The Duke had by this time visualized the possibility of his corpse being cast into the evil-smelling pond beside the inn, but he could see no obligation on him to take Mr. Liversedge's hand, he merely bowed. Mr. Liversedge, whose eyes had been running over him shrewdly, smiled more widely than ever, and drew out a chair from the table, and said: "Let us be seated, sir! Alas, you have come upon a very painful errand! I assure you I feel for you, sir, for I have been young myself, but my duty is to my unfortunate niece. Ah, Mr. Ware, you little know the pain and grief—I may say the chagrin—you have inflicted on one whose tender heart was been so undeservedly smitten!" Overcome by the picture his own words had conjured up, he disappeared for a moment or two into a large handkerchief.
The Duke sat down, and laid his hat on the table. He said in his diffident way: "Indeed, I am sorry for that, Mr. Liversedge. I should not wish to cause any female pain or grief."
Mr. Liversedge raised his bowed head. "There," he said, much moved, "speaks a member of the Quality! I knew it, Mr. Ware! True Blue! When my niece has wept upon this bosom, declaring herself forsaken and betrayed, My love, I have said, depend upon it a scion of that noble house will not fail to do you right! I thank God, Mr. Ware, that my faith in humanity is not to be rudely shaken!"
"I hope not, indeed," said the Duke. "But, you know, I had no notion that your niece's affections were so deeply engaged."
"Sir," said Mr. Liversedge, "you are young! you do not yet know the depths of woman's heart!"
"No," agreed the Duke. "But will money allay the—the pangs of grief and chagrin?"
"Yes," said Mr. Liversedge simply.
The Duke could not help smiling at this. He said in a meek tone: "Forgive me, Mr. Liversedge, but is not a—a transaction of this nature repugnant to a man of your sensibility?"
"Mr. Ware," said Mr. Liversedge, "I shall not conceal from you that it is deeply repugnant. I am, as you have divined, a man of sensibility, and it is with profound reluctance that I have compelled myself to take up the cudgels on behalf of my orphaned niece."
"At her instigation?" murmured the Duke.
Mr. Liversedge surveyed him, a calculating look in his eye. "My niece," he said, "has been put to great expense on account of expectations raised, Mr. Ware. I need not enumerate. But bride-clothes, you know, sir, and—"
"Five thousand pounds?" said Gilly, in bewildered accents.
They looked at one another. "I am persuaded," said Mr. Liversedge reproachfully, "that you would not wish to do anything unhandsome, sir. Considering the elevated nature of my niece's expectations, five thousand pounds cannot be considered an extortionate figure."
"But I am quite unable to pay such a sum," said Gilly.
Mr. Liversedge spread out his hands. "It is very disagreeable for me to be obliged to remind you, sir, that you are nearly related to one, who, I am persuaded, would not regard such a trifling sum any more than you or I would regard a crown piece."
"Sale?" said the Duke. "Oh, he would never pay it!"
Mr. Liversedge said in a shocked voice: "I cannot be brought to believe, sir, that his Grace would grudge it!"
The Duke shook his head sadly. "I do not stand next to him in the succession, you know. I have two uncles, and a cousin before me. And my father, Mr. Liversedge, is not a rich man."
"I cannot credit that his Grace would permit his name to be dragged through the mire of the Courts!" said Mr. Liversedge, with resolution.
"And I am sure," said the Duke gently, "that you would shrink from dragging your niece's name through that mire."
"Shrink, yes," acknowledged Mr. Liversedge. "But I shall steel myself, Mr. Ware. That is, I should do so if his Grace were to prove adamant. But what a shocking thing if the head of such a noble house should have so little regard for his name!"
"I wonder what course you had the intention of pursuing if I had fled to Gretna Green with your niece?" said the Duke thoughtfully. "For I cannot suppose that an alliance for her with anyone so lacking in fortune and expectation as myself was what you had in mind!"
"Certainly not," replied Mr. Liversedge, without a blush. "But she is a minor, after all! little more than a child! The marriage might have been set aside—at a price."
The Duke laughed. "Come, we begun to understand one another better! You may as well own, sir, that your object is to squeeze money from my noble relative, no matter on what pretext."
"Between these four walls, Mr. Ware," said Liversedge cheerfully. "Between these four walls!"
"How much it must disgust a man of your sensibility to be reduced to such straits!" observed the Duke.
