“The waiter didn’t seem to think much of it when he brought it.”

“No, no.  If he’d asked for senna and salts, the waiter wouldn’t have showed any surprise.  By-the-by, you touched him up about that poor girl.”

“Did I, my lord?  I didn’t mean it.”

“You see he’s Bernard Dale’s father, and the question is, whether Bernard shouldn’t punish the fellow for what he has done.  Somebody ought to do it.  It isn’t right that he should escape.  Somebody ought to let Mr Crosbie know what a scoundrel he has made himself.”

“I’d do it to-morrow, only I’m afraid—­”

“No, no, no,” said the earl; “you are not the right person at all.  What have you got to do with it?  You’ve merely known them as family friends, but that’s not enough.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Eames, sadly.

“Perhaps it’s best as it is,” said the earl.  “I don’t know that any good would be got by knocking him over the head.  And if we are to be Christians, I suppose we ought to be Christians.”

“What sort of a Christian has he been?”

“That’s true enough; and if I was Bernard, I should be very apt to forget my Bible lessons about meekness.”

“Do you know, my lord, I should think it the most Christian thing in the world to pitch into him; I should, indeed.  There are some things for which a man ought to be beaten black and blue.”

“So that he shouldn’t do them again?”

“Exactly.  You might say it isn’t Christian to hang a man.”

“I’d always hang a murderer.  It wasn’t right to hang men for stealing sheep.”

“Much better hang such a fellow as Crosbie,” said Eames.

“Well, I believe so.  If any fellow wanted now to curry favour with the young lady, what an opportunity he’d have.”

Johnny remained silent for a moment or two before he answered.  “I’m not so sure of that,” he said; mournfully, as though grieving at the thought that there was no chance of currying favour with Lily by thrashing her late lover.

“I don’t pretend to know much about girls,” said Lord De Guest; “but I should think it would be so.  I should fancy that nothing would please her so much as hearing that he had caught it, and that all the world knew that he’d caught it.”  The earl had declared that he didn’t know much about girls, and in so saving, he was no doubt right.

“If I thought so,” said Eames, “I’d find him out to-morrow.”

“Why so? what difference does it make to you?” Then there was another pause, during which Johnny looked very sheepish.

“You don’t mean to say that you’re in love with Miss Lily Dale?”

“I don’t know much about being in love with her,” said Johnny, turning very red as he spoke.  And then he made up his mind, in a wild sort of way, to tell all the truth to his friend.  Pawkins’s port wine may, perhaps, have had something to do with the resolution.  “But I’d go through fire and water for her, my lord.  I knew her years before he had ever seen her, and have loved her a great deal better than he will ever love any one.  When I heard that she had accepted him, I had half a mind to cut my own throat,—­or else his.”