The Greatest Historical Novels & Romances of D. K. Broster. D. K. Broster

received the impression that he was a trifle the worse for wine. The Countess said, with a smiling authority, “Then it behoves you all the more, Francis, to hear how Mr. Cameron beat off the footpads who assailed your father’s chair this evening at the corner of the square.”

      “English footpads?” queried the young man, and he looked meaningly for an instant at the rescuer.

      “Why, what else?” asked his father. “Two footpads armed with cudgels. I had the narrowest escape of being robbed, if not of being murdered.”

      “I can quite believe that you had, sir,” observed Lord Aveling, looking at Ewen again.

      But Ewen had by now resolved that he was not going to suffer these stabs any longer, nor was he disposed to hear the account of his prowess given a second time, and to the mocking accompaniment which he knew that it would receive. He therefore took advantage of the check to Lord Stowe’s imminent narrative, brought about by these (to him) unintelligible remarks of his son’s, firmly to excuse himself on the score of the lateness of the hour. Either Lord Aveling would allow him to leave the house without further words, or he would not; in any case, it was probable that he desired such words to take place without witnesses. The fact that he had not previously mentioned to his family their encounter and its disastrous end seemed to point to the fact that his young pride had been too bitterly wounded for him to speak of it, even in the hope of obtaining revenge. It might be very different now that his enemy was delivered so neatly into his hands.

      “You must promise to visit us again, Mr. Cameron,” said the Countess with the utmost graciousness, and Lord Stowe said the same, adding that if there were any way in which he could serve him he had but to name it. Ewen thought rather sardonically how surprised the Earl would be if he responded by a request that he should prevent his son from landing him in Newgate, but he merely murmured polite thanks as the Earl conducted him to the door of the drawing-room. It seemed as though he were going to pay his rescuer the further compliment of descending the stairs with him, but in this design he had reckoned without his son, who, as Ewen was perfectly aware, had followed behind them, awaiting his opportunity.

      “I will escort Mr. Cameron down the stairs, my lord,” he said easily, slipping in front of his father. “You must remember that we are old acquaintances.”

      He sounded perfectly civil and pleasant now, and after a barely perceptible hesitation the Earl relinquished the guest to his care, shook hands with great warmth, repeating his assurance of undying gratitude and a perpetual warm welcome at Stowe House. Then the door closed, and Ewen and Lord Aveling were alone together.

      “Will you come into the library downstairs?” asked the young man, somewhat in the tone he might have used to a mason come about repairs, and with as little apparent doubt of the response.

      “Yes,” answered Ardroy with equal coldness, “I will,” and followed him down the great staircase.

      In the marble-pillared hall a footman stepped forward. “Take lights into the library,” commanded the young lord, and while he and Ewen waited for this to be done, without speaking, or even looking at each other, Ewen, gazing up at a portrait of some judicial ancestor in wig and ermine (not inappropriate to the present circumstances) thought, ‘What is to prevent my opening the door into the square and leaving the house?’ What indeed? Something much stronger than the desire to do so.

      But in another moment the lackey was preceding them with a couple of branched candlesticks into a room lined with books. He made as though to light the sconces too, but Lord Aveling checked him impatiently, and the man merely set the lights on the big, polished table in the centre and withdrew. The son of the house waited until his footsteps had died away on the marble outside.

      “Now, Mr. Cameron!” he said.

      * * * * *

      Ewen had always known that to come to London was to invite the Fates to present him with the reckoning for his behaviour at Dalmally. Well, if it had to be, it was preferable to have it presented by the victim himself rather than by some emissary of the justice which he had invoked. And, however this unpleasant interview was to end, he might perhaps during its course succeed in convincing Lord Aveling of the sincerity of his regrets for that lamentable episode.

      “I suppose, my lord,” he now answered gravely, “that you must say what you please to me. I admit that I have little right to resent it.”

      The admission, unfortunately, appeared but to inflame the young nobleman the more. “You are vastly kind, Mr. Cameron, upon my soul! You lay aside resentment, forsooth! I fear I cannot rise to that height, and let me tell you, therefore, that what I find almost more blackguardly than your infamous conduct at Dalmally is the coup you have brought off to-night, in——”

      “The coup I have brought off!” exclaimed Ewen in bewilderment. “My lord, what——”

      Aveling swept on “—in forcing an entrance to this house, and ingratiating yourself with my parents, having put my father under a fancied obligation by a trick so transparent that, if he were not the most good-natured man alive, he would have seen through it at once.”

      At this totally unexpected interpretation of the sedan-chair incident a good deal of Ewen’s coolness left him.

      “You cannot really think that the attack on Lord Stowe was planned—that I was responsible for it!”

      “How else am I to account for your being there so pat?” inquired the young man. “You hired the ruffians and then came in as a deliverer. It has been done before now. And having succeeded in laying Lord Stowe under an obligation you know that I cannot well——” He broke off, his rage getting the better of him. “But the insolence, the inexpressible insolence of your daring to enter this house after what has happened!”

      “Since I did not plan the attack, Lord Aveling,” said Ewen firmly, “I had no notion whom I was rescuing. Nor did Lord Stowe tell me his name until he was on the point of taking me upstairs. It was too late to withdraw then.”

      “As I am henceforward unable to believe a word that you say, sir,” retorted the young man, “it is of small use your pretending ignorance of my father’s identity.”

      “Yet perhaps you are still able to recognise logic when you hear it,” rejoined Ewen with some sharpness, his own temper beginning to stir. “Had I known that the gentleman in the sedan-chair was Lord Stowe—which, if I had planned the attack, I must have known—the merest prudence would have kept me from entering a house in which I was so like to meet you.”

      “Yes,” said Aveling with a bitter little smile, “you would have done better to part sooner from my father after this pretended rescue!”

      “And yet,” said the Highlander, looking at him with a touch of wistfulness in his level gaze, “as chance has brought us together again, is it too much to hope, my lord, that you will at least endeavour to accept my most sincere and humble apologies for what my great necessity forced me to do that evening?”

      “Apologies?” said Viscount Aveling. “No, by heaven, there are no apologies humble enough for what you did!”

      “Then I am ready to give you satisfaction in the way usual between gentlemen,” said Ewen gravely.

      The young man shook his powdered head. “Between gentlemen, yes. But a gentleman does not accept satisfaction of that kind from a highwayman; he has him punished, as I swore I would you. But you doubtless think that by gaining the Earl’s goodwill you have put that out of my power? Let me assure you, Mr. Highwayman, that you have not; the law is still the law!”

      “I doubt if the law can touch me for what I did,” answered Ewen.

      “Not for theft, horse-stealing and assault? Then this must indeed be an uncivilised country! . . . And behind those crimes remains always the question of how my brother really met his end.”

      “That I have already told you, Lord Aveling.”

      “Yes; and I was fool enough to believe you! I am wiser now; I know of what you are capable, Mr. Ewen Cameron!”