Liversedge sighed. "It does, sir. In fact, it is quite out of my line."
"What is your line?" enquired the Duke curiously.
Mr. Liversedge waved an airy hand. "Cards, sir, cards! I flatter myself I had established myself with every prospect of success. But Fate singled me out to be the object of vile persecution, Mr. Ware. I am—temporarily, of course—without the means to re-establish myself suitably, and you see me forced to eke out a miserable existence in surroundings which, I am persuaded, you will easily descry to be, totally unfitting for any man of gentility. You, Mr. Ware, who are putting up, I make no doubt, in the comfort of the George—an excellent hostelry!—can have little notion—"
"No, no, above my touch!" murmured the Duke demurely. "The White Horse!"
"The White Horse," said Mr. Liversedge feelingly, "may not aspire to the elegance of the George, but compared with this hovel in which I am compelled to sojourn, Mr. Ware, it is a palace!"
The Duke did not deny it, and after a slight pause during which Mr. Liversedge appeared to dwell longingly on the amenities afforded by post-inns, that worthy gentleman heaved a sigh, and continued in a more optimistic tone: "However, I do not complain. Life, Mr. Ware, is full of vicissitudes! Let me but once come about, and I do not despair of finding just the locality for the opening of a house where gentlemen with a taste for play may be sure of finding entertainment. In all modesty, Mr. Ware, I will say that I have a talent above the ordinary for such enterprises. If ever I should have the happiness to welcome you to any house under my direction, I fancy you will be pleased with what you will find. Nothing shoddy, I assure you, and admittance by password only. I shall pay particular attention to the quality of the wine in my cellar: nothing could be more fatal to the success of such a venture than to fob off one's patrons with inferior wine! But to achieve my object, sir, I must have Substance. Without Substance the result, if any, must be shabby, and, as such, too far beneath me to be considered."
"You are frank!" said the Duke. "My cousin Sale, in fact, is to set you up in some gaming-hell!"
"That," said Mr. Liversedge, "is to put the matter with vulgar bluntness, Mr. Ware."
"I fear I must wound your susceptibilities more deeply still! It is not your niece who makes this demand, but you, and the whole affair is a fudge!"
Mr. Liversedge smiled at him with great patience. "My dear sir, you wrong me, indeed you do!"
"I am very sure I do not! You have owned to me—"
A plump, uplifted hand checked him. "Between these four walls, Mr. Ware!" Liversedge said, with a return to his reproachful manner.
The Duke stared at him. Suddenly he said: "And what, sir, if I were to express my willingness to marry your niece? Have you thought of that?"
"Of everything!" Liversedge assured him affably. "I, of course, with my niece's happiness in mind, should be overjoyed. But it would not do for you at all, Mr. Ware, and your noble relatives, I fear, would do what lay in their power to prevent such an unequal match. Alas that it should be so, but it is the way of the world, after all, and if I were your father, sir, I confess I should strain every nerve to put a bar between you and my poor Belinda. Love-begotten, you know. Dear me, yes! Quite ineligible! You are young, and impetuous, but I feel sure your relatives must see it as I do myself."
"Mr. Liversedge," said the Duke, "I do not believe that your niece has the least notion of suing me for breach of promise! You think to out-jockey me, to take me in like a goose, in fact! This is all a hoax! I daresay your niece knows nothing of the matter!"
Mr. Liversedge shook his head sorrowfully. "It pains me, Mr. Ware, to meet with this unmerited mistrust! it pains me excessively! I did not look to have my good faith so doubted; I did not expect, in face of all that has passed between you and my unfortunate niece, to be met with what I must—reluctantly, believe me!—term callousness! If you were an older man, sir, I should be strongly tempted to request you to name your friends. As it is, I shall content myself with bringing before you irrefutable proof of the integrity of my actions."
He rose to his feet as he spoke, and the Duke followed suit rather warily. Liversedge smiled his understanding, and said: "Have no fear, Mr. Ware! A guest under my roof, you know, I must hold sacred, however moved I may be. Not, I beg you to believe, that I lay the least claim to this roof. But the principle holds! Pray be seated, for I shall not be long gone!"
