“Don’t be so daft, Ottershaw!” said Hugo quietly.

Anthea paid no heed, but gave a scornful, angry laugh, and said: “Well, I hope you know how my brother has contrived to become a smuggler without anyone’s being the wiser, for I can assure you I don’t! When I think of the way every single soul at Darracott Place fusses and cossets him—Oh, what is the use of talking to you? You are out of your senses!” She swung round towards Lord Darracott, demanding impetuously: “Grandpapa, how much more of this do you mean to endure?”

“Let him go his length, my girl!” he replied. “The farther the better! Do you think I mean to stop him tieing the noose round his own neck? I don’t, pea-goose!”

Sergeant Hoole stepped forward, laying a hand on the Lieutenant’s arm. “Sir!” he uttered imploringly. “Begging your pardon, but—”

Ottershaw shook him off. He had gone too far to draw back, and the voice within his brain that urged him not to let these Darracotts outjockey him was growing every second more insistent. Rather pale, but with his jaw out-thrust, he said: “If Mr. Richmond Darracott is unhurt, why should he hesitate to remove his coat, so that I may be convinced by the evidence of my own eyes that it is so?”

Hugo, who had bent over Claud, adjusting the sling that supported his left arm, straightened himself, saying: “Oh, for God’s sake, take your coat off, Richmond, and your waistcoat too! Let’s be done with this business!”

Richmond might be pale, but his eyes, tremendously alive, gave the lie to the drawn look on his face, not a trace of fear in them. He gave a gleeful chuckle, and pointed a derisive finger at the Major. “Who said I couldn’t bamboozle the Exciseman? Who said he was too fly to the time of day to be hoaxed by a silly schoolboy? I’ve done it! Vincent, do you know what Hugo—”

“I’m going to say something more, when you’re sober enough to attend to me,” said Hugo, somewhat grimly. “Happen you won’t find that so amusing! In the meantime, we’ve had more than enough of your hoax, so take your coat off, and let me have no argument about it!”

Richmond’s laughter was quenched. He looked resentfully at his large cousin, saying sulkily: “I don’t know why I need do as you say. I don’t care for what you think. Nothing to do with you!”

“Help him off with it, Vincent!” said Hugo curtly.

At this point Claud, who had opened his eyes some few minutes previously, demanded, in bewildered accents: “What the devil does that fellow want with Richmond’s coat? Dash it, he is mad!”

“Don’t fatch!” said Hugo. “He thinks it’s Richmond that was shot, and not you at all, so the easiest way to prove him wrong—”

“Thinks—thinks I wasn’t shot?” gasped Claud, galvanized into struggling up on to his right elbow. “Oh, so that’s what you think, is it, you murderous lunatic? Then let me tell you—”

“You young fool, keep still! Claud—!” exclaimed Hugo, taking two hasty strides to the head of the sofa, as Claud, with every sign of one exerting a superhuman effort, dragged himself up from the cushions, panting, and making unavailing attempts to speak. “Nay then, lad! Gently now!” he begged, his arms round Claud. “You’ll do yourself an injury, you silly lad! You mustn’t—”

“Don’t you talk to me!” raged Claud, between laboured breaths. “If you think—Ow—!”

The anguish throbbing in this sharp cry was so real that even Vincent was startled, while Anthea could almost have exclaimed Bravo! Ottershaw, who had been paying no heed to him, but keeping his eyes fixed on Richmond, just about to let Vincent pull off his coat, turned involuntarily.

“Hugo, you—you—!”

“Nay, lad, it’s your own fault!” protested Hugo. “Stop wriggling about like—”

“You put your great, clumsy hand right on—Oh—ah—ugh—!” moaned Claud, reduced again to extremis.

“Brandy, Polyphant!” Hugo said, his anxious gaze on Claud’s face. He shifted him slightly, and stretched out an imperative hand. “Or the salts! Anything, only give it to me quickly!”

A tiny, perfectly spontaneous shriek escaped Anthea.

“Hugo—! Your hand!”she stammered, her dilating eyes riveted to it.

“Good God!” ejaculated Vincent involuntarily.

Hugo looked round, surprised at Anthea, and then at his own bloodstained palm. “Oh, my God!” he uttered, swiftly glancing down at Claud’s back, which only he was in a position to see.

