L’Isle was too angry to trust himself with an answer, but Major Conway, turning to Bradshawe, said gaily:  “Colonel L’Isle is here soon enough for me; he is within the time, and I have won the fifty guineas.”

L’Isle started.  Here was a revelation!  His last night’s adventure was no secret.  There were more parties to the plot than he had imagined.

“Sir!” said he, turning upon Conway, with a cold, hard manner.  “Am I to understand that you have done me the honor to bet on my movements?”

“Here is gratitude for you,” exclaimed Conway, pacifically appealing to his companions, and his voice attracted Sir Rowland’s attention.  “Here have I been showing for him the height of friendship, hazarding my best friends, my guineas, on his infallible fulfillment of duty; and my full faith in him is received as an outrage.”

“I suppose, sir,” said L’Isle, turning on Bradshawe, with freezing politeness, “it is you who have so obligingly afforded my volunteer backer so singular an opportunity of proving his friendship?”

“I cannot claim the credit of it,” answered Bradshawe, with easy urbanity.  “I am not even a stakeholder in the game; though, as a mere looker-on, I confess having watched it with keen and growing interest.”  And with a little wave of the hand he passed L’Isle gently over to Lord Strathern.

L’Isle looked from the imperturbable colonel to the pacific major, who professed to be so zealously his partisan, and back again to the former.  Not seeing how he could fasten a quarrel on either, he turned somewhat reluctantly on Lord Strathern, who complacently awaited him.

“As for you, my lord, I might have felt surprise at your making me the subject of such a bet, but it is lost in astonishment at the means you took to win it!”

“And, after all to lose it,” said Lord Strathern, in a mocking, dolorous tone.  “Is it not provoking?”

“No scruple,” continued L’Isle, “seems to have stood in your way, my lord, in the choice of either means or agent.”

“On the contrary,” said Lord Strathern, blandly, “I always scrupulously choose the best of both.”

“You must have contrived this plot,” L’Isle persisted, “though the chief actor be in Elvas.  But I will say no more here.”

“A few words more, I pray,” said Lord Strathern, smiling.  “I understood that you were to have been detained in Elvas.  How the devil did you get away?”

L’Isle turned abruptly away, seeing that the more anger and mortification he showed, the more gratified Lord Strathern seemed to be.  Rising from his seat, he walked up to Sir Rowland, who had been watching him with much curiosity, and said:  “I suppose, sir, you have no further use for me here.  If so, pray excuse my absence from your table to-day, as I have occasion to return at once to Elvas.”

Sir Rowland bid his secretary go and send off the despatch at once; then looking fixedly at L’Isle, said:  “I may need you here for a day or two.”