‘Waiter, bring me a Bradshaw, or an A B C,’ said Lord Hartfield.

He had eaten nothing but a biscuit since breakfast, but he was ready to go off at once, supperless, if there were a train to carry him.  Unluckily there was no train.  The mail had started.  Nothing till seven o’clock next morning.

‘Eat your supper, old fellow,’ said Maulevrier.  ’After all, the danger may not be so desperate as I fancied this morning.  Slander is the favourite amusement of the age we live in.  We must allow a margin for exaggeration.’

‘A very liberal margin,’ answered Hartfield.  ’No doubt the man who warned you meant honestly, but this scandal may have grown out of the merest trifles.  The feebleness of the Masher’s brain is only exceeded by the foulness of the Masher’s tongue.  I daresay this rumour about Lady Lesbia has its beginning and end among the Masher species.’

’I hope so, but—­I have seen those two together—­I met them at Victoria one evening after Goodwood.  Old Kirkbank was shuffling on ahead, carrying Smithson with her, absorbing his attention by fussification about her carriage.  Lesbia and that Cuban devil were in the rear.  They looked as if they had all the world to themselves.  Faust and Marguerite in the garden were not in it for the expression of intense absorbing feeling compared with those two.  I’m not an intellectual party, but I know something of human nature, and I know when a man and woman are in love with each other.  It is one of the things that never has been, that never can be hidden.’

‘And you say this Montesma is a dangerous man?’

‘Deadly.’

’Well, we must lose no time.  When we are on the spot it will be easy to find out the truth; and it will be your duty, if there be danger, to warn Lesbia and her future husband.

‘I would much rather shoot the Cuban,’ said Maulevrier.  ’I never knew much good come of a warning in such a case:  it generally precipitates matters.  If I could play ecarte with him at the club, find him sporting an extra king, throw my cards in his face, and accept his challenge for an exchange of shots on the sands beyond Cherbourg—­there would be something like satisfaction’

‘You say the man is a gambler?’

‘Report says something worse of him.  Report says he is a cheat.’

‘We must not be dependent upon society gossip,’ replied Lord Hartfield.  ’I have an idea, Maulevrier.  The more we know about this man—­Montesma, I think you called him——­’

‘Gomez de Montesma.’

’The more fully we are acquainted with Don Gomez de Montesma’s antecedents the better we shall be able to cope with him, if we come to handy-grips.  It’s too late to start for Cowes, but it is not too late to do something.  Fitzpatrick, the political-economist, spent a quarter of a century in South America.  He is a very old friend—­knew my father—­and I can venture to knock at his door after midnight—­all the more as I know he is a night-worker.  He is very likely to enlighten us about your Cuban hidalgo.’