “I found the fellow here last night — mighty friendly with Mary.”

“What!” Miss Marling stiffened. “Here? With Mary? What was he doing?”

“Holding her hands, curse his impudence.”

“Oh!” Miss Marling turned quite pale with indignation. “The wicked, deceitful creature! She never breathed a word of it to me! And then to dare to scold me for quarrelling with Frederick! Oh, I could kill them both! Holding her hands at that hour of night! And then to turn jealous because I like to dance with Bertrand! Oh, it beats anything I have ever heard! I’ll never forgive either of them.”

Vidal got up. “I’m going round to Comyn’s lodging,” he said, and walked to the door.

“Don’t kill him, Dominic, I implore you!” shrieked his cousin.

“For God’s sake, don’t be such a damned little fool, Juliana!” said the Marquis irritably, and departed.

The owner of Mr. Comyn’s lodgings, a retired valet, opened the door to the Marquis, and admitted him into a narrow hall. On being asked for the English gentleman he said that M. Comyn had paid his shot, and left by coach a bare hour since.

“Left, has he? Alone?” demanded the Marquis.

The valet cast down his eyes. “The Englishwoman who came to see him — oh, but at a very strange hour, m’sieur! — was with him.”

He stole a sly look upwards at the Marquis, and was startled by the expression on that dark face. “She was, eh?” said Vidal through his teeth. He smiled, and the valet retreated a pace, quite involuntarily. “Where have they gone? Do you know?”

“But no, m’sieur, how should I tell? The lady had no baggage, but M. Comyn took all of his. He said to me that he will not return, and he gave to me a letter to deliver in the Rue St. Honoré.”

Light flashed in the Marquis’s sombre eyes. “Where in the Rue St. Honoré, my man?”

“It was a letter to an English Marquis, m’sieur, at the Hôtel Avon.”

“Was it, by God!” said Vidal, and promptly went off home.

The letter, addressed in Mr. Comyn’s neat handwriting, was lying on the table in the wide hall. Vidal broke the seal, and ran his eye down the single sheet.

“My lord,” wrote Mr. Comyn, “I have to inform your lordship that my betrothal to Miss Juliana Marling being at an end, I have made bold to offer my hand in marriage to the lady lately travelling under your lordship’s protection. I think it only proper to apprise your lordship of this step, since your lordship was good enough to take me into your confidence. Miss Challoner having been so obliging as to accept of my offer, we are leaving Paris immediately. Miss Challoner, while sensible of the honour your lordship does her in proposing for her hand, is highly averse from a marriage which she deems unsuitable, and from the outset doomed to unhappiness. Since I apprehend that this aversion is known to your lordship, it will be unnecessary (I am assured) to request your lordship to relinquish the pretensions which have become a menace to Miss Challoner’s peace of mind.

“I beg to remain, my lord, in all else,

“Your lordship’s obedient servant to command,

“Frederick Comyn.”

His lordship swore softly and long, to the admiration of a lackey, who stood reverently listening to his fluency. Then he proceeded to set his household by the ears, and the word flew round inside of ten minutes that the Devil’s Cub was in a rare taking, and there would be bloodshed before nightfall. From the orders that followed one another like lightning off his lordship’s tongue, it was apparent that he was going on a sudden swift journey, and when Fletcher was bidden send to the gates of Paris to find whether an Englishman accompanied by a lady had passed out of any one of them that morning, none of the household had any doubt at all of the nature of his lordship’s journey.

“Damn my blood if I’ve ever seen the Cub so wild!” remarked his lordship’s particular groom. “Ay, and I’ve known him a year or two.”

“I’ve seen him wilder nor this,” mused a footman, “but not for a female. And meself I’d say the Mantoni had more to her than this one, or that piece we had with us a couple of years back — what was her name, Horace? The beauty that threw a coffee-pot at the Cub in one of her tantrums.”

“I’m not Horace to you, my lad,” said Mr. Timms loftily. “And me knowing what I do, which is natural in his lordship’s own gentleman, I’d advise you not to draw odious comparisons between Miss Challoner and those other trollops.”