“Sir—!” exclaimed Polyphant reproachfully, and darted forward to snatch up some lint from the pile on the floor. “No, no, let me, sir! I beg pardon, but pray don’t—Just hold him, if you please! Oh, dear, oh, dear!

Miss Anthea, the longest strip of linen you can find—or knot two together—anything! Don’t move, Mr. Claud! I implore you, sir, don’t move!”

Since no one in the room had seen the Major pick up several of the blood-soaked swabs from the bowl still standing on the chair beside the sofa, and close his hand on them, it was hardly surprising that the sight of his horridly reddened palm should have come as a shock to the rest of his family. Had Lieutenant Ottershaw not been far too much shocked himself to think of studying the expressions on the faces of his companions, one glance must have satisfied him that the Darracotts were honestly horrified.

Anthea was the first to recover her wits, and to rush to the sofa, scolding distractedly; Vincent was swift to follow suit. Both blamed Hugo for having handled the drooping Claud with abominable clumsiness; my lord joined in, directing his menaces, however, towards Lieutenant Ottershaw, for being the real cause of this fresh disaster; and the Sergeant, prompted by real dismay, and a very lively dread of the consequences, seized the opportunity provided by all this commotion to represent to Ottershaw, with all the eloquence at his command, that any more attempts to exacerbate the Darracotts would only bring them both to ruin.

It was at this moment that Lady Aurelia entered the room, and, halting on the threshold, demanded, in a voice which, without being raised to any vulgar pitch, easily penetrated the hubbub: “What, may I ask, is the meaning of this extraordinary scene?”

Such was the effect of her commanding eye, and air of supreme assurance, that Lieutenant Ottershaw found himself to his subsequent fury, adding his voice to those of Anthea and Vincent, in an attempt to present her ladyship with the explanation she desired.

She seemed to grasp the gist of what was told her with all the rapidity of a powerful intelligence; and, considerably before the various accounts had been brought to their conclusions, paralysed the company by uttering, in icy yet ominous accents: “Be silent, if you please! I have heard enough!”

She then swept forward to the sofa, Anthea, Vincent, and the Major giving way instinctively before her, and bent over Claud, feeling his brow, and his wrist. Magnificently ignoring everyone else, she exchanged a few words with Polyphant, who had remained devoutly at the head of the sofa; and, upon Claud’s venturing to open his eyes sufficiently to cast a doubtful, slightly nervous glance up at her, said with calm kindness: “You will keep perfectly still, my son: do you understand me? You have no need to trouble yourself about anything, for Mama is here, and will make you better directly.”

She then turned, and looked round the room, with all the lofty contempt natural to the descendant of eleven Earls, all of whom, if not otherwise distinguished, had been remarkable for the high-handed and very successful way with which they had dealt with inferior persons, and overridden all opposition to their domestic decrees. No one saw these august personages range themselves at Lady Aurelia’s back, but (as her appreciative elder son afterwards asserted) no one could doubt that they had all of them hurried to the support of so worthy a daughter.

“I do not know,” she stated, in a tone of dispassionate censure, “why I have been obliged to come downstairs to discover for myself the precise nature of Claud’s injury, but I do not attempt to conceal from you that I am excessively displeased. Your conduct, Vincent, I consider particularly reprehensible, for it was on the understanding that you would instantly apprise me of it, if you found your brother’s injury to be of a serious character, that I allowed myself to be persuaded to remain upstairs. Neither you nor Anthea, whom I must deem to have been gravely at fault, are so stupid as to have supposed that the accident was of a trifling nature. I shall say no more to you, Hugo, than that I trust you will in future refrain from making well-meaning but foolish attempts to conceal from some other female in my position the very dangerous state in which one of her children may be lying. Pray do not answer me! I have neither the time nor the desire to listen to excuses or apologies. You will all of you, with the exception of Polyphant, be so good as to leave this room immediately. Vincent, since I apprehend that Richmond is disgracefully inebriated, you will please assist him to his bed-chamber. I do not presume to dictate to you, my lord, but since there is nothing for you to do here I am persuaded you will be very much more comfortable in your library.” Her eyes next fell on Lieutenant Ottershaw, and after considering him for a moment or two in a way that made the Sergeant feel profoundly thankful that her gaze had swept past him, said, without the slightest change of intonation: “You, I believe, are the author of this outrage. I collect that you are in the service of the Board of Customs, I shall be obliged to you if you will furnish me with your name, and style.”