CHAPTER V.

TERMS ACCEPTED.

A fortnight passed after Lord Loughton's interview with the dowager countess before he received any further communication from her. During that time life went on with him in its ordinary humdrum fashion. No one either saw or suspected any difference in him. If the misfortunes and mishaps of his earlier life had taught him nothing else, they had at least taught him the virtue of patience. He was emphatically a man who could bide his time.

But at the end of a fortnight there came a note addressed to Mr. Fildew, at the Brown Bear, in which he was informed that the countess would see him at the Charing Cross Hotel at eleven o'clock next morning. He smiled grimly to himself as he read. "We are ashamed of our shabby relation, it seems," he muttered. "We don't want him to call again in Harley Street till he is a little more presentable."

But he was not one whit more presentable when he was ushered into her ladyship's room next morning. "A more deplorable object than ever," were her ladyship's words afterwards to Mr. Flicker. The ends of two fingers had burst completely through his gloves and refused to be hidden any longer, while the shiny patch on one side of his hat was certainly growing in circumference from day to day. It is quite possible that he had some ulterior object to serve in thus appearing at his shabbiest before the countess.

He walked across the room rather more briskly than usual, and when he reached the countess he put out his hand. But her ladyship made believe not to see it, and motioned him to a chair. He took it, not in the slightest degree abashed by her refusal to shake hands with him. The inevitable Mr. Flicker was seated close by, as monumentally cold and as mutely observant as ever.

Her ladyship's first remark was a somewhat singular one. "Mr. Flicker," she said, "will you oblige me by looking behind the left ear of--of the person opposite to me, just at the back of the lobe, and tell me whether you find a large mole there?"

Mr. Flicker rose from his seat, coughed deferentially, adjusted his double eyeglass on his nose, and walked gingerly across the floor to where Lord Loughton was sitting. "Pardon me," he said in his blandest tones "it is at her ladyship's special request that I do this."

The earl smiled, or it may be he only sneered--one could not always feel sure which was intended--but said nothing. Bending his head slightly forward, he lifted up the tangled masses of his iron-gray hair with one hand and pulled at the lobe of his ear with the other, so as to assist Mr. Flicker in his search for the birth-mark.

That gentleman, with his hands behind his coattails, bent his head and peered through his glasses as though he were trying to decipher some half-illegible inscription. "Nothing to be seen, I suppose, is there?" asked the dowager at last, drumming impatiently on the table with her fingers meanwhile.

"Pardon me, madam, but there is certainly a very large mole here, just behind the lobe of the left ear," replied Flicker, in his slow, precise way.

"There is, eh? A mole. You are quite sure?"

"Quite sure, Lady Loughton. There can be no mistake in the matter, I give you my word of honor. A very fine mole, indeed."

Her ladyship sighed. "Ah, well, then," she said, after a moment's silence, "I suppose we must really put him down as being the Earl of Loughton."

"I thought that point was finally settled when I saw your ladyship last," said the earl.

"Then it shows, sir, how little you know about it. Nothing is finally settled in this world, except that there are a vast number of rogues and vagabonds in it."

"It would not be half such a diverting place without them," said the earl, with a chuckle. Mr. Flicker shook his head in his slow, melancholy way, but did not speak. Such doctrines were dreadful to listen to, especially when enunciated by a peer of the realm.

Her ladyship was staring intently at the fire. After a while she said, without turning round, "The strange proposition which you chose to lay before me when I saw you last has been received with more consideration than it deserved. It has been decided by my advisers, conjointly with the advisers of Miss Collumpton and Mr. Slingsby Boscombe, in the first place, to pay off the debts contracted by you some thirty years ago, after receiving from you a full and correct schedule of the same; and, in the second place, to allow you an income of six hundred pounds per annum so long as you continue to remain unmarried; and I must say that I consider the offer a most munificent one."

"Oh, yes, most munificent!" sneered the earl. "Six hundred a year out of eighteen thousand; yes, certainly, most munificent."

"Do you, or do you not, agree to the terms?"