He went off to pack Vidal’s cloak-bag, and was much scandalized to discover that he was not to accompany his master. When he ventured on an expostulation he was asked roundly whether he imagined my lord was unable to dress himself. Being a polite person he disclaimed, but this was precisely what he did think. He had a vision, horrible to a gentleman’s gentleman, of my lord’s cravat ill-tied, his hair uncurled, his dress carelessly arranged; and when Vidal flung the pounce-box, the haresfoot, and the rouge-pot out of the cloak-bag, he was moved to beg his lordship to consider his feelings.

Vidal gave a short bark of laughter. “What the devil have your feelings to do with it?” he demanded. “Put up a change of clothing, and my razors, and my night-gear.”

Mr. Timms was ordinarily a timid creature, but where his profession was concerned he became possessed of great daring. He said firmly: “My lord, it’s well known that it’s me who has the dressing of your lordship. I have my pride, my lord, and to have you travelling amongst all these Frenchies, a disgrace to me, as you will, my lord, begging your pardon — oh, it’s enough to make a man cut his throat, sir!”

Vidal, in his shirt sleeves, was pulling on his top-boots. He glanced up, not unamused, and said bluntly: “If you want a master you can dress like a painted puppet, you’d best leave my service, Timms. I’ll never be a credit to you.”

“My lord,” said Mr. Timms, “if I may take leave to say so, there’s not a gentleman in London, no, nor in Paris either, that can be a greater credit to his valet than what your lordship can be.”

“You flatter me,” said Vidal, picking up his waistcoat.

“No, my lord. I was three years with Sir Jasper Trelawney, who was thought to be a fine beau in his day. The clothes we had! Ah, that was a gentleman as was an artist. But the shoulders to his coats had to be padded so that it fair broke one’s heart, and when it came to him wearing three patches on his face I had to leave him, because I’d my reputation to think of, like any other man.”

“Good God!” said Vidal. “I trust my shoulders don’t offend your sensibilities, Timms?”

“If I may take the liberty of saying so, my lord, I have seldom seen a finer pair. Whatever else may sometimes be amiss, our coats set so that it is a pleasure to see them done justice to.” He assisted his lordship to struggle into one as he spoke, and smoothed the cloth with a loving hand. “When I was with Lord Devenish, sir,” he said reminiscently, “we had to assist his lordship’s legs a little with sawdust in the stocking. But even so they were never what one likes to see in a gentleman of fashion. Everything else about his lordship was as it should be; I believe I never saw a neater waist, and at that time, my lord, coats were worn very tight at the waist with whaleboned skirts. But below the knee his lordship fell off sadly. It took away from one’s pride in dressing him, and sawdust, though helpful, is not like good muscle.”

“I can imagine nothing more unlike,” said Vidal, who was eyeing him in open astonishment. “You seem to have been hard put to it with your previous masters.”

“That, my lord, was the trouble,” replied Timms. “If your lordship will permit me, I will adjust this buckle. When I left Lord Devenish I was with young Mr. Harry Cheston for a space. Shoulders, legs, waist — all very passable. He wore his clothes very well, my lord; never a crease, nor a pin out of place, though he favoured vellum-hole waistcoats more than I could like. It was Mr. Cheston’s hands that were his undoing. Do what one would, my lord, they were such as to render the perfection of his attire quite negligible. He slept every night in chicken-skin gloves, but it was of no use, they remained a vulgar red.”

Vidal cast himself down in the chair by the dressing-table, and leaned back in it, surveying his valet with a half-smile curling his lips. “You alarm me, Timms, positively you alarm me.”

Mr. Timms smiled indulgently. “Your lordship has no need to feel alarm. I could wish that we wore a ring — not a profusion, sir, but one ring, possibly an emerald, which is a stone designed to set off the whiteness of a gentleman’s hand — but since your lordship has a strong aversion from jewels we must forgo the adornment. The hands themselves, if your lordship will not think it impertinent, are all that I could wish.”

His lordship, quite unnerved by this encomium, thrust them both into his breeches pockets. “Come, let me have it, Timms!” he said. “Where do I fall short of your devilish high standards? Let me know the worst.”

