He took up his gold-topped scent-bottle for the third time, and by an effort almost heroic, though there was so little heroic in its cause, resumed a frank and unresentful manner.
"I disagree with you utterly, Toby," he said, "but I will do as you suggest. You don't mind my speaking straight out what I think? No? Well, you seem to me to have interfered in a most unwarrantable manner; but as you have done so, I dare say, from excellent motives, though I don't care a straw about your motives, I must make the best of it. I will go to-morrow morning, and I will telegraph now to Kit, to say I can't stop here. Now, you said you didn't wish to quarrel with me. That I hold you to. Let us remain friends, Toby, for if anyone has a grievance it is I. What I shall say to Kit, God knows; she will be furious, and if the thing comes out I shall tell her the whole truth, and lay the whole blame on you."
"That is only fair," he said. "Good-bye."
Lord Comber smoothed his hair before the glass, when suddenly an idea struck him, so brilliant and so simple that he could hardly help smiling. He opened the door.
"I shall just walk with you to the top of the stairs," he said, again taking Toby's arm. "Really I am quite sorry to leave; I have got quite attached to my dear little room, and don't you think it's rather pretty? So sorry I shan't be able to come and see your mother at the cottage, and it's all your fault. Good-bye, Toby."
Toby went downstairs, and Lord Comber hurried back to his room. He had no longer the smallest resentment against Toby, and a smile of amused satisfaction testified to his changed sentiments. He rang for his man, and sat down to write a telegram. It was addressed to Kit, and ran as follows:
"Impossible to remain here. Excellent reasons. Do come to Aldeburgh instead. I arrive there to-morrow afternoon, and go to hotel."
"Poor Toby," he thought to himself. "What a lesson not to interfere!"
During this beautiful August weather Mr. Alington was very busily employed in London. At no time was he a notable lover of the country, taking it in homoeopathic doses only, and enjoying a copy of Nature by Turner far more than the original thing. He was, indeed, somewhat disposed to Dr. Johnson's characteristic and superficial heresy that one green field is like another green field, and though he took no walks for pleasure down Fleet Street, he took many hansoms to his brokers for business. For the financial scheme which had darted like a meteor across his augur's brain on the night on which he received his manager's report had, meteor-like, left a shining and golden furrow. The shining furrow, indeed, had grown ever more brilliant and golden; it illumined the whole of his speculative heaven. And by the end of the month the reading of the augur was ready to be practically fulfilled.