"Beggars cannot be choosers, madam; and, as I have said more than once already, I am not a marrying man."

"Mr. Flicker will settle all details with you." Mr. Flicker rubbed his hands and bowed. "You will, of course, sign an undertaking not to marry so long as the income is continued to you."

"Pardon me, madam, but I must decline to sign any such document. My word of honor must be taken as a sufficient guarantee of my intentions."

"Your word of honor! Pray, how much would that article fetch if it were put up to auction?"

Mr. Flicker crossed the floor and whispered a few words in the countess's ear. "If you really think so, let it be so," she said to him. Then she said to the earl, "As I said before, I will leave you and Flicker to settle details."

"May I presume that your lordship has never been married?" asked the lawyer, in his most insinuating tones. He was looking down and fumbling with some papers on the table before him.

The countess turned her head quickly.

"Never, Flicker, never," replied the earl, impressively "on that word of honor which her ladyship believes would fetch so little if put up for sale. I have been very near it, though, once or twice--very near it indeed--but Providence has always intervened."

Her ladyship turned away in a huff.

There was an interval of silence. Mr. Flicker was engaged in tying up his documents, and the earl was watching him.

"May I ask whether you have formed any plans for the future?" asked the dowager, presently.

"No plans in particular. I think that I shall go and live at Brimley, at least for some time to come."

"At Brimley! Why, that is only sixteen miles from Ringwood."

"Precisely so. We shall be neighbors. A dozen miles, more or less, are not of much consequence in the country."

The countess did not look over well pleased. "What is your object in choosing Brimley for a residence?" she asked.

"I lived near there with my father when a lad, and I still retain some pleasant recollections of it, so that the place will not seem altogether strange to me. In addition to which, I see from an advertisement in today's _Times_ that 'Laurel Cottage' there is to be let on lease--the very place to suit an elderly bachelor of limited means and unambitious tastes. I shall run down there to-morrow and see about it."

"Well, sir, I hope that when next I see you I shall find some improvement in your toilet and general appearance."

"Possibly, madam, possibly. I admit that there is some slight room for alteration, perhaps for improvement. I have not followed the fashions very attentively of late. The state of my finances did not allow of my doing so."

"Mr. Flicker will send you a check to-morrow."

"I shall be greatly obliged to Mr. Flicker."

"What a pity it is that you threw your chances to the dogs in the way you did when a young man."

"What a pity it is that my cousin Charles, your good son, madam, could not see his way to advance me the three thousand pounds which was all I needed at that time to save me from destruction. But he buttoned his breeches pocket--saving your ladyship's presence--and allowed me to go headlong to the deuce."

"You forget, sir, that you had had five hundred pounds from him only six months previously."

"I forget nothing. Three thousand pounds would have been my salvation. I did not have the three thousand pounds, nor three thousand pence, and you see the result before you to-day."

"Charles was building and planting at the time, as I well remember, and the sum was a much larger one than he could spare."

"So the building and the planting went on, and Cousin Jack was obliged to fly like a thief in the night. It was the young fool's own fault, and it was only right that he should suffer. So ridiculous of him, wasn't it, to think that because he and Charley had been schoolfellows and like brothers for years, he could now ask Charley to pull him through his troubles? I've often laughed since to think what a young greenhorn he must have been. I'll warrant you he knows the world better by this time."

The countess's head was beginning to shake worse than ever. Flicker made a sign to the earl, and the latter rose. "Good-morning, Aunt Barbara," he said; "shake hands with me for my mother's sake if you won't for my own."

She stared very hard at him for about half a minute, and then she extended two claw-like fingers. "Get a decent coat to your back before you let me see you again. And--and I don't want to see those gloves any more."

Next day "Mr. Fildew" received from Mr. Flicker a check for one hundred and fifty pounds, being the first quarterly instalment of his allowance at the rate of six hundred pounds a year.

"Greedy old hag!" muttered the earl to himself as he pocketed the check. "She might just as easily have made it twelve hundred as six. I'll be even with her for this before I've done with her."