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  The door of Mr Ringwood’s lodging was opened to him by the retired gentleman’s gentleman who owned the house, who conveyed to him the intelligence that Mr Ringwood was out of town.

  ‘Out of town!’ exclaimed George indignantly.‘What the devil ails him to be out of town, I should like to know?’

  The owner of the house, being accustomed to the vagaries of the Quality, and knowing this particular member of the Quality of old, showed no surprise at this unreasonable explosion, but said civilly that Mr Ringwood had gone into Leicestershire for a day’s hunting, and was not expected to return until the morrow.

  ‘Confound him!’muttered George.‘Taken his man with him, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘He would!’ said George savagely.‘Now what am I to do?’

  Mr Ford, not deeming that any answer was expected of him, discreetly held his peace. George stood glowering for a few minutes, and then said, with all the air of a man who has taken a momentous decision:‘I’ll leave a note for him!’

  Mr Ford bowed, and at once ushered him into Mr Ringwood’s parlour. George sat down at the desk in the window, cast Cocker, the Racing Chronicle, and several copies of the Weekly Dispatch on to the floor, drew forward the ink-well, found, after considerable search amongst a litter of bills and invitations, a sheet of notepaper, and dashed off a hurried letter.

  ‘Dear Gil,’ he wrote. ‘The devil’s in it now, and no mistake, for Sherry’s off to Bath to-morrow with his mother and Miss Milborne. I see nothing for it but to post down there ahead of him, to warn Lady Sherry, in case she does not desire to see him. I shall leave town tonight. Yours, etc.,Wrotham.’

  His lordship then folded this missive, affixed a wafer to it, wrote Mr Ringwood’s name on it in arresting characters, propped it up against the clock on the mantelpiece, and departed. He felt that in going to apprise Hero of her husband’s approaching visit to Bath, he would be acting with extreme propriety; and the circumstance of this particular deed of friendship’s happening to coincide with his own paramount desire to repair to Bath was nothing more (he told himself ) than a happy chance.

  While George was making these arrangements, Sherry had astonished his man, Bootle, by commanding him to have everything in readiness for a journey to Bath by an early hour on the following morning. He was rather vague about the probable length of his stay in this watering-place, and from never having been obliged to pack for himself, he could not conceive why Bootle should think this a matter of even trifling interest. He decided to drive himself down in his curricle, since this would frustrate at the outset any attempt on his parent’s part to force him into sitting with her in the family travelling coach. So Jason and his groom had immediately to be warned, and by the time this had been done, and the groom given his orders to arrange for suitable changes of horses at the various stages, it was going on for eight o’clock, and the Viscount began to think of his dinner. Since Hero’s disappearance it had become increasingly rare for him to dine at home. On this evening, so firmly persuaded was he that he at last had the clue to Hero’s whereabouts, he felt cheerful enough to have eaten his dinner in Half Moon Street, had Mrs Bradgate made any preparation to meet so unexpected an eventuality. As she had not, he was obliged to go out again. He walked down to White’s and ordered the most sustaining meal he had been able to fancy for many weeks. He was finishing it when his cousin Ferdy strolled into the coffee-room. Ferdy was engaged with a party of friends, but as they had not yet put in an appearance, he sat down beside Sherry and joined him in a glass of burgundy.

  ‘Care to see a little cocking to-morrow night, Sherry, dear old boy?’ he asked, sipping his wine.

  ‘Can’t,’ responded Sherry briefly. ‘I’m off to Bath.’

  Ferdy choked. It took a great deal of back-slapping to restore him, and when he was at last able to catch his breath again, his eyes were watering, and his countenance was alarmingly flushed.

  ‘Well, what the deuce!’ exclaimed Sherry, eyeing him in surprise.

  ‘Crumb!’ gasped Ferdy.

  ‘Crumb? You weren’t eating anything!’

  ‘Must have been,’ said Ferdy feebly.‘What takes you to Bath, Sherry?’

  ‘My mother. She’s putting up at Grillon’s with the Incomparable. Both going to Bath to drink the waters. I’m to escort ’em.’

  Ferdy gazed at him in dismay. ‘I wouldn’t do it, Sherry,’ he said.‘You won’t like it there!’

  ‘Well, if I don’t like it, I can come back, can’t I?’

  ‘Much better not go at all,’ said Ferdy.‘Very dull sort of a place these days. Don’t even waltz there. Won’t like the waters either.’

  ‘Good God, I ain’t going to drink ’em!’

  ‘Pity to miss the cocking! Very good match!’ Ferdy said, faint but pursuing.

  ‘I tell you I’m going to escort my mother to Bath!’ Sherry said impatiently.‘What the deuce ails you, Ferdy? Why shouldn’t I got to Bath?’

  ‘Just thought you might not care for it, dear boy! No offence! Did you say the Incomparable was going too?’

  ‘Going to bear my mother company.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Ferdy, thinking this over painstakingly. ‘Well, that settles it:much better not go, Sherry! If the Incomparable goes, Revesby will, and you won’t like that.’

  ‘I suppose Bath is big enough to hold us both. In fact, if he means to hang about Bella’s apron-strings, it’s as well I should go!’

  Ferdy gave it up. He withdrew a few minutes later to join his friends, and Sherry went home. But Ferdy’s friends found him preoccupied that evening. He sat in a brown study over dinner, followed the party in a trance-like fashion to the card-room, and there paid so little attention to the game that his brother accused him of being cast-away. Their host, considering the question dispassionately, shook his head.‘Not cast-away,Duke. Very affectionate as soon as he’s a trifle disguised. Not affectionate tonight. You quite well, Ferdy, old fellow?’

  ‘Had a shock,’ Ferdy said. ‘Saw Sherry to-night.’

  ‘Sherry?’ said the Honourable Marmaduke.

  ‘My cousin Sherry,’ explained Ferdy.

  ‘Dash it, he’s my cousin too, ain’t he?’ said Marmaduke. ‘You’re as dead as a house, Ferdy!’

  ‘He may be your cousin, too,’ said Ferdy, not prepared to dispute this,‘but it wouldn’t have given you a shock. No reason why it should. Sherry’s going to Bath.’

  Marmaduke stared at him.‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Just what I’ve been wondering all the evening, Duke. You know what I think? Fate! That’s what it is: fate! There’s a thing that comes after a fellow: got a name, but I forget what it is. Creeps up behind him, and puts him in the basket when he ain’t expecting it.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’ enquired his host uneasily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Ferdy. ‘It ain’t a thing you can see.’

  ‘If it’s a ghost, I don’t believe in ’em!’ said his host, recovering his composure.

  Ferdy shook his head. ‘Worse than that, Jack, dear boy! I’ll think of its name in a minute. Met it at Eton.’

  ‘Dash it, Ferdy, I was at Eton the same time as you were, and you never said a word about anything creeping up behind you!’

  ‘I may not have said anything, but it did. Crept up behind me when I broke that window in chapel.’

  ‘Old Horley?’ Mr Westgate said.‘You don’t mean to tell me he’s come up to London? What’s he creeping up behind you for?’

  ‘No, no!’ replied Ferdy, irritated by his friend’s poverty of intellect. ‘Not old Horley! Thing that made him suspect me when I thought my tracks were covered. Not sure it ain’t a Greek thing. Might have been Latin, though, now I come to think of it.’

  ‘I know what he means!’ said Marmaduke. ‘What’s more, it proves he’s cast-away, or he wouldn’t be thinking of such things. Nemesis! That’s it, ain’t it, Ferdy?’

  ‘Nemesis!’ repeated Ferdy, pleased to find himself understood at last. �€