'How long?' Mr. Pomeroy answered, raising his eyebrows. 'Ah. Well,
let's say--what do you think? Two days?' 'And if the first fail, two days for the second?' 'There will be no second if I am first,' Pomeroy answered grimly.
'But otherwise,' the tutor persisted; 'two days for the second?' Bully Pomeroy nodded.
'But then, the question is, can we keep her here?' 'Four days?' 'Yes.' Mr. Pomeroy laughed harshly. 'Ay,' he said, 'or six if needs be and I
lose. You may leave that to me. We'll shift her to the nursery
to-morrow.' 'The nursery?' my lord said, and stared.
'The windows are barred. Now do you understand?' The tutor turned a shade paler, and his eyes sank slyly to the table.
'There'll--there'll be no violence, of course,' he said, his voice a
trifle unsteady.
'Violence? Oh, no, there will be no violence,' Mr. Pomeroy answered with
an unpleasant sneer. And they all laughed; Mr. Thomasson tremulously,
Lord Almeric as if he scarcely entered into the other's meaning and
laughed that he might not seem outside it. Then, 'There is another thing
that must not be,' Pomeroy continued, tapping softly on the table with
his forefinger, as much to command attention as to emphasise his words,
'and that is peaching! Peaching! We'll have no Jeremy Twitcher here, if
you please.' 'No, no!' Mr. Thomasson stammered. 'Of course not.' 'No, damme!' said my lord grandly. 'No peaching!' 'No,' Mr. Pomeroy said, glancing keenly from one to the other, 'and by
token I have a thought that will cure it. D'ye see here, my lord! What
do you say to the losers taking five thousand each out of Madam's money?
That should bind all together if anything will--though I say it that
will have to pay it,' he continued boastfully.
My lord was full of admiration. 'Uncommon handsome!' he said. 'Pom, that
does you credit. You have a head! I always said you had a head!' 'You are agreeable to that, my lord?' 'Burn me, if I am not.' 'Then shake hands upon it. And what say you, Parson?' Mr. Thomasson proffered an assent fully as enthusiastic as Lord
Almeric's, but for a different reason. The tutor's nerves, never strong,
were none the better for the rough treatment he had undergone, his long
drive, and his longer fast. He had taken enough wine to obscure remoter
terrors, but not the image of Mr. Dunborough--impiger, iracundus,
inexorabilis, acer--Dunborough doubly and trebly offended! That image
recurred when the glass was not at his lips; and behind it, sometimes
the angry spectre of Sir George, sometimes the face of the girl, blazing
with rage, slaying him with the lightning of her contempt.