"Now the bridegroom, gentlemen! I give you the bridegroom! Long live! Long live I say!"
He was on his feet waving his mug with every lusty shout. Then he drained it once more to the last drop, Stowmaries and Rochester doing likewise, for time-honoured custom demanded that such toasts must be responded to right heartily. Michael however made no acknowledgment as he should have done. He sat quite still with slender, nervy fingers idly toying with the crumbs on the table.
"Respond, Michael, respond," cried Lord Rochester who seemed to have quite shaken off his former diffidence. "Man, are you in the clouds?--Of a surety," he continued with a knowing wink directed at his friends, "'twere no marvel on this eventful night, and with a pretty bride awaiting her lord not thirty paces away on the other side of that door. We saw her in church, Michael, and by Gad, man, you are a lucky dog! But we did drink to the bridegroom and--"
"And I, too, drink to him," interposed Michael loudly, as he rose to his feet, bumper in hand and turned directly to his Cousin Stowmaries, "to you, my lord and cousin do I drink--the only bridegroom worthy of such a bride."
To say the least of it, this speech was vastly astonishing. No one quite knew how to take it, and as Michael drained his cup Stowmaries broke into a forced laugh.
"You do flatter me, Coz," he said, feeling strangely uncomfortable under the other's steady gaze, and realising that some sort of reply was expected of him, "but of a truth the flattery is misplaced. The bride is yours and you have won her by fair means; and I, in my turn, will add something to my lord Rochester's toast--something which, an I mistake not, will be vastly acceptable to you--a draft for seventy thousand pounds on my banker, Master Vivish of Fleet Street. The final payment of my debt to you."
And Stowmaries took a paper from the pocket of his surcoat and handed it to Michael, who made no movement to take it.
"Cousin," he said, "when I accepted the bargain which you offered me, I was more deeply in my cups than I myself had any idea of. Let us admit that 'twas an ignoble bargain, shameful alike to me and to you. Now I would pray you to return that draft to your pocket; 'tis but little I have spent of that first fifty thousand pounds, the balance of what remains you shall have on my return to London, as for the rest--that which I have so foolishly spent--I pray you to grant me a few months delay and I will repay you to the full. Thus we two who made the bargain, and these two gentlemen who witnessed it, will cease to have aught but a dim recollection of the shameful doings of a mad and roisterous night."