"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo said.
"After the opera. Here's the note of invitation--stop--no, this is
another paper--I thought I had h, but it's of no consequence, and I
pledge you my word to the fact. If we had come--and it was only one of
Mrs. Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers under them a
good deal, especially in the spring--if we had come, and you had
returned home, there would have been no quarrel, no insult, no
suspicion--and so it is positively because my poor wife has a headache
that you are to bring death down upon two men of honour and plunge two
of the most excellent and ancient families in the kingdom into disgrace
and sorrow."
Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air of a man profoundly
puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a kind of rage that his prey was escaping
him. He did not believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or
disprove it?
Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory, which in his place
in Parliament he had so often practised--"I sat for an hour or more by
Lord Steyne's bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his
intention of demanding a meeting. I pointed out to him that the
circumstances were after all suspicious--they were suspicious. I
acknowledge it--any man in your position might have been taken in--I
said that a man furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a
madman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel between you must
lead to the disgrace of all parties concerned--that a man of his
Lordship's exalted station had no right in these days, when the most
atrocious revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling
doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a public scandal;
and that, however innocent, the common people would insist that he was
guilty. In fine, I implored him not to send the challenge."
"I don't believe one word of the whole story," said Rawdon, grinding
his teeth. "I believe it a d------ lie, and that you're in it, Mr.
Wenham. If the challenge don't come from him, by Jove it shall come
from me."
Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage interruption of the
Colonel and looked towards the door.
But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo. That gentleman rose up
with an oath and rebuked Rawdon for his language. "You put the affair
into my hands, and you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as
you do. You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort of
language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an apology. And as for a
challenge to Lord Steyne, you may get somebody else to carry it, I
won't. If my lord, after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy
let him. And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my belief is,
there's nothing proved at all: that your wife's innocent, as innocent
as Mr. Wenham says she is; and at any rate that you would be a d--fool
not to take the place and hold your tongue."