Mr. Timms bent to dust one of his lordship’s shining boots. “Your lordship can hardly fail to be aware of the elegance of your lordship’s whole figure. In the twenty-five years during which I have been a gentleman’s valet I have always had to fight against odds, as it were. Your lordship would be surprised to know how one inferior feature can ruin the most modish toilet. There was the Honourable Peter Hailing, sir, whose coats were so exactly cut to his figure that it needed myself and two lackeys to coax him into them. He had a leg such as is seldom seen, and his countenance was by no means contemptible. But it all went for nothing, my lord, Mr. Hailing’s neck was so short that no neckcloth could be made to disguise it. I could tell your lordship of a dozen such cases. Sometimes it’s the shoulders, at others the legs; once I served a gentleman with a fatal tendency to corpulence. We did what we could with tight-lacing, but it was not successful. Yet he was as handsome as your lordship, if I may say so.”

“Spare my blushes, Timms,” said the Marquis sardonically. “I don’t aspire to be an Adonis. Out with it! What’s my fault?”

Mr. Timms said simply: “Your lordship has none.”

The Marquis was startled. “Eh?”

“None whatsoever, my lord. One could wish for greater care in the arrangement of the cravat, and a more frequent use of the curling-irons and pounce-box; but we have nothing to conceal. Your lordship will understand that a constant struggle against nature disheartens one. When your lordship found yourself in need of a valet, I applied for the post, being confident — with all respect, my lord — that though your lordship might affect a carelessness that one is bound to deplore, the figure, face, hands — your lordship’s whole person, in short — were so exactly proportioned as to render the apparelling of your lordship a work of pleasure unmarred by any feeling of dissatisfaction.”

“Good God!” said the Marquis.

Mr. Timms said insinuatingly: “If your lordship would permit me to place one patch — one only — ”

The Marquis got up. “Content yourself with my perfect proportions, Timms,” he said. “Where’s that fellow Fletcher?” He strode out, calling to his major-domo, who came sedately up the stairs to meet him. “Well, man, are those damned lackeys to be all day about their business?” he demanded.

“John, my lord, is come in. At the Porte Saint-Denis, no one. At the Porte Saint-Martin, no one. I await the return of Robert and Mitchell, my lord, and will apprise your lordship instantly.”

“No luck at the northern gates,” the Marquis said, musing. “So he’s not taking her back to England. Now what the devil’s his game?”

Ten minutes later Fletcher came to find him again, and said impassively: “Robert reports, my lord, that shortly before noon a travelling chaise passed out of Paris by the Port Royal. It contained an Englishman who spoke French very indifferently, and one lady.”

The Marquis’s hand clutched on his riding-whip. “Dijon!” he said, with, something of a snarl. “Damn his infernal impudence! Have the bay saddled, Fletcher, and send me a man to take a note to Miss Marling.” He sat down at the writing-desk, and jabbed a quill in the standish. He scrawled one line only to his cousin. “They’re off to Dijon. I leave Paris in half an hour. ”Having given this to a lackey, he picked up his hat and went off to Foley, his grace of Avon’s banker.

When he returned, twenty minutes later, his light chaise was already awaiting him in the courtyard, and his groom was walking the bay up and down. A lackey was in the act of placing two band boxes in the chaise, but was checked by a thunderous demand to know what the devil he was about.

“They belong to the lady, my lord,” explained the lackey nervously.

“Lady? What lady?” said Vidal, astonished.

He was answered by the appearance of his cousin in the big doorway. Miss Marling had on a highly becoming hat, tied under her chin with pink ribands, and carried a feather-muff. Her face wore a look of mulish determination. “Oh, so there you are at last, Vidal!” she said.

“What in the fiend’s name brings you here?” asked the Marquis, coming to her side. “There’s nothing for you to do in this coil.”

Miss Marling looked up at him defiantly. “I am coming with you.”

“The devil you are!” ejaculated his lordship. “No, my fair cousin. I don’t hamper myself with a petticoat on this journey.”

“I am coming with you,” repeated Miss Marling.

“You’re not,” said Vidal curtly, and beckoned to his groom.

Juliana caught at his wrist. “You shan’t go without me!” she said in a fierce whisper. “You only care for your odious Mary, but she has run off with my Frederick, I’ll have you know, and I’ll come if I have to hire a post-chaise and travel alone! I mean it, Vidal!”

