a deuce of a row because you're not there."

"Sir Magnus be blowed! How am I to be there if I've got a bilious
headache? I'm not dressed. I could not have dressed myself for a
five-pound note."

"Couldn't you, now? Shall I go back and tell him that? But you must have
something to eat. I don't know what's up, but Sir Magnus is in a
taking."

"He's always in a taking. I sometimes think he's the biggest fool out."

"And there's the place kept vacant next to Miss Mountjoy. Grascour
wanted to sit there, but her ladyship wouldn't let him. And I sat next
Miss Abbott because I didn't want to be in your way."

"Tell Grascour to go and sit there, or you may do so. It's all nothing
to me." This he said in the bitterness of his heart, by no means
intending to tell his secret, but unable to keep it within his own
bosom.

"What's the matter, Anderson?" asked the other piteously.

"I am clean broken-hearted. I don't mind telling you. I know you're a
good fellow, and I'll tell you everything. It's all over."

"All over--with Miss Mountjoy?" Then Anderson began to tell the whole
story; but before he had got half through, or a quarter through, another
message came from Sir Magnus. "Sir Magnus is becoming very angry
indeed," whispered the butler. "He says that Mr. Arbuthnot is to go
back."

"I'd better go, or I shall catch it."

"What's up with him, Richard?" asked Anderson.

"Well, if you ask me, Mr. Anderson, I think he's--a-suspecting of
something."

"What does he suspect?"

"I think he's a-thinking that perhaps you are having a jolly time of
it." Richard had known his master many years, and could almost read his
inmost thoughts. "I don't say as it so, but that's what I am thinking."

"You tell him I ain't. You tell him I've a bad bilious headache, and
that the air in the garden does it good. You tell him that I mean to
have something to eat up-stairs when my head is better; and do you mind
and let me have it, and a bottle of claret."

With this the butler went back, and so did Arbuthnot, after asking one
other question: "I'm so sorry it isn't all serene with Miss Mountjoy?"

"It isn't then. Don't mind now, but it isn't serene. Don't say a word
about her; but she has done me. I think I shall get leave of absence and
go away for two months. You'll have to do all the riding, old fellow. I
shall go,--but I don't know where I shall go. You return to them now, and
tell them I've such a bilious headache I don't know whic