"Certainly. Who's the gentleman?"
"My best friend, I tell you. I could hardly have proposed another.
Allow this business to go on smoothly just now." There was an uproar within the colonel to blind his wits, and Willoughby looked so friendly that it was possible to suppose the man of projects had mentioned his best friend to Miss Middleton.
And who was the best friend?
Not having accused himself of treachery, the quick-eyed colonel was duped.
"Have you his name handy, Willoughby?"
"That would be unfair to him at present, Horace--ask yourself--and to her. Things are in a ticklish posture at present. Don't be hasty."
"Certainly. I don't ask. Initials'll do."
"You have a remarkable aptitude for guessing, Horace, and this case offers you no tough problem--if ever you acknowledged toughness. I have a regard for her and for him--for both pretty equally; you know I have, and I should be thoroughly thankful to bring the matter about."
"Lordly!" said De Craye.
"I don't see it. I call it sensible."
"Oh, undoubtedly. The style, I mean. Tolerably antique?"
"Novel, I should say, and not the worse for that. We want plain practical dealings between men and women. Usually we go the wrong way to work. And I loathe sentimental rubbish."
De Craye hummed an air. "But the lady?" said he.
"I told you, there seems a likelihood of her consenting."
Willoughby's fish gave a perceptible little leap now that he had been taught to exercise his aptitude for guessing.
"Without any of the customary preliminaries on the side of the gentleman?" he said.
"We must put him through his paces, friend Horace. He's a notorious blunderer with women; hasn't a word for them, never marked a conquest."
De Craye crested his plumes under the agreeable banter. He presented a face humourously sceptical.
"The lady is positively not indisposed to give the poor fellow a hearing?"
"I have cause to think she is not," said Willoughby, glad of acting the indifference to her which could talk of her inclinations.
"Cause?"
"Good cause."
"Bless us!"
"As good as one can have with a woman."
"Ah?"
"I assure you."
"Ah! Does it seem like her, though?"
"Well, she wouldn't engage herself to accept him."
"Well, that seems more like her."
"But she said she could engage to marry no one else."
The colonel sprang up, crying: "Clara Middleton said it?" He curbed himself "That's a bit of wonderful compliancy."
"She wishes to please me. We separate on those terms. And I wish her happiness. I've developed a heart lately and taken to think of others."
"Nothing better. You appear to make cock sure of the other party--our friend?"
"You know him too well, Horace, to doubt his readiness."
"Do you, Willoughby?"
"She has money and good looks. Yes, I can say I do."
"It wouldn't be much of a man who'd want hard pulling to that lighted altar!"
"And if he requires persuasion, you and I, Horace, might bring him to his senses."
"Kicking, "t would be!"
"I like to see everybody happy about me," said Willoughby, naming the hour as time to dress for dinner.
The sentiment he had delivered was De Craye's excuse for grasping his hand and complimenting him; but the colonel betrayed himself by doing it with an extreme fervour almost tremulous.
"When shall we hear more?" he said.
"Oh, probably to-morrow," said Willoughby. "Don't he in such a hurry."
"I'm an infant asleep!" the colonel replied, departing.
He resembled one, to Willoughby's mind: or a traitor drugged.
"There is a fellow I thought had some brains!"
Who are not fools to beset spinning if we choose to whip them with their vanity! it is the consolation of the great to watch them spin. But the pleasure is loftier, and may comfort our unmerited misfortune for a while, in making a false friend drunk.
Willoughby, among his many preoccupations, had the satisfaction of seeing the effect of drunkenness on Horace De Craye when the latter was in Clara's presence. He could have laughed. Cut in keen epigram were the marginal notes added by him to that chapter of The Book which treats of friends and a woman; and had he not been profoundly preoccupied, troubled by recent intelligence communicated by the ladies, his aunts, he would have played the two together for the royal amusement afforded him by his friend Horace.
