style="font-size:15px;"> Falcon was a gentleman on the surface, and knew he should only make matters worse by quarrelling with her. So he ground his teeth, and said, “May your own heart never feel the pangs you have inflicted. I shall love you and remember you till my dying day.”
He bowed ceremoniously and left her.
“Ay,” said he to himself, “I WILL remember you, you heartless jilt, and the man you have jilted me for. Staines is his d—d name, is it?”
He drove back crestfallen, bitter, and, for once in his life, heart-sick, and drew up at his lodgings. Here he found attendants waiting to receive him.
A sheriff's officer took his dogcart and horse under a judgment; the disturbance this caused collected a tiny crowd, gaping and grinning, and brought Phoebe's white face and eyes swollen with weeping to the window.
Falcon saw her and brazened it out. “Take them,” said he, with an oath. “I'll have a better turn-out by to-morrow, breakfast-time.”
The crowd cheered him for his spirit.
He got down, lit a cigar, chaffed the officer and the crowd, and was, on the whole, admired.
Then another officer, who had been hunting him in couples with the other, stepped forward and took HIM, for the balance of a judgment debt.
Then the swell's cigar fell out of his mouth, and he was seriously alarmed. “Why, Cartwright,” said he, “this is too bad. You promised not to see me this month. You passed me full in the Strand.”
“You are mistaken, sir,” said Cartwright, with sullen irony. “I've got a twin-brother; a many takes him for me, till they finds the difference.” Then, lowering his voice, “What call had you to boast in your club you had made it right with Bill Cartwright, and he'd never see you? That got about, and so I was bound to see you or lose my bread. There's one or two I don't see, but then they are real gentlemen, and thinks of me as well as theirselves, and doesn't blab.”
“I must have been drunk,” said Falcon apologetically. “More likely blowing a cloud. When you young gents gets a-smoking together, you'd tell on your own mothers. Come along, colonel, off we go to Merrimashee.”
“Why, it is only twenty-six pounds. I have paid the rest.”
“More than that; there's the costs.”
“Come in, and I'll settle it.”
“All right, sir. Jem, watch the back.”
“Oh, I shall not try that game with a sharp hand like you, Cartwright.”
“You had better not, sir,” said Cartwright; but he was softened a little by the compliment.
When they were alone, Falcon began by saying it was a bad job for him.
“Why, I thought you was a-going to pay it all in a moment.”
“I can't; but I have got a friend over the way that could, if she chose. She has always got money, somehow.”
“Oh, if it is a she, it is all right.”
“I don't know. She has quarrelled with me; but give me a little time. Here! have a glass of sherry and a biscuit, while I try it on.”
Having thus muffled Cartwright, this man of the world opened his window and looked out. The crowd had followed the captured dogcart, so he had the street to himself. He beckoned to Phoebe, and after considerable hesitation she opened her window.
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