"I'm very sorry, you fellows," said he, with absurd humility. "I'm all off colour to-night, and I know I've made a rude ruffian of myself. Some of these days you'll understand; meantime will you forgive me?" "_I_ have nothing to forgive," replied Llewellyn. "We'll say no more about it," said Stubbs. And Jack shook hands with them both before leaving them for good; then he hurried through the length of the building to the great conservatory, where Stebbings was putting out the lights. The conservatory was at that extreme of the Towers which the dogcart would pass first. Here, too, was room and air for a man distraught. So Jack called out to Stebbings to leave the lights on longer. "And light some more," he added suddenly. "Light up every lamp in the place! I shall stay here until Mr. Lafont returns." "Yes, your Grace." "Stebbings!" "Your Grace?" "For God's sake don't call me that again! I--I'm not used to it, Stebbings--any more than you're used to me," added Jack inconsequently; and he fled into the grounds until the old man should be gone. The night was very dark and heavy; clouds obscured the moon, shedding a fine rain softly upon drive and terrace. Jack raised his face, and a grateful sprinkling cooled its fever. He longed for a far heavier fall, with the ancient longing of those prehistoric days when a grey sky and an honest wetting were the rarest joys in life. Could he indeed return to that rough routine after all these weeks of aristocratic ease? The bushman might exchange his wideawake for a coronet, but could the peer go back to the bush? Time must show. The only question was whether Hunt had lied or told the truth; and the answer could not be much longer delayed. Already it was half-past eleven; there was the clang creeping lazily through the night, round quarter of a mile of intervening wall, and half a hundred angles. He would have gone down the drive to meet the dogcart; but the night was too dark; and beside him blazed the great conservatory like a palace of fire. He entered it again, and now he had it to himself; the statues among the tree-ferns were his only companions. But in his absence old Stebbings had placed a little table with brandy and soda-water set out upon it; even the butler had seen and pitied his condition.