at else was the stinking rakehell seeking but to put himself right
again in the eyes of a town that was nauseated with him and his
excesses? The self-seeking toad that makes virtue his profession--the
virtue of others--and profligacy his recreation!" He smote fist into
palm. "There's a way to silence him."

"Ah?" she looked up quickly, hopefully.

"A foot or so of steel," Rotherby explained, and struck the hilt of his
sword. "I might pick a quarrel with him. 'Twould not be difficult. Come
upon him unawares, say, and strike him. That should force a fight."

"Tusk, fool! He's all empanoplied in virtue where you are concerned.
He'd use the matter of your affair with Caryll as a reason not to
meet you, whatever you might do, and he'd set his grooms to punish any
indignity you might put upon him."

"He durst not."

"Pooh! The town would all approve him in it since your running Caryll
through the back. What a fool you were, Charles."

He turned away, hanging his head, full conscious, and with no little
bitterness, of how great had been his folly.

"Salvation may lie for you in the same source that has brought you to
the present pass--this man Caryll," said the countess presently. "I
suspect him more than ever of being a Jacobite agent."

"I know him to be such."

"You know it?"

"All but; and Green is assured of it, too." He proceeded to tell her
what he knew. "Ever since Green met Caryll at Maidstone has he suspected
him, yet but that I kept him to the task he would have abandoned it.
He's in my pay now as much as in Lord Carteret's, and if he can run
Caryll to earth he receives his wages from both sides."

"Well--well? What has he discovered? Anything?"

"A little. This Caryll frequented regularly the house of one Everard,
who came to town a week after Caryll's own arrival. This Everard--Sir
Richard Everard is known to be a Jacobite. He is the Pretender's
Paris agent. They would have laid him by the heels before, but that
by precipitancy they feared to ruin their chances of discovering the
business that may have brought him over. They are giving him rope at
present. Meanwhile, by my cursed folly, Caryll's visits to him were
interrupted. But there has been correspondence between them."

"I know," said her ladyship. "A letter was delivered him just now. I
tried to smoke him concerning it. But he's too astute."

"Astute or not," replied her son, "once he leaves Stretton House it
should not be long ere he betra