Michael had nothing special to do and so followed him there at once by train, coming upon him just as he was closing his letter to Mrs. Howard. Then in his usual whirlwind way, which must be obeyed--he had persuaded Henry to take him on with him, inwardly against that astute politician's, but diffident lover's will.
"Look here, Michael," he had said, "I am going to see the lady of my heart--you know, and you will probably be in the way!"
"Not a bit, old boy--I'll play the helpful friend and spin things along. What's she like?"
Here Lord Fordyce gave a guarded description--but with the enthusiasm of a man who is no longer quite young but madly in love.
"Good Lord!" whistled Michael. "She must be a daisy! And when are you going to be married, old man? I'll lend you Arranstoun for the honeymoon--damned good place for a honeymoon--" and then he stopped short suddenly and laughed with a strange regretful sound in his mirth.
"Alas!" Henry sighed. "I cannot say--she is an American, you know, and has been married to a brute of her own nation out west, whom she has to get perfectly free of before I can have the honor to call her mine."
"Yes, it is a dreadful bore having to wait. They arrange divorces wonderfully well over there though it is only a question of a few months, I suppose--but she would be worth waiting for for ten years----"
"It is simply glorious to hear you raving so, old bird!" Michael laughed. "When I think of the lectures you used to give me about women--mere recreations for a man's leisure moments, I think you called them, and not to be taken seriously in a man's real life!"
"I have completely changed my opinions," Lord Fordyce announced, rather nettled. "So would any man if he knew Mrs. Howard."
"Howard?" asked Michael--"but anyone can be a Talbot or a Howard or a Cavendish out there--so she is a Mrs. Howard, is she? I wonder who the husband was--I had a rascally cousin of that name who went to Arizona--perhaps she married him."
"Her husband was an American," Henry rejoined, "and is in a madhouse or an institution for inebriates, I believe."
"Well, I wish you all joy, Henry, I do, indeed--and I promise you I will do all I can to help you through with it. I won't retaliate for your thundering niggardness five years ago, when you would not even be my best man, do you remember?"