CHAPTER XII

Mr. Rupert Hemphill.

That afternoon it rained, so that the Broadstone people were obliged to stay indoors.  Dick Lancaster found Mr. Fox a very agreeable and well-informed man, and Mrs. Fox was also an excellent conversationalist.  Mrs. Easterfield, who, after the confidences of the morning, could not help looking at him as something more than an acquaintance, talked to him a good deal, and tried to make the time pass pleasantly, at which business she was an adept.  All this was very pleasant to Dick, but it did not compensate him for the almost entire loss of the society of Olive, who seemed to devote herself to the entertainment of the Austrian secretary.  Mrs. Easterfield was very sorry that the young foreigner had come at this time, but he had been invited the winter before; the time had been appointed; and the visit had to be endured.

When the rain had ceased, and Dick was about to take his leave, his hostess declared she would not let him walk back through the mud.

“You shall have a horse,” she said, “and that will insure an early visit from you, for, of course, you will not trust the animal to other hands than your own.  I would ask you to stay, but that would not be treating the captain kindly.”

As Dick was mounting Mr. Du Brant was standing at the front door, a smile on his swarthy countenance.  This smile said as plainly as words could have done so that it was very amusing to this foreign young man to see a person with rolled-up trousers and a straw hat mount upon a horse.  Claude Locker, whose soul had been chafing all the afternoon under his banishment from the society of the angel of his life, was also at the front door, and saw the contemptuous smile.  Instantly a new and powerful emotion swept over his being in the shape of a strong feeling of fellowship for Lancaster.  It made his soul boil with indignation to see the sneer which the Austrian directed toward the young man, a thoroughly fine young man, who, by said foreigner’s monkeyful impudence, and another’s mistaken favor, had been made a brother-in-misfortune of himself, Claude Locker.

“I will make common cause with him against the enemy,” thought Locker.  “If I should fail to get her I will help him to.”  And although Dick’s brown socks were plainly visible as he cantered away, Mr. Locker looked after him as a gallant and honored brother-in-arms.

That evening Claude Locker fought for himself and his comrade.  He persisted in talking French with Mr. Du Brant; and his remarkable management of that language, in which ignorance and a subtle facility in intentional misapprehension were so adroitly blended that it was impossible to tell one from the other, amused Olive, and so provoked the Austrian that at last he turned away and began to talk American politics with Mr. Fox, which so elated the poet that the ladies of the party passed a merry evening.

“Would you like me to take him out rowing to-morrow?” asked Claude apart to his hostess.