"The lady must certainly not be annoyed," said Edward, with feeling.

"I came to-night to see if you were here... ."

"It is an unusual hour for a call," said Edward, "but I am proportionally honored."

"--to see if you were here, and, if you were, to tell you that my niece is not."

Edward cast a puzzled eye around the crowded parlor. "No," he said.

"No."

"I mean," Miss Davenant went on, "that my niece has left this neighborhood and will not return while you are here; so you are wasting your time and trouble."

"_I_ see," said Edward, helpfully.

"You will gain nothing by this att.i.tude," said Miss Davenant. "If you will consent to leave Jevington to-night I will give you twenty pounds."

"Twenty pounds!" he repeated, softly.

"Yes, twenty pounds, on condition that you promise not to molest this defenseless girl."

"Put up your money, madam," said Edward Basingstoke, with a n.o.ble gesture copied from the best theatrical models, "and dry your eyes.

Never shall it be said that Edward Basingstoke was deaf to the voice of a lady in distress. Lay your commands on me, and be a.s.sured that, for me, to hear is to obey."

"You are very impertinent, young man," Miss Davenant told him, "and you won't do yourself any good by talking like a book. Clear out of this to-night, and I'll give you twenty pounds. Stay, and take the consequences."

"Meaning--?"

"Well, stay if you like. You won't see her. She won't return to Jevington till you're gone. So I tell you you'd better accept my offer and go."

"Accept your offer and go," repeated Edward.

"Twenty pounds," said the lady, persuasively.

"Tempt me not!" said Edward. "To a man in my position... ."

"Exactly."

"Nay," said Edward, "there are chords even in a piano-tuner's breast--chords which, too roughly touched, will turn and rend the smiter."

"Good gracious!" said Miss Davenant, "I believe the man's insane."

"Withdraw that harsh expression," he pleaded. And then, without warning, the situation ceased to amuse him. Here he was, swimming in the deep, smooth waters of diplomacy, and suddenly diplomacy seemed a sticky medium. He would have liked Miss Davenant to be a man--a man in green-silk Georgian coat and buckled shoes; himself also gloriously Georgian, in murray-colored cut velvet, with Mechlin at wrists and throat. Then they could have betaken themselves to the bowling-green and fought it out with ringing rapiers, by the light of the lantern held in the landlord's trembling fingers. Or at dawn, in the meadow the red wall bounded, there could have been measured pacings--a dropped handkerchief, two white puffs drifting away on the chill, sweet air, and Edward Basingstoke could have handed his smoking pistol to his second and mounted his horse--Black Belial--and so away to his lady, leaving his adversary wounded slightly ("winged," of course, was the word). Thus honor would have been satisfied, and Edward well in the lime-light. But in this little box of an overfurnished room, by the light of an ill-trimmed paraffin-lamp, to rag an anxious aunt... . He withdrew himself slowly from diplomacy--tried to find an inch or two of dry truth to stand on.

"Well, why don't you say something?" asked the anxious aunt.

"I will," said Mr. Basingstoke. "Madam, I have to ask your pardon for an unpardonable liberty. I have deceived you. I am not what you think. I am not a piano-tuner, but an engineer."

"But you said you were... ."

"Pardon me. I said there were chords in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of piano-tuners."

"But if you aren't, how did you know there was one?"

This _riposte_ he had not antic.i.p.ated. Frankness had its drawbacks--so small a measure of it as he had allowed himself. He leaped headlong into diplomacy again.

"Look back on what you have said, not only to me, but to others," he said, solemnly, and saw that the chance shot had gone home. "Now," he said, "don't let us prolong an interview which cannot but be painful to us both. I am not the piano-tuner for whom you take me. You are a complete stranger to me. The only link that binds us is the fact that your horse ran over my dog and that you bore the apparently lifeless body home for me. Yet if you wish me to leave the neighborhood, I will leave it. In fact, I was going in any case," he added, struggling against diplomacy.

Miss Davenant looked at him. "You're speaking the truth," she said; "you're not the piano-tuner. But you got as red as fire yesterday. So did my niece. What was that for?"

"I cannot explain my complicated color-scheme," said Edward, "without diagrams and a magic-lantern. And as for your niece, I can lay my hand on my heart and say that the light of declining day never illumined that face for me till the moment when it also illumined yours."

"Are you deceiving me?" Miss Davenant asked, weakly, and Edward answered:

"Yes, I am; but not in the way you think. We all have our secrets, but mine are not the secrets of the piano-tuner."

Some one sneezed in the pa.s.sage outside.

"Our host has been eavesdropping," said Edward, softly.

"Well, if he doesn't make more of this conversation than I do, he won't make much," said Miss Davenant. "I don't trust you."

"That would make it all the easier for me to deceive you," said Edward, "if I sought to deceive."

"You've got too much language for me," said Miss Davenant. "If you're not the man, I apologize."

"Don't mention it," said Edward.

"If you are, I don't wonder so much at what happened in London. Good night. Sorry to have disturbed you."

"Don't you think," said Edward, "that you might as well tell me why you _did_ disturb me?"

"I thought you were the piano-tuner," she said; "you knew that perfectly well. And I don't want piano-tuners hanging round Jevington.

I'm sorry I offered the money. I ought to have seen."

"Not at all," said Mr. Basingstoke, "and, since my presence here annoys you, know that by this time to-morrow I shall be far away."

"There's one thing more," said Miss Davenant. But Mr. Basingstoke was never to know what that one thing was, for at the instant a wild shriek rang through the quiet night, there was a scuffle outside, hoa.r.s.e voices in anger and pain, the door burst open, and Miss Davenant's groom staggered in.

"Beg pardon, ma'am"--he still remembered his station, and it was thus he affirmed it--"beg pardon, ma'am, but this 'ere dawg--"

It was too true. Charles, perhaps conscious of his master's presence in the parlor, had slipped his collar, scratched a hole under the stable door, and, finding the groom and the landlord in the pa.s.sage, barring his entrance, had bitten the groom's trousers leg. It hung, gaping, from knee to ankle--with Charles still attached. Charles's master choked the dog off, but confidential conversation was at an end, even when a sovereign had slipped from his hand to the groom's.

"Seems the young lady's missing," said the host, when the dog-cart had rattled up the street.

"Indeed!" said Edward. "Well, I think I also shall retreat. Will it inconvenience you if I leave my traps to be sent on? I shall walk into Seaford and catch the early train."

"It wasn't my fault the lady come, sir," said the landlord, sulky but deferential.

"I know it," said the guest, "and I am not leaving because of her coming. I should have left in any case. But it is a fine night, I have a fancy for a walk, and it does not seem worth while to go to bed again.