The Amateur Gentleman

"But not this woman," answered Barnabas, frowning a little also.

"My dear fellow, men like Carnaby attract all women--"

"That," said Barnabas, shaking his head, "that I cannot believe."

"Have you known many women, Bev?"

"No," answered Barnabas; "but I have met the Lady Cleone--"

"Once!" added the Viscount significantly.

"Once!" nodded Barnabas.

"Hum," said the Viscount. "And, therefore," added Barnabas,

"I don't think that we need fear Sir Mortimer as a rival."

"That," retorted the Viscount, shaking his head, "is because you

don't know him--either."

Hereupon, having come to the inn and having settled their score, the

Viscount stepped out to the stables accompanied by the round-faced

landlord, while Barnabas, leaning out from the open casement, stared

idly into the lane. And thus he once more beheld the gentleman in

the jaunty hat, who stood lounging in the shade of one of the great

trees that grew before the inn, glancing up and down the lane in the

attitude of one who waits. He was tall and slender, and clad in a

tight-fitting blue coat cut in the extreme of the prevailing fashion,

and beneath his curly-brimmed hat, Barnabas saw a sallow face with

lips a little too heavy, nostrils a little too thin, and eyes a

little too close together, at least, so Barnabas thought, but what he

noticed more particularly was the fact that one of the buttons of

the blue coat had been wrenched away.

Now, as the gentleman lounged there against the tree, he switched

languidly at a bluebell that happened to grow within his reach, cut

it down, and with gentle, lazy taps beat it slowly into nothingness,

which done, he drew out his watch, glanced at it, frowned, and was

in the act of thrusting it back into his fob when the hedge opposite

was parted suddenly and a man came through. A wretched being he

looked, dusty, unkempt, unshorn, whose quick, bright eyes gleamed in

the thin oval of his pallid face. At sight of this man the

gentleman's lassitude vanished, and he stepped quickly forward.

"Well," he demanded, "did you find her?"

"Yes, sir."

"And a cursed time you've been about it."

"Annersley is further than I thought, sir, and--"

"Pah! no matter, give me her answer," and the gentleman held out a

slim white hand.

"She had no time to write, sir," said the man, "but she bid me tell

you--"

"Damnation!" exclaimed the gentleman, glancing towards the inn,

"not here, come further down the lane," and with the word he turned

and strode away, with the man at his heels.

"Annersley," said Barnabas, as he watched them go; "Annersley."

But now, with a prodigious clatter of hoofs and grinding of wheels,

the Viscount drove round in his curricle, and drew up before the

door in masterly fashion; whereupon the two high-mettled bloods

immediately began to rear and plunge (as is the way of their kind),

to snort, to toss their sleek heads, and to dance, drumming their

hoofs with a sound like a brigade of cavalry at the charge, whereupon

the Viscount immediately fell to swearing at them, and his

diminutive groom to roaring at them in his "stable voice," and the

two ostlers to cursing them, and one another; in the midst of which

hubbub out came Barnabas to stare at them with the quick, appraising

eye of one who knows and loves horses.