He looked down at her frowningly. “You do, do you? I doubt you won’t relish this journey overmuch.”

“You’ll take me?” she said eagerly.

He shrugged. “I’ll take you, but if I were your husband I’d soon school you, my girl.” He handed her up somewhat urgently into the chaise, and said brusquely: “Does Tante know of this?”

“Well, she was gone out, but I felt a letter explaining as well as I could for the hurry I was in.”

“Very well,” Vidal said, and shut the door on her.

One of the lackeys put up the steps; the postillions were already in their saddles, and grooms stood to the horses’ heads. Vidal pulled on his gloves, gathered the bay’s bridle in his left hand, and mounted. “Port Royal!” he said to the postillions, and reigned the bay in hard to let the chaise pass out of the courtyard.

At the first post-stage Miss Marling insisted on descending from the chaise. While the horses were changed she favoured the Marquis with a pungent criticism of his manners, and the springs of the chaise. She said that never had she been so shaken and battered. She wondered that any man should be so brutal as to subject a lady to such discomfort, and declared that she vastly regretted having come on the journey.

“I thought you would,” replied his lordship. “Perhaps it’ll teach you not to meddle in my affairs.”

“Your affairs?” gasped Miss Marling. “Do you imagine that I care a pin for your affairs? I’ve come on my own, Vidal!”

“Then don’t grumble,” he returned.

Miss Marling stalked back to the chaise in high dudgeon. At the next halt she did not even look out of the window, but at the end of another twelve miles, she alighted once more, with her cloak held tightly round her against the sharp evening wind.

It was dusk and the landscape was dim, with a grey mist rising off the ground. The lamps on the chaise had been lit, and a comfortable glow came from the windows of the small inn.

“Vidal, can we not stay here for the night?” asked Miss Marling in a fading voice.

His lordship was speaking to one of the ostlers. He finished what he had to say, and then came leisurely towards his cousin. He had put on his greatcoat, an affair of buff-coloured cloth, with three capes at the shoulders. “Tired?” he said.

“Of course I am tired, stupid creature!” replied Miss Marling.

“Go into the inn,” he commanded. “We dine here.”

“I vow I could not eat a morsel!”

He did not pay any heed to this, but walked back to say something to his groom. Miss Marling, hating him, flounced into the inn, and was escorted by the landlord to a private parlour. A fire had been kindled in the grate, and Juliana drew up a chair and sat down, spreading her chilled fingers to the warmth.

Presently the Marquis came in. He flung his greatcoat over a chair, and kicked the smouldering logs to a small blaze. “That’s better,” he said briskly.

“You have made it smoke,” remarked Miss Marling in a voice of long suffering.

He looked down at her with a hint of a smile. “You’re hungry, and devilish cross, Ju.”

Her bosom swelled. “You have treated me abominably,” she said.

“Fiddle!” replied the Marquis.

“You let me be jolted and bumped till the teeth rattled in my head. You thrust me into your odious chaise as though I were a mere piece of baggage, and you have not the civility to stay with me.”

“I never drive when I can ride,” said his lordship indifferently.

“I make no doubt at all that had I been Mary Challoner you would have been glad enough to have borne me company!”

The Marquis was snuffing one of the candles, but he looked up at that, and there was a glint in his eye. “That, my dear, is quite another matter,” he said.

Miss Marling told him roundly that he was the rudest creature she had ever met and when he only laughed, she launched into a speech of some length.

He interrupted her to say: “My good cousin, do you wish to catch up with our two runaways, or not?”

“Of course I do! But must we travel at this shocking speed? They cannot reach Dijon for two or three days, and we’ve time enough, I should have thought, to come up with them.”

“I want to overtake them to-night,” Vidal said grimly. “They are not three hours ahead of us now.”

“What! Have we gained on them so fast? Then I take it all back, Vidal, every word. Let us go on at once!”

“We’ll dine first,” answered his lordship.

“How,” demanded Juliana tragically, “can you suppose that I could think of food at such a time?”

“Do you know,” said the Marquis gently, “I find you excessively tedious, Juliana. You complain of the speed at which I choose to travel; you talk a deal of damned nonsense about my incivility and your sensibilities; you spurn dinner as though it were poisoned; you behave in short like a heroine out of a melodrama.”

