"So you are to tell them about the duel Dickey," he said, slowly.
"I thought it was to be kept as dark as possible." Dickey's jaw dropped and his eyes lost their gleam of satisfaction.
"By thunder, I--I forgot that!" he exclaimed. "What am I to do?" he went on after a moment of perplexity and dismay. The long, cool drink seemed to have left a disagreeable taste in his mouth and he gulped feebly.
"Commit suicide, I should say. I see no other way out of it," advised the man in the bed, soberly. The misery in Dickey's face was beyond description, and the perspiration that stood on his brow came not from the heat of the day.
"Did you ever know a bigger ass than I, Phil? Now, did you, honestly?" he groaned.
"I believe I can outrank you myself, Dickey. It seems to me we are out of our class when it comes to diplomacy. Give Lady Saxondale and Lady Jane my compliments to-night, and tell them I hope to see them before I sail for home."
"She thinks I'm a liar, so what is the use?"
"You didn't talk that way this morning. You swore she believed everything you said and that she cares for you. Anything happened since then?"
"Nothing but the opportunity to think it all over while these bandages hold my brain in one place. Her mind is made up and I can't change it, truth or no truth. She'll never know what a villian Ravorelli--or Pavesi--is until it is too late."
"You'll feel better to-morrow, old man. The stitches hurt like the devil, don't they? Cheer up, old chap; I'm the one who needs encouragement. See what I have to face to-night. Good lord, there'll be three women, at least--maybe a dozen--begging, commanding me to tell all about that confounded shooting match, and I was getting along so nicely with her, too," he concluded, dolefully.
"With the baroness? On such short acquaintance?"
"No, of course not. With Jane Oldham. I don't know how I'm going to square it with her, by jove, I don't. Say, I'll bet my head I bray in my sleep, don't I? That's the kind of an ass I am."
When he looked listlessly into Quentin's room late that evening he wore the air of a martyr, but he was confident he had scored a triumph in diplomacy. Diplomacy in his estimation, was the dignified synonym for lying. For an hour he had lied like a trooper to three women; he left them struggling with the conviction that all the rest of the world lied and he alone told the truth. With the perspiration of despair on his brow, he had convinced them that there had been no real duel--just a trifling conflict, in which he, being a good Yankee, had come off with a moderate victory. Lady Jane believed; Lady Saxondale was more or less skeptical; while the Baroness, although graciously accepting his story as it came from his blundering lips, did not believe a word of it. His story of the "robbery" was told so readily and so graphically that it could not be doubted.