Produced by David Widger
By Winston Churchill
XXXIV. His Grace makes Advances
XXXV. In which my Lord Baltimore appears
XXXVI. A Glimpse of Mr. Garrick
XXXVII. The Serpentine
XXXVIII. In which I am roundly brought to task
XXXIX. Holland House
XL. Vauxhall
The next morning I began casting about as to what I should do next.There was no longer any chance of getting at the secret from Dorothy, ifsecret there were. Whilst I am ruminating comes a great battling at thestreet door, and Jack Comyn blew in like a gust of wind, rating mesoundly for being a lout and a blockhead.
"Zooks!" he cried, "I danced the soles off my shoes trying to get in hereyesterday, and I hear you were moping all the time, and paid me no moreattention than I had been a dog scratching at the door. What! and haveyou fallen out with my lady?"
I confessed the whole matter to him. He was not to be resisted. Hecalled to Banks for a cogue of Nantsey, and swore amazingly at what hewas pleased to term the inscrutability of woman, offering up consolationby the wholesale. The incident, he said, but strengthened his convictionthat Mr. Manners had appealed to Dorothy to save him. "And then," addedhis Lordship, facing me with absolute fierceness, "and then, Richard, whythe devil did she weep? There were no tears when I made my avowal. Itell you, man, that the whole thing points but the one way. She lovesyou. I swear it by the rood."
I could not help laughing, and he stood looking at me with such awhimsical expression that I rose and flung my arms around him.
"Jack, Jack!" I cried, "what a fraud you are! Do you remember theargument you used when you had got me out of the sponging-house? Quotingyou, all I had to do was to put Dorothy to the proof, and she would tossMr. Marmaduke and his honour broadcast. Now I have confessed myself, andwhat is the result? Nay, your theory is gone up in vapour."
"Then why," cried his Lordship, hotly, "why before refusing me did shedemand to know whether you had been in love with Patty Swain? 'Sdeath!you put me in mind of a woman upon stilts—a man has always to be walkingalongside her with encouragement handy. And when a proud creature suchas our young lady breaks down as she hath done, 'tis clear as skylightthere is something wrong. And as for Mr. Manners, Hare overheard a partof a pow-wow 'twixt him and the duke at the Bedford Arms,—and Charterseahas all but owned in some of his drunken fits that our little fop is inhis power."
"Then she is in love with some one else," I said.
"I tell you she is not," said Comyn, still more emphatically; "and youcan write that down in red in your table book. Gossip has never beenable to connect her name with that of any man save yours, when she wentfor you in Castle Yard. And, gemini, gossip is like water, and will getin if a crack shows. When the Marquis of Wells was going to ArlingtonStreet once every day, she sent him about his business in a fortnight."
Despite Comyn's most unselfish optimism, I could see no light. And inthe recklessness that so often besets youngsters of my temper, on likeoccasions, I went off to Newmarket next day with Mr. Fox and Lord Ossory,in his Lordship's travelling-chaise and four. I spent a very gay weektrying to forget Miss Dolly. I was the loser by some three hundredpounds, in addition to what I expended and loaned to Mr. Fox. This younggentleman