Ethelberta had returned inside the window, and her answer was inaudible. Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met. Both had been reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to instantly retire. Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same. Each saw that the face of his companion was flushed.
'Come in and see me,' said Ladywell quickly, before quite withdrawing his head. 'I am staying in this room.'
'I will,' said Neigh; and taking his hat he left Ethelberta's apartment forthwith.
On entering the quarters of his friend he found him seated at a table whereon writing materials were strewn. They shook hands in silence, but the meaning in their looks was enough.
'Just let me write a note, Ladywell, and I'm your man,' said Neigh then, with the freedom of an old acquaintance.
'I was going to do the same thing,' said Ladywell.
Neigh then sat down, and for a minute or two nothing was to be heard but the scratching of a pair of pens, ending on the one side with a more boisterous scratch, as the writer shaped 'Eustace Ladywell,' and on the other with slow firmness in the characters 'Alfred Neigh.'
'There's for you, my fair one,' said Neigh, closing and directing his letter.
'Yours is for Mrs. Petherwin? So is mine,' said Ladywell, grasping the bell-pull. 'Shall I direct it to be put on her table with this one?'
'Thanks.' And the two letters went off to Ethelberta's sitting-room, which she had vacated to receive Lord Mountclere in an empty one beneath. Neigh's letter was simply a pleading of a sudden call away which prevented his waiting till she should return; Ladywell's, though stating the same reason for leaving, was more of an upbraiding nature, and might almost have told its reader, were she to take the trouble to guess, that he knew of the business of Lord Mountclere with her to-day.
'Now, let us get out of this place,' said Neigh. He proceeded at once down the stairs, followed by Ladywell, who--settling his account at the bureau without calling for a bill, and directing his portmanteau to be sent to the Right-bank railway station--went with Neigh into the street.
They had not walked fifty yards up the quay when two British workmen, in holiday costume, who had just turned the corner of the Rue Jeanne d'Arc, approached them. Seeing him to be an Englishman, one of the two addressed Neigh, saying, 'Can you tell us the way, sir, to the Hotel Bold Soldier?'
Neigh pointed out the place he had just come from to the tall young men, and continued his walk with Ladywell.
Ladywell was the first to break silence. 'I have been considerably misled, Neigh,' he said; 'and I imagine from what has just happened that you have been misled too.'
'Just a little,' said Neigh, bringing abstracted lines of meditation into his face. 'But it was my own fault: for I ought to have known that these stage and platform women have what they are pleased to call Bohemianism so thoroughly engrained with their natures that they are no more constant to usage in their sentiments than they are in their way of living. Good Lord, to think she has caught old Mountclere! She is sure to have him if she does not dally with him so long that he gets cool again.'
'A beautiful creature like her to think of marrying such an infatuated idiot as he!'
'He can give her a title as well as younger men. It will not be the first time that such matches have been made.'
'I can't believe it,' said Ladywell vehemently. 'She has too much poetry in her--too much good sense; her nature is the essence of all that's romantic. I can't help saying it, though she has treated me cruelly.'
'She has good looks, certainly. I'll own to that. As for her romance and good-feeling, that I leave to you. I think she has treated you no more cruelly, as you call it, than she has me, come to that.'
'She told me she would give me an answer in a month,' said Ladywell emotionally.
'So she told me,' said Neigh.
'And so she told him,' said Ladywell.
'And I have no doubt she will keep her word to him in her usual precise manner.'
'But see what she implied to me! I distinctly understood from her that the answer would be favourable.'
'So did I.'
'So does he.'
'And he is sure to be the one who gets it, since only one of us can.
Well, I wouldn't marry her for love, money, nor--'
'Offspring.'
'Exactly: I would not. "I'll give you an answer in a month "--to all three of us! For God's sake let's sit down here and have something to drink.'
They drew up a couple of chairs to one of the tables of a wine-shop close by, and shouted to the waiter with the vigour of persons going to the dogs. Here, behind the horizontal-headed trees that dotted this part of the quay, they sat over their bottles denouncing womankind till the sun got low down upon the river, and the houses on the further side began to be toned by a blue mist. At last they rose from their seats and departed, Neigh to dine and consider his route, and Ladywell to take the train for Dieppe.
While these incidents had been in progress the two workmen had found their way into the hotel where Ethelberta was staying. Passing through the entrance, they stood at gaze in the court, much perplexed as to the door to be made for; the difficulty was solved by the appearance of Cornelia, who in expectation of them had been for the last half-hour leaning over the sill of her bed-room window, which looked into the interior, amusing herself by watching the movements to and fro in the court beneath.
After conversing awhile in undertones as if they had no real right there at all, Cornelia told them she would call their sister, if an old gentleman who had been to see her were gone again. Cornelia then ran away, and Sol and Dan stood aloof, till they had seen the old gentleman alluded to go to the door and drive off, shortly after which Ethelberta ran down to meet them.
