But when the dinner-time came he really was sick with love,--or sick with disappointment. He felt that he could not eat his dinner under the battery of raillery which was always coming from Sir Magnus, and therefore he had told the servants that as the evening progressed he would have something to eat in his own room. And then he went out to wander in the dusk beneath the trees in the garden. Here he was encountered by Mr. Arbuthnot, with his dress boots and white cravat. "What the mischief are you doing here, old fellow?" "I'm not very well. I have an awfully bilious headache." "Sir Magnus is kicking up a deuce of a row because you're not there." "Sir Magnus be blowed! How am I to be there if I've got a bilious headache? I'm not dressed. I could not have dressed myself for a five-pound note." "Couldn't you, now? Shall I go back and tell him that? But you must have something to eat. I don't know what's up, but Sir Magnus is in a taking." "He's always in a taking. I sometimes think he's the biggest fool out." "And there's the place kept vacant next to Miss Mountjoy. Grascour wanted to sit there, but her ladyship wouldn't let him. And I sat next Miss Abbott because I didn't want to be in your way." "Tell Grascour to go and sit there, or you may do so. It's all nothing to me." This he said in the bitterness of his heart, by no means intending to tell his secret, but unable to keep it within his own bosom. "What's the matter, Anderson?" asked the other piteously. "I am clean broken-hearted. I don't mind telling you. I know you're a good fellow, and I'll tell you everything. It's all over." "All over--with Miss Mountjoy?" Then Anderson began to tell the whole story; but before he had got half through, or a quarter through, another message came from Sir Magnus. "Sir Magnus is becoming very angry indeed," whispered the butler. "He says that Mr. Arbuthnot is to go back." "I'd better go, or I shall catch it." "What's up with him, Richard?" asked Anderson. "Well, if you ask me, Mr. Anderson, I think he's--a-suspecting of something." "What does he suspect?" "I think he's a-thinking that perhaps you are having a jolly time of it." Richard had known his master many years, and could almost read his inmost thoughts. "I don't say as it so, but that's what I am thinking." "You tell him I ain't. You tell him I've a bad bilious headache, and that the air in the garden does it good. You tell him that I mean to have something to eat up-stairs when my head is better; and do you mind and let me have it, and a bottle of claret." With this the butler went back, and so did Arbuthnot, after asking one other question: "I'm so sorry it isn't all serene with Miss Mountjoy?"