Miss Marling was prevented from replying by the entrance of two serving-men. Covers were laid, and chairs placed at the table. The men withdrew, and Miss Marling said carefully: “You have a vast deal to say in my dispraise, Vidal. Pray, is it to be expected that I should feel no agitation? To be sure, I am sorry I complained of the speed, but to be left hour upon hour alone in a jolting chaise is enough to try the patience even of a Mary Challoner.”

“No,” said his lordship. A reminiscent smile softened his mouth for a brief moment. “Come and sit down.”

She came, but told him that a glass of wine to revive her was all that was needed.

The Marquis shrugged. “Just as you please, cousin.”

Miss Marling sipped her wine, and watched his lordship carve the capon. She shuddered, and said that she wondered at him. “For my part,” she added, “I should have thought any gentleman of the least sensibility would have refrained from — from gorging when the lady in his company — ”

“Ah, but I’m not a gentleman,” said the Marquis. “I have it on the best of authority that I am only a nobleman.”

“Good gracious, Vidal, who in the world dared to say such a thing?” cried his cousin, instantly diverted.

“Mary,” replied his lordship, pouring himself out a glass of wine.

“Well, if you sat eating as though nothing mattered save your dinner I’m not surprised,” said Juliana viciously. “If I were not so angry with her, the deceitful, sly wretch, I could pity her for all she must have undergone at your hands.”

“Seeing me eat was the least of her sufferings,” answered the Marquis. “She underwent much, but it may interest you to know, Juliana, that she never treated me to the vapours, as you seem like to do.”

“Then I can only say, Vidal, that either she had no notion what a horrid brutal man you are, or that she is just a dull creature with no nerves at all.”

For a moment Vidal did not answer. Then he said in a level voice: “She knew.” His lip curled. He glanced scornfully at his cousin. “Had I carried you off as I carried her you would have died of fright or hysterics, Juliana. Make no mistake, my dear; Mary was so desperately afraid she tried to put a bullet through me.”

“Tried to put a bullet through you, Dominic?” repeated Miss Marling incredulously. “I never heard a word of this before!”

“It is not a story that I should be likely to tell, since it don’t redound to my credit,” said Vidal drily. “But when you sit there full of airs and graces because you’ve been jolted over a bad road, and sneer at Mary — ”

“I didn’t sneer!” said Juliana hastily. “I’d no notion you behaved so dreadfully badly to her. You said you forced her aboard your yacht, but I never supposed that you really frightened her enough to make her fire at you. You need not be in a rage with me for saying so, Dominic, but when I saw Mary at your house she was so placid I made sure you’d not treated her so very brutally after all. Had you?”

“Yes,” said Vidal bluntly. He looked at Juliana. “You think it was vastly romantic for Mary to be carried off by me, don’t you? You think you would enjoy it, and you cannot conceive how she should be afraid, can you? Then think, my girl! Think a little! You are in my power at this moment, I may remind you. What if I make you feel it? What if I say to start with that you shall eat your dinner, and force it down your throat?”

Juliana shrank back from him involuntarily. “Don’t, Vidal! Don’t come near me!” she said, frightened by the expression in his face.

He laughed. “Not so romantic, is it, Ju? And to force you to eat your dinner would be a small thing compared with some other things I might force you to do. Sit down, I’m not going to touch you.”

She obeyed, eyeing him nervously. “I — I wish I hadn’t come with you!” she said.

“So did Mary, with more reason. But Mary would have died sooner than let me see that she was afraid. And Mary, my love, is not my cousin.”

Juliana drew a long breath. “Of course, I didn’t think that you would really force me to eat,” she said. “You — you merely startled me.”

“Well, I shall force you if you don’t take care,” said his lordship. He carved a slice of breast, and handed it to her. “Don’t be tiresome, Juliana. Eat it, and forget your sensibilities. You’ve not much time.”

Juliana took the plate meekly. “Oh, very well,” she said. “I must say, Dominic, if you looked at Mary in that dreadful threatening way I can almost forgive her for running off with Frederick.” She stole a sidelong look at him. “You were not very kind to Mary, apparently.”