He bowed with great dignity, and went out of the room, leaving the Duke to wonder what might be going to happen next. He walked over to the window restlessly, and stood fidgeting with the blind-cord. As he stood there, he had the satisfaction, at least, of seeing the landlord and the man in the plush waistcoat walking across the dirty yard with pails in their hands. From the medley of squeals in the distance he inferred that they were on their way to feed the pigs. He had not soberly supposed that either of them would be called in to overpower him, for he could not perceive any good end to be achieved through such methods, but he felt more at his ease with them out of earshot. Mr. Liversedge might be an entertaining scoundrel, but a scoundrel he certainly was, and would probably stop at very little to extort money from his victims. It was evident that he considered the supposed Mr. Ware a negligible opponent. The Duke had seen the indulgent contempt in his smile, and had done nothing to dispel it. He was by this time quite determined not to allow himself to be bled of as much as a farthing. By fair means or foul—and he would feel very little compunction at using foul means against a gentleman of Liversedge's kidney—he must wrest Matthew's letters, which Liversedge had in all probability gone away to collect, away from him. And since it seemed unlikely that this could be achieved without Mr. Manton's pistol coming into play, he was happy to see the landlord and his henchman going off to feed the pigs.
Mr. Liversedge was absent for some ten minutes, but presently the Duke heard his ponderous tread, and turned round to face the door.
It opened; Mr. Liversedge's voice said unctuously: "Come in, my love! Come and tell Mr. Ware how deeply he has wounded your tender heart!"
The Duke jumped, for this was a possibility he had not envisaged. The thought darted across his mind that if his true identity should be guessed it might occur to Mr. Liversedge's fertile brain that the Duke of Sale, held to ransom, would prove a more profitable investment than his niece's broken heart. His hand slid once more into the pocket of his coat, to grasp the butt of his pistol, and he braced himself to face the inevitable disclosure.
Into the room stepped a vision of loveliness. The Duke caught his breath, and stood staring. His cousin Matthew had certainly spoken of Belinda's beauty, but he had not prepared him for anything as superb as the creature who now stood on the threshold, regarding him out of eyes so large, so innocent, and of so deep translucent a blue as to make his senses swim for a dizzy moment. He closed his own eyes involuntarily, and opened them again to make sure that they had not deceived him. They had not. He beheld a veritable beauty. A face of rose-leaf complexion was framed in a cascade of guinea-gold curls, artlessly bound with a ribbon of scarcely a deeper blue than those glorious eyes; the brows were delicately arched; the little nose classically straight; the wistful mouth, with its short upper-lip, as kissable as it was perfect in proportion.
The Duke swallowed once, and waited. That melting gaze widened a little as it rested on him, but the lady said nothing.
"Did not Mr. Ware promise you marriage, my love?" said Mr. Liversedge, closing the door, and bending solicitously over the vision.
"Yes," said the vision, in a soft, west-country voice. "Oh, yes!"
If the Duke had been dizzy before, his senses now reeled. He could think of nothing to say. He wondered, for an unreasoning instant, if those tender blue eyes could be sightless, since he resembled his cousin hardly at all. But when he stared into them he saw a sort of speculation in their gaze, and knew that they were not.
"And did he not write you letters, my love, which you very properly gave to me, promising that he would make you his wife?" prompted Mr. Liversedge.
"Oh, yes, he did!" corroborated Belinda, smiling angelically at the Duke, and affording him an entrancing glimpse of even teeth, gleaming like pearls between her parted lips.
Mr. Liversedge spoke in a voice of studied patience.
"Were you not completely taken-in, my dear child? Was it not a crushing blow to you when he declared off and left you forsaken?"
Under the Duke's bemused stare, the smile left Belinda's face, and two large tears welled over, and rolled down her cheeks. "Yes, it was," she said, in a voice that would have wrung pity from Herod. "He said I should have a purple silk dress when we was married."
Mr. Liversedge interposed rather hastily, patting one dimpled hand. "To be sure, yes, and other things too! And now you have none of them!"
"No," agreed Belinda dolefully. "But I shall be paid a vast sum of money for being so taken-in, and then I may have a—"
"Yes, my love, yes!" interrupted Mr. Liversedge. "You are upset, and no wonder! I would not have brought you face to face with Mr. Ware, who has so grossly deceived you, but that he doubted the depth of the wound he had dealt yon. I will not compel you to remain another instant in the same room with him, for I know it to be painful to you. Go, my love, and trust your uncle to care for your interests!"