‘The letter was entrusted to me, Lady Fleetwood.’

‘You are afraid to entrust it to the post?’

‘I was thinking of delivering it myself in town.’

‘You will entrust it to me.’

‘Anything on earth of my own.’

‘The treasure would be valued.  This you confide to my care.’

‘It is important.’

‘No.’

‘Indeed it is.’

’Say that it is, then.  It is quite safe with me.  It may be important that it should not be delivered.  Are you not Lord Fleetwood’s friend?  Lady Arpington is not so very, very prominent in the list with you and me.  Besides, I don’t think she has come to town yet.  She generally sees out the end of the hunting season.  Leave the letter to me:  it shall go.  You, with your keen observation missing nothing, have seen that my uncle has not his whole judgement at present.  There are two sides to a case.  Lord Fleetwood’s friend will know that it would be unfair to offer him up to his enemies while he is absent.  Things going favourably here, I drive back to town to-morrow, and I hope you will accept a seat in my carriage.’

He delivered his courtliest; he was riding on cloud.

They talked of Baden.  His honourable surrender of her defeated purse was a subject for gentle humour with her, venturesome compliment with him.  He spoke well; and though his hands were clean of Sir Meeson Corby’s reproach of them, the caricature of presentable men blushed absurdly and seemed uneasy in his monstrous collar.  The touching of him again would not be required to set him pacing to her steps.  His hang of the head testified to the unerring stamp of a likeness Captain Abrane could affix with a stroke:  he looked the fiddler over his bow, playing wonderfully to conceal the crack of a string.  The merit of being one of her army of admirers was accorded to him.  The letter to Lady Arpington was retained.

Gower deferred the further mention of the letter until a visit to the admiral’s chamber should furnish an excuse; and he had to wait for it.  Admiral Baldwin’s condition was becoming ominous.  He sent messages downstairs by the doctor, forbidding his guest’s departure until they two could make the journey together next day.  The tortured and blissful young man, stripped of his borrowed philosopher’s cloak, hung conscience-ridden in this delicious bower, which was perceptibly an antechamber of the vaults, offering him the study he thirsted for, shrank from, and mixed with his cup of amorous worship.

CHAPTER XXI

In which we have further glimpses of the wondrous mechanism of our younger man