“Kind!” ejaculated Vidal. “No, I was not — kind.”

Juliana ate another morsel of capon. “You seem to me to have behaved as though you hated her,” she remarked.

He said nothing. Juliana peeped at him again. “You’re very anxious to get her in your power again, Vidal. But I don’t quite know why you should be, for you meant to marry her only because you had ruined her, and so were obliged to, didn’t you?”

She thought that he was not going to answer, but suddenly he raised his eyes from the contemplation of the dregs of his wine. “Because I am obliged to?” he said. “I mean to marry Mary Challoner because I’m devilish sure I can’t live without her.”

Juliana clapped her hands with a crow of delight. “Oh, it is famous!” she exclaimed. “I never dreamed you had fallen in love with my staid Mary! I thought you were chasing her through France just because you so hate to be crossed! But when you flew into a rage with me for saying she was too dull to be afraid of you, of course, I guessed at once! My dearest Dominic, I was never more glad of anything in my life, and it is of all things the most romantic possible! Do, do let us overtake them at once! Only conceive of their astonishment when they see us!”

“Mary knows I am hard on her heels,” Vidal answered, with a little laugh. “At every stage I meet with the same tale: the English lady was anxious to lose no time. She’s used to my way of travel, Juliana; she’ll whisk your Frederick to Dijon in a manner highly discomposing to his dignity.”

“It is possible,” said Miss Marling stiffly, “that Frederick and not Mary will have the ordering of the journey.”

Vidal chuckled. “Not if I know my Mary,” he replied.

Twenty minutes later they took the road again. Dinner had revived Miss Marling’s spirits, and she made no demur at entering the chaise again. Knowing that she was within reach of her Frederick she could not now drive fast enough, and her only fear was that they might overshoot their mark. Somewhere on the route Frederick and Mary must have halted for the night, and Miss Marling was inclined to stop at every village they passed, in case the fugitives might be there.

She occupied herself in planning the scene that lay before her, and had decided on the speech she would make when there was a sudden crash, and she was hurled against the side of the chaise. There was a dreadful bump, the smash of breaking glass, and Miss Marling, considerably shaken and dazed, tried to right herself only to find that the seat of the coach was now at a very odd angle, and the off-door almost where the roof should have been. She heard the trampling of the horses plunging in alarm, and the voices of the postillions. Then the off-door was wrenched open, and Vidal said sharply: “Are you hurt, Ju?”

“No, but what has happened? — Oh, I have cut myself! Oh, this dreadful glass! It is too bad of you, Dominic! I said we were driving at a wicked pace, and now see what has happened!”

“We’ve lost a wheel,” explained his lordship. “Reach up your hands to me, and I’ll pull you out.”

This feat was performed in an expeditious if somewhat rough-and-ready fashion. Juliana was swung down on to the road, and left to examine her hurts while his lordship went to see that the frightened horses were unhurt. When he came back he found his cousin in a state of seething indignation. She demanded to know where they were, how he proposed to come up with the runaways, where they were to sleep, and whether anyone cared enough to bind up her bleeding hand or not.

The Marquis performed this office for her by the light of one of the chaise lamps, and told her not to be in a taking over a mere scratch. He said that they were, providentially, only a quarter of a mile from the next village, where they could obtain a lodging for the night in one of the cottages.

“What?” shrieked the afflicted Miss Marling. “Sleep in a horrid peasant’s cottage? I won’t! You must find another chaise at once! At once, Vidal, do you hear?”

“I hear,” said his lordship coolly. “Now, don’t be nonsensical, Juliana. You’ll do well enough. For all I know there may be an inn you can stay at, though I won’t vouch for the sheets. There’s no hope of repairing the chaise till the morning, for Richards will have to ride to the nearest town to find a smith. I’m sending him off now, and for the present you must make the best of it. We shall catch our runaways in time, don’t doubt it.”

Miss Marling, overcome by the ignominy of her position, sank down on the bank by the roadside and gave way to her emotions. The postillions regarded her with interested sympathy; Richards coughed in embarrassment; and my lord, raising his clenched fists to heaven, prayed to be delivered from every female but one.