Ripton’s only definite answer was, a gasping iteration of “My lord.”

My lord resumed:  “I am perfectly guiltless of offending him, as far as I know.  In fact, I had a friendship for him.  Is he liable to fits of this sort of thing?”

Not yet at conversation-point, Ripton stammered:  “Fits, my lord?”

“Ah!” went the other, eying Ripton in lordly cognizant style.  “You know nothing of this business, perhaps?”

Ripton said he did not.

“Have you any influence with him?”

“Not much, my lord.  Only now and then—­a little.”

“You are not in the Army?”

The question was quite unnecessary.  Ripton confessed to the law, and my lord did not look surprised.

“I will not detain you,” he said, distantly bowing.

Ripton gave him a commoner’s obeisance; but getting to the door, the sense of the matter enlightened him.

“It’s a duel, my lord?”

“No help for it, if his friends don’t shut him up in Bedlam between this and to-morrow morning.”

Of all horrible things a duel was the worst in Ripton’s imagination.  He stood holding the handle of the door, revolving this last chapter of calamity suddenly opened where happiness had promised.

“A duel! but he won’t, my lord,—­he mustn’t fight, my lord.”

“He must come on the ground,” said my lord, positively.

Ripton ejaculated unintelligible stuff.  Finally Lord Mountfalcon said:  “I went out of my way, sir, in speaking to you.  I saw you from the window.  Your friend is mad.  Deuced methodical, I admit, but mad.  I have particular reasons to wish not to injure the young man, and if an apology is to be got out of him when we’re on the ground, I’ll take it, and we’ll stop the damned scandal, if possible.  You understand?  I’m the insulted party, and I shall only require of him to use formal words of excuse to come to an amicable settlement.  Let him just say he regrets it.  Now, sir,” the nobleman spoke with considerable earnestness, “should anything happen—­I have the honour to be known to Mrs. Feverel—­and I beg you will tell her.  I very particularly desire you to let her know that I was not to blame.”

Mountfalcon rang the bell, and bowed him out.  With this on his mind Ripton hurried down to those who were waiting in joyful trust at Raynham.

CHAPTER XLIV

The watch consulted by Hippias alternately with his pulse, in occult calculation hideous to mark, said half-past eleven on the midnight.  Adrian, wearing a composedly amused expression on his dimpled plump face,—­held slightly sideways, aloof from paper and pen,—­sat writing at the library table.  Round the baronet’s chair, in a semi-circle, were Lucy, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria, and Ripton, that very ill bird at Raynham.  They were silent as those who question the flying minutes.  Ripton had said that Richard was sure to come; but the feminine eyes reading him ever and anon, had gathered matter for disquietude, which increased as time sped.  Sir Austin persisted in his habitual air of speculative repose.