Looking upon Francis’ pallid countenance, she could not wonder at his discomfiture. Although she might have little dependence on the sensibility which cast him into such apparent woe, she could not doubt that he was laboring under considerable nervous tension. It found expression in a shriller note in his voice and the testiness with which he rounded on his valet for some fault. His smile seemed forced and his movements less measured and graceful than they had been before the receipt of the tidings from London. Elinor could almost have pitied him had she not stood in such dread that his fear of the implacable master whom both he and De Castres served might lead him to undertake some desperate action in which she might become involved. She was in a fever to pour out the whole to Carlyon, and once Francis had gone upstairs to lie down upon his bed, with smelling salts and hartshorn and the blinds drawn, she could scarcely drag herself away from the parlor windows, which commanded a view of the front drive. Provokingly matter-of-fact Carlyon might be, but she owned it would be an inexpressible comfort to see his tall figure entering the house and to hear his quiet voice coolly making light of her alarms.
But it was not Carlyon’ who at last came riding up from the gate, but only Nicky, who had shed his funeral wear in defiance of his brother John for a blue coat with large silver buttons and very yellow buckskins, and was bestriding a rawboned hunter which took instant exception to Bouncer’s ecstatic greeting of his master. Nicky was fully occupied for a minute or two in a tussle with his horse, but he caught sight of Elinor presently and waved, shouting, “I’ll just stable Rufus! Isn’t he a proper highbred ’un? Just playing off his tricks, you know! He don’t care a button for Bouncer, of course. He’s been eating his head off in the stable, poor old fellow!”
She nodded and smiled, able to sympathize even in her agitated state of mind with his pride in his horse. He rode on toward the stables and she resigned herself to a prolonged wait while he saw the noble animal properly rubbed down and bestowed.
Twenty minutes later he came striding into the house, and laying down his hat and whip on the table in the hall, said in an undervoice vibrant with excitement, “Where is Cheviot?”
“In his bedchamber with the blinds drawn and Crawley chafing his feet. Oh, Nicky—”
“Hush! Come into the bookroom, Cousin: we must not be talking here, where we might be overheard.”
“Oh, no!” she agreed, going toward the bookroom obediently. “But indeed I think he is in truth laid down upon his bed. He is suffering the greatest irritation of nerves. I cannot allow that to be called in question.”
“Lord, yes, don’t I know it!” he said, shutting the door securely and treading over to the fire to cast another log on to it. “Sick as a horse! He told you that Louis de Castres has been murdered?”
“Yes, and the reflections this shocking event conjures up are so horrid that my own nerves are in a sad way. Where is your brother? I had hoped he might have come back here with you!”
“No, no, you will not be seeing Ned today!” Nicky replied. “He has gone up to London—driving post, you know, and taking his own bays over the first two stages! Prime goers, those bays of his! Beautiful J steppers!”
“Gone up to London!” she exclaimed in a stupefied tone.
“Yes. He said he would come back as fast as he could, but—”
“Does he know of that Frenchman’s death?” she demanded, interrupting him without compunction.
“Oh, yes! Well, of course he does! It is to do with that he has gone to town, though he would not tell us what he meant to do there. John is at the Hall still, and if you should like it he says he will spend the night here, without Francis’ being any the wiser, of course. And, by Jupiter, Cousin Elinor, I must take care Bouncer does not eat anything I do not give him myself, for John thinks Francis or that toothdrawer of a valet of his may seek to poison him! But I have been training Bouncer not to take food from the hand of any stranger, so I dare say there is not the least fear on that score.”
She refrained from telling him that his favorite apparently considered the offer of a bone or a scrap of meat sufficient introduction to put him on terms of acquaintance with the seediest stranger, and said, “Your brother knew this and has gone off to town without a word vouchsafed to me?”
“Oh, he knew I was to return here, and should inform you of his journey! It is the most famous affair, Cousin! We cannot tell what may happen next!”
“Very true! And for that reason I should have wished to have had speech with his lordship!”
“Well, I fancy he don’t know either, but I don’t mind telling you this, Cousin: he thinks Francis is a very dangerous man! He said so and bade me take care what I was about here.”
“Oh, he did?” exclaimed Elinor, rigid with wrath. “I am sure I am very much obliged to him! And am I to take care what I am about, or is that of no consequence?”
Nicky smiled engagingly down at her. “Bouncer and I will take good care of you, Cousin Elinor.”
“I have a very good mind to pack up my trunk and to leave this house within the hour!”
“You will not!”
“No, I will not,” she said crossly. “But it is the most infamous thing! When I see your brother—if ever I do see him again, which very likely I shall not as I dare say I shall soon be found with my throat cut from ear to ear!—I shall have something to say to him! Oh, when I think of the hideous case in which I am, and all through his crazy schemes which he has the effrontery to say are very sensible, I could—I could go into strong hysterics!”
He laughed. “Ay! You will have a spasm, I dare say, like one of my sisters’ governesses! But this is no time to be funning, Cousin!”
“Funning!”
“Now, be serious! Oh, Cousin Elinor, did you ever suppose—when you were quite young, I mean, in the schoolroom—that you would one day find yourself pitted against French agents?”
“No, Nicky, I did not. Nothing that has happened to me during the past week did I expect, even when I was in the schoolroom—where I very much wish I was now!”
“I am persuaded you do not! Why, how could you? But the thing is, what will Francis do now?”
“That thought has been occupying my mind this past hour.”—’
“He is such a poor-spirited fellow, you know, that I do not at all believe that he will attempt anything of a violent nature. I wish he would!”
“Yes, I am sure you do.”
“No,” said Nicky, unheeding. “If Ned is right, and he is indeed a dangerous fellow—but I own I cannot believe that a fellow that prefers cats to dogs and will not stir without he has his smelling salts with him can be worth a button!—but if it is so indeed, then I’ll swear he will go to work in some devilish cunning way you and I would never think of!”
“You are very likely right, and every word you say adds to my conviction that I had best pack up and be off to Mrs. Macclesfield this very day.”
“Mrs. Macclesfield? Oh, that female you was to have gone to! It is a good thing Ned would not let you, isn’t it? You would not have liked to have missed all this sport!”
Elinor had not consorted with adolescents for six years without learning when it was useless to persevere in the attempt to convey to them ideas that were wholly alien to their minds, and she now made no further effort to bring Nicky to an appreciation of her own sentiments. She agreed that it would have been a shocking thing to have missed spending a week in almost continuous alarm, and was rewarded by his telling her with impulsive warmth that he had known all along that she was a right one. He then did what lay in his power to undermine whatever fortitude was left to her by recounting, with embellishments, John’s theories on the murder of De Castres.