The Victory
She was putting on a brave show for him, but her eyes were anxious.
    ‘ Don't worry, my darling. Everything is going to be all right,' he said firmly. 'I shall go and see him, and make him change his mind. Trust me, Lucy. I'll make everything all right with your Chetwyn.’

Chapter Three
     
      White's and Brooks's, London's leading clubs, faced each other across St James's Street. White's was known as the Tory club, and Brooks's as the Whig, but most gentlemen belonged to both, and used either as the whim of the moment or the excellence of the dinners dictated. Captain Weston, in search of the Earl of Aylesbury and not finding him at his lodgings, enquired for him in both establishments, and discovered him at Brooks's, on the point of dining.
    ‘ I'm sorry to interrupt you at such a moment,' Weston said with a formal politeness designed to keep him from trembling, 'but I believe it is important. Might I have an interview with you in private?’
    The earl looked at him coldly. 'I see no reason for it. You and I can have nothing to say to each other.’
    Weston looked exasperated. 'Sir, I understand how you must feel about me, and I assure you that I like the idea of this interview as little as you do, but you cannot in all reason expect me simply to go away. There are things that must be said: arrangements to be made.’
    The earl looked at him for a moment, tight-lipped, and then said, 'Very well. We had better go to a private room. I don't suppose your seeking me out in this public way can give rise to more gossip than is already current.’
    Weston thought the earl looked really ill, and was ashamed to have made his life more difficult in this manner. 'I'm sorry, sir. I suppose I should have sent a note first, requesting an interview, but the matter is one of such urgency that —'
    ‘ You mistake, Captain. There is no urgency in the case. But I concede that you might well think so. If you please,' — he silenced Weston with a gesture — 'no more talk until we are alone.’
    Having asked a club servant to ensure they were not disturbed, he led the way into a private parlour, closed the door and, taking a seat himself, signed the younger man to sit down. Weston obeyed, but almost instantly got to his feet again, hardly aware that he had done so, his agitation too great to let him be still. The two men had been many times in company together since the beginning of Weston's association with Lucy, but they had never been alone together, and noth ing in the nature of a confrontation had ever taken place. Aylesbury had been at pains that it should not, and was angry that Weston should have precipitated one now.
    ‘ Well, Captain Weston,' he said at last, when the other had paced up and down the room a few times, 'if you have some thing to say to me, you had better say it, and let us be done with this.’
    Weston turned to face him. 'If this interview is painful to you, sir, I assure you it is even more so to me.'
    ‘No, sir. That is not possible,' Aylesbury said, quite gently. ‘Proceed.’
    Weston flushed. 'Sir, Lucy tells me that you came to see her this morning, at her request; that she had something to tell you.'
    ‘ She told me that she is with child,' the earl answered brutally, 'and since the whole world knows that the child cannot be mine, it is to be supposed that you are responsible for its existence.’
    Weston bit his lip. 'Yes, it's true. It would be absurd of me to apologise to you —'
    ‘ More than absurd. It would be an intolerable imperti nence,' the earl said in a hard voice.
    ‘ Sir, I am sorry that you, or anyone else, should be hurt in any way by my actions,' Weston persevered. 'I wish with all my heart that things could have been different, but I do beg you to believe that I have not acted lightly, and that I should never have wronged you if it weren't for my great love for her.'
    ‘ These protestations are tedious and distasteful to me. Please understand that I have no interest whatever in

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