The gentleman opened his snuff-box, and took a pinch delicately. ‘If you succeeded in protecting your virtue, my dear Miss Challoner, I can readily believe – knowing his lordship – that your methods must have been exceedingly drastic. You perceive me positively agog with curiosity.’
‘I shot him,’ she said bluntly.
The hand that was raising the pinch of snuff to one nostril was checked for a brief moment. ‘Accept my compliments,’ said the gentleman calmly, and inhaled the snuff.
‘It was not a very bad wound,’ she told him. ‘But it sobered him, you see.’
‘I imagine that it might do so,’ he conceded.
‘Yes, sir. He began to realise that I was not – not vulgarly coy, but in deadly earnest.’
‘Did he indeed? A gentleman of intuition, I perceive.’
Miss Challoner said with dignity: ‘You laugh, sir, but it was not very amusing at the time.’
The gentleman bowed. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said solemnly. ‘What happened next?’
‘His lordship insisted that I should tell him all that I have told you. When he had heard me out he said that there was only one thing to be done. I must marry him at once.’
The keen eyes lifted from the contemplation of the enamelled snuff-box, and were suddenly intent. ‘We have reached the point where you interest me extraordinarily,’ said that smooth voice. ‘Proceed, Miss Challoner.’
She looked down at her clasped hands. ‘I could not consent to so wild a scheme, sir, of course. I was forced to decline his lordship’s offer.’
‘I do not think I am a fool,’ said the gentleman pensively. ‘But although I can sympathise with your reluctance to marry so dissolute a gentleman as Lord Vidal, your predicament was such that I do not immediately perceive what forced you to decline.’
‘The knowledge, sir, that Lord Vidal did not care for me,’ answered Miss Challoner in a low voice. ‘The knowledge also that in marrying me he would be making a – a deplorable mésalliance. I do not desire to discuss that, if you please. I requested his lordship – since I could hardly return to England – to escort me to Paris, where I hoped to find some genteel employment, such as I described to you.’
The quizzing-glass was raised again. ‘You appear to have confronted your somewhat unnerving situation with remarkable equanimity, Miss Challoner.’
She shrugged. ‘What else could I do, sir? Vapours would not have helped me. Besides, I had his lordship sick on my hands with some slight inflammation of the wound I had given him, and as he was bent on doing a number of imprudent things I had too much to do in preventing him to think very much of my own troubles.’
‘From my brief acquaintance with you, Miss Challoner, I feel moderately convinced that you did prevent Lord Vidal’s imprudence.’
‘Oh yes,’ she answered. ‘He is quite easy to manage, if – if one only knows the way.’
The quizzing-glass fell. ‘His lordship’s parents should be anxious to meet you,’ said the gentleman.
Her smile was twisted. ‘I am afraid not, sir. I do not know whether you are acquainted with his grace of Avon?’
‘Intimately,’ he said, with the ghost of a laugh.
‘Oh, then –’ She broke off. ‘In short, sir, I refused Lord Vidal’s offer, and we –’
‘But were you not about to make some observation concerning his grace of Avon?’ he interposed urbanely.
‘I was, sir, but if you are intimate with him I will refrain.’
‘Pray do not. In what monstrous light has this gentleman appeared to you?’
‘I have never set eyes on him, sir. I only judge him by what I have heard, and by things that Lord Vidal has from time to time let fall. I suppose him to be a man of few morals and no heart. He seems to me a sinister person, and is, I believe, quite unscrupulous in attaining his ends.’
The gentleman appeared to be amused. ‘I am far from contradicting you, Miss Challoner, but may I inquire whether you culled this masterly description from Lord Vidal’s lips?’
‘If you mean, did Lord Vidal tell me so, no, sir, he did not. Lord Vidal is, I think, attached to his grace. I go by common report, a little, and by the very lively fear of her uncle evinced by my friend Miss Marling. His lordship merely gave me to understand that his father was uncannily omniscient, and had a habit of succeeding in all his objects.’
‘I am relieved to hear that Lord Vidal has so much respect for his grace,’ remarked the gentleman.
‘Are you, sir? Well, having formed this opinion, I could not but feel that so far from desiring to meet me, his grace would very likely disinherit Lord Vidal if his lordship married me.’