“I will have him hounded out of every Club in London,” Lord Arthur said quietly, which was somehow more dramatic than if he had spoken with any expression in his voice.

“But he must repay me at any rate,” the man who had lost twenty thousand pounds said almost hysterically.

“I think we can say that all debts for the last six months will be refunded or cancelled,” Lord Arthur replied. “Beyond that the situation would be too difficult. Huntleigh, you have, I know, lost not only large sums of money, but also a property in Berkshire. I will undertake that the deeds are returned to you. And, Drayton, you owe him about ten thousand since we have been here. Forget it.”

Lord Arthur hesitated and looked at Lord Lynche.

“Need I go on?” he said with a thin smile. “I think you are all feeling a sense of relief.”

“I am feeling more than that!” a man exclaimed. “I would like to kick the swine from one end of St. James’s to the other. One thing is certain, that we will see he never plays again.”

“I think Miss Claverly has already seen to that,” Lord Arthur remarked.

He looked at Carina kindly and somehow she felt that her heart would burst.

“But you cannot give me back my father,” she said to him in a voice hardly above a whisper and turning she ran from the room, her eyes blinded with tears.

Chapter 11

Carina was awakened by a housemaid pulling back the curtains. For a moment she could hardly believe that she had been asleep.

When she had gone to bed, she thought that she would lie awake all night, reliving the events of the day. But from sheer exhaustion she had dropped into a dreamless slumber and now she felt as if she was being dragged back to earth from some far distant planet.

The housemaid put down the tray of morning tea beside the bed and withdrew almost noiselessly. She had obviously been taught her work well by Mrs. Barnstaple.

Carina sat up in bed and stared across the room to where someone had removed the stain of blood from the floor and there was nothing now to indicate where Sir Percy had fallen.

Had it all really happened, she wondered, or was it just a figment of her imagination? Had she really sat with a pistol in her hand intent on killing a man?

Had she swept from hatred and enmity to passion and burning love?

She felt a sudden tingle in her fingertips at the memory of Lord Lynche’s touch on her shoulders. It ignited a fire within her that had seemed to burn her up and consume her so that she had known she loved him beyond all sense and almost beyond all caution.