“My Gawd!” said the groom again.

Inside the house two lackeys hovered about the late-comer to take his hat and coat. There was another gentleman in the hall, just about to go up the wide stairway to the saloon. He was good-looking in a rather florid style, with very heavily-arched brows and a roving eye. His dress proclaimed the Macaroni, for he wore a short coat decorated with frog-buttons, fine striped breeches with bunches of strings at the knee, and a waistcoat hardly reaching below the waist. The frills of his shirt front stuck out at the top, and instead of the cravat, he displayed a very full handkerchief tied in a bow under his chin. On his head he wore an amazingly tall ladder-toupet, dusted with blue hair powder, and he carried in his hand a long tasselled cane.

He turned as my lord entered, and when he saw who it was, came across the hall. “I hoped I was the last,” he complained. He raised his quizzing-glass, and through it peered at the hole in his lordship’s coat. “My dear Vidal!” he said, shocked. “My dear fellow! Ecod, my lord, your coat!”

One of the lackeys had it over his arm. My lord shook out his Dresden ruffles, but carelessly as though it mattered very little to him to be point-de-vice. “Well, Charles, what of my coat?” he asked.

Mr. Fox achieved a shudder. “There’s a damned hole in it, Vidal,” he protested. He moved forward and very gingerly lifted a fold of the garment. “And a damned smell of powder, Vidal,” he said. “You’ve been shooting someone.”

His lordship leaned against the bannister, and opened his snuff-box. “Some scum of a footpad only,” he said.

Mr. Fox abandoned his affectations for the moment. “Kill him, Dominic?”

“Of course,” said my lord.

Mr. Fox grinned. “What have you done with the corpse, my boy?”

“Done with it?” said his lordship with a touch of impatience. “Nothing. What should I do with a corpse?”