“Couldn’t you, now?  Shall I go back and tell him that?  But you must have something to eat.  I don’t know what’s up, but Sir Magnus is in a taking.”

“He’s always in a taking.  I sometimes think he’s the biggest fool out.”

“And there’s the place kept vacant next to Miss Mountjoy.  Grascour wanted to sit there, but her ladyship wouldn’t let him.  And I sat next Miss Abbott because I didn’t want to be in your way.”

“Tell Grascour to go and sit there, or you may do so.  It’s all nothing to me.”  This he said in the bitterness of his heart, by no means intending to tell his secret, but unable to keep it within his own bosom.

“What’s the matter, Anderson?” asked the other piteously.

“I am clean broken-hearted.  I don’t mind telling you.  I know you’re a good fellow, and I’ll tell you everything.  It’s all over.”

“All over—­with Miss Mountjoy?” Then Anderson began to tell the whole story; but before he had got half through, or a quarter through, another message came from Sir Magnus.  “Sir Magnus is becoming very angry indeed,” whispered the butler.  “He says that Mr. Arbuthnot is to go back.”

“I’d better go, or I shall catch it.”

“What’s up with him, Richard?” asked Anderson.

“Well, if you ask me, Mr. Anderson, I think he’s—­a-suspecting of something.”

“What does he suspect?”

“I think he’s a-thinking that perhaps you are having a jolly time of it.”  Richard had known his master many years, and could almost read his inmost thoughts.  “I don’t say as it so, but that’s what I am thinking.”

“You tell him I ain’t.  You tell him I’ve a bad bilious headache, and that the air in the garden does it good.  You tell him that I mean to have something to eat up-stairs when my head is better; and do you mind and let me have it, and a bottle of claret.”

With this the butler went back, and so did Arbuthnot, after asking one other question:  “I’m so sorry it isn’t all serene with Miss Mountjoy?”

“It isn’t then.  Don’t mind now, but it isn’t serene.  Don’t say a word about her; but she has done me.  I think I shall get leave of absence and go away for two months.  You’ll have to do all the riding, old fellow.  I shall go,—­but I don’t know where I shall go.  You return to them now, and tell them I’ve such a bilious headache I don’t know which way to turn myself.”

Arbuthnot went back, and found Sir Magnus quarrelling grievously with the butler.  “I don’t think he’s doing anything as he shouldn’t,” the butler whispered, having seen into his master’s mind.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Do let the matter drop,” said Lady Mountjoy, who had also seen into her husband’s mind, and saw, moreover, that the butler had done so.  “A young man’s dinner isn’t worth all this bother.”

“I won’t let the matter drop.  What does he mean when he says that he isn’t doing anything that he shouldn’t?  I’ve never said anything about what he was doing.”