“I knew he’d do it if ever he got the opportunity,” said the earl when he had read his letter; and he walked about his room striking his hands together, and then thrusting his thumbs into his waistcoat-pockets.  “I knew he was made of the right stuff,” and the earl rejoiced greatly in the prowess of his favourite.  “I’d have done it myself if I’d seen him.  I do believe I would.”  Then he went back to the breakfast-room and told Lady Julia.  “What do you think?” said he; “Johnny Eames has come across Crosbie, and given him a desperate beating.”

“No!” said Lady Julia, putting down her newspaper and spectacles, and expressing by the light of her eyes anything but Christian horror at the wickedness of the deed.

“But he has, though.  I knew he would if he saw him.”

“Beaten him!  Actually beaten him!”

“Sent him home to Lady Alexandrina with two black eyes.”

“Two black eyes!  What a young pickle!  But did he get hurt himself?”

“Not a scratch he says.”

“And what’ll they do to him?”

“Nothing.  Crosbie won’t be fool enough to do anything.  A man becomes an outlaw when he plays such a game as he has played.  Anybody’s hand may be raised against him with impunity.  He can’t show his face, you know.  He can’t come forward and answer questions as to what he has done.  There are offences which the law can’t touch but which outrage public feeling so strongly that any one may take upon himself the duty of punishing them.  He has been thrashed, and that will stick to him till he dies.”

“Do tell Johnny from me that I hope he didn’t get hurt,” said Lady Julia.  The old lady could not absolutely congratulate him on his feat of arms, but she did the next thing to it.

But the earl did congratulate him, with a full open assurance of his approval.

“I hope,” he said “I should have done the same at your age, under similar circumstances, and I’m very glad that he proved less difficult than the bull.  I’m quite sure you didn’t want any one to help you with Master Crosbie.  As for that other person at Allington, if I understand such matters at all, I think she will forgive you.”  It may, however, be a question whether the earl did understand such matters at all.  And then he added, in a postscript:  “When you write to me again,—­and don’t be long first, begin your letter ’My dear Lord De Guest,’—­that is the proper way.”

CHAPTER XXXVII

An Old Man’s Complaint

“Have you been thinking again of what I was saying to you, Bell?” Bernard said to his cousin one morning.

“Thinking of it, Bernard?  Why should I think more of it?  I had hoped that you had forgotten it yourself.”

“No,” he said; “I am not so easy-hearted as that.  I cannot look on such a thing as I would the purchase of a horse, which I could give up without sorrow if I found that the animal was too costly for my purse.  I did not tell you that I loved you till I was sure of myself, and having made myself sure I cannot change at all.”