"Oh, heavens!" cried she; "mined and undone!" and fled before I could see her; while the stranger, fastening the door behind him with the key, advanced towards me with an air at once so menacing and warlike that I seized the poker, an instrument about four feet six long, and stood on the defensive.
"Mr. Kenny Dodd, I believe," said he, solemnly.
"And not Lord Harvey Bruce, at least, on this occasion," said he, with a kind of sneer.
"I am Lord Harvey Bruce, sir," was the answer.
I don't think I said anything in reply; indeed, I am quite sure I did not say a syllable; but I must have made some expressive gesture, or suffered some exclamation to escape me, for he quickly rejoined,--
"Yes, sir, you have, indeed, reason to be thankful; for had it been my wretched, miserable, and injured friend instead, you would now be lying weltering in your blood."
"Might I make bold to ask the name of the wretched, miserable, and injured gentleman to whom I was about to be so much indebted?"
"The husband of your unhappy victim, sir," exclaimed he, and with such an energy of voice that I brandished the poker to show I was ready for him. "Yes, sir, Mr. Gore Hampton is now in this village,--to a mere accident you owe it that he is not in this hotel,--ay, in this very room."
And he gave a shudder at the words, as though the thoughts they suggested were enough to curdle a man's blood.
"I'll tell you what, my Lord," said I, getting the table between us, to prevent any sudden attack on his part, "all your anger and high-down indignation are clean thrown away. There is no victim here at all,--there is no villain; and, so far as I am concerned, your friend is not either miserable or injured. The circumstances under which I accompanied that lady to this place are all easy of explanation, and such as require a very different acknowledgment from what you seem disposed to make for them."
"If you think you are dealing with a schoolboy, sir, you are somewhat mistaken," broke he in. "I am a man of the world, and it will save us a deal of time, sir, if you will please to bear this plain fact in your memory."
"You may be that, or anything else you like, my Lord," said I; "but I 'd have you to know that I am a man well respected in the world, the father of a grown-up family. There is no occasion for that heavy groan at all, my Lord; the case is not what you suspect. I came here purely out of friendship--"