A Strange Likeness

‘Steady on, Victor,’ said Ned indignantly. ‘Alan here’s such a busy man, what with sparring with Gurney, ruining his eyesight in the City and dancing about with your lawyers, that he’s hardly had time to get into bed with anyone, let alone such an exhausting piece as La Bencolin is said to be. He don’t look dead wore out, do he?’

Both Sir Richard and Victor, despite themselves, gave Alan a good hard look. No, he didn’t took ‘dead wore out’. But that proves nothing, thought Sir Richard cynically. He wouldn’t, not he. It was quite plain that Victor was making such a dead set at young Dilhorne because it was beginning to look as though the Hatton girl was slipping out of his hand.

He promptly turned the conversation to other matters, and fortunately a sudden access of good manners prevented Victor from turning it back. In revenge he took Ned off to Rosie’s as soon as he could decently prise him away from the aftermath of the dinner party. Once there he cheated Ned, now more than half-drunk, out of more money, playing piquet, than Ned could ever repay.

If playing clean wasn’t going to win him Eleanor, playing dirty might!

Chapter Four

‘N ed, a word with you,’ said Almeria Stanton when he crawled downstairs well into the next afternoon after his misspent night.

‘Yes, Great-Aunt,’ croaked Ned, ‘but make it short, please. I’ve a monstrous bad head on me.’

‘So you should have,’ she told him severely. ‘Arriving home at five in the morning and disturbing the sleep of the whole house with your drunken nonsense. If you can’t behave any better than that, I shall have to ask you to find rooms elsewhere. Apart from anything else, it’s a bad example for poor Charles.’