Beau Lavenham, who was two years younger than Shield, did not resemble him in the least. Sir Tristram was a large, lean man, very dark, harsh-featured, and with few airs or graces; the Beau was of medium height only, slim rather than lean, of a medium complexion and delicately-moulded features, and his graces were many. Nothing could have been more exquisite than the arrangement of his powdered curls, or the cut of his brown-spotted silk coat and breeches. He wore a waistcoat embroidered with gold and silver, and stockings of palest pink, a jewel in the snowy folds of his cravat, knots of ribbons at his knees, and rings on his slender white fingers. In one hand he carried his snuffbox and scented handkerchief; in the other he held up an ornate quizzing-glass that hung on a riband round his neck. Through this he surveyed his two cousins, blandly smiling and quite at his ease. “Ah, Tristram!” he said in a soft, languid voice, and, letting fall his quizzing-glass, held out his hand. “How do you do, my dear fellow?”

Sir Tristram shook hands with him. “How do you do, Basil? It’s some time since we met.”

The Beau made a gesture of deprecation. “But, my dear Tristram, if you will bury yourself in Berkshire what is one to do? Eustacie—!” He went to her, and bowed over her hand with incomparable grace. “So you have been making Tristram’s acquaintance?”

“Yes,” said Eustacie. “We are betrothed.”

The Beau raised his brows, smiling. “Oh la, la! so soon? Did Sylvester call this tune? Well, you are, both of you, very obedient, but are you quite, quite sure that you will deal well together?”

“Oh, I hope so!” replied Sir Tristram bracingly.

“If you are determined—and I must warn you, Eustacie, that he is the most determined fellow imaginable—I must hope so too. But I do not think I expected either of you to be so very obedient. Sylvester is prodigious—quite prodigious! One cannot believe that he is really dying. A world without Sylvester! Surely it must be impossible!”

“It will seem odd, indeed,” Shield said calmly.

Eustacie looked disparagingly at the Beau. “And it will seem odd to me when you are Lord Lavenham—very odd!”

There was a moment’s silence. The Beau glanced at Sir Tristram, and then said: “Ah yes, but, you see, I shall not be Lord Lavenham. My dear Tristram, do, I beg of you, try some of this snuff of mine, and let me have your opinion of it. I have added the veriest dash of Macouba to my old blend. Now, was I right?”

“I’m not a judge,” said Shield, helping himself to a pinch. “It seems well enough.”

Eustacie was frowning. “But I don’t understand! Why will you not be Lord Lavenham?”

The Beau turned courteously towards her. “Well, Eustacie, I am not Sylvester’s grandson, but only his great-nephew.”

“But when there is no grandson it must surely be you who are the heir?”

“Precisely, but there is a grandson, dear cousin. Did you not know that?”

“Certainly I know that there was Ludovic, but he is dead after all!”

“Who told you Ludovic was dead?” asked Shield, looking at her under knit brows.

She spread out her hands. “But, Grandpère, naturally! And I have often wanted to know what it was that he did that was so entirely wicked that no one must speak of him. It is a mystery, and, I think, very romantic.”

“There is no mystery,” said Shield, “nor is it in the least romantic. Ludovic was a wild young man who crowned a series of follies with murder, and had in consequence to fly the country.”

“Murder!” exclaimed Eustacie. “Voyons, do you mean he killed someone in a duel?”

“No. Not in a duel.”

“But, Tristram,” said the Beau gently, “you must not forget that it was never proved that Ludovic was the man who shot Matthew Plunkett. For my part I did not believe it possible then, and I still do not.”

“Very handsome of you, but the circumstances were too damning,” replied Shield. “Remember that I myself heard the shot that must have killed Plunkett not ten minutes after I had parted from Ludovic.”

“But I,” said the Beau, languidly polishing his quizzing-glass, “prefer to believe Ludovic’s own story, that it was an owl he shot at.”

“Shot—but missed!” said Shield. “Yet I have watched Ludovic shoot the pips out of a playing-card at twenty yards.”

“Oh, admitted, Tristram, admitted, but on that particular night I think Ludovic was not entirely sober, was he?”

Eustacie struck her hands together impatiently. “But tell me, one of you! What did he do, my cousin Ludovic?”

The Beau tossed back the ruffles from his hand, and dipped his finger and thumb in his snuffbox. “Well, Tristram,” he said with his glinting smile. “You know more about it than I do. Are you going to tell her?”

“It is not an edifying story,” Shield said. “Why do you want to hear it?”

“Because I think perhaps my cousin Ludovic is of this family the most romantic person!” replied Eustacie.

“Oh, romantic!” said Sir Tristram, turning away with a shrug of the shoulder.

The Beau fobbed his snuffbox. “Romantic?” he said meditatively. “No, I do not think Ludovic was romantic. A little rash, perhaps. He was a gamester—whence the disasters which befell him. He lost a very large sum of money one night at the Cocoa-Tree to a man who lived at Furze House, not two miles from here.”

“No one lives at Furze House,” interrupted Eustacie.

“Not now,” agreed the Beau. “Three years ago Sir Matthew Plunkett lived there. But Sir Matthew—three years ago—was shot in the Longshaw Spinney, and his widow removed from the neighbourhood.”

“Did my cousin Ludovic shoot him?”

“That, my dear Eustacie, is a matter of opinion. You will get one answer from Tristram, and another from me.”

“But why?” she demanded. “Not just because he had lost money to him! That, after all, is not such a great matter—unless perhaps he was quite ruined?”

“Oh, by no means! He did lose a large sum to him, however, and Sir Matthew, being a person of—let us say indifferent—breeding—was ill-mannered enough to demand a pledge in security before he would continue playing. Of course, one should never play with Cits, but poor dear Ludovic was always so headstrong. The game was piquet, and both were in their cups. Ludovic took from his finger a certain ring, and gave it to Sir Matthew as a pledge—to be redeemed, naturally. It was a talisman ring of great antiquity which had come to Ludovic through his mother, who was the last of a much older house than ours.”

Eustacie stopped him. “Please, I do not know what is a talisman ring.”

“Just a golden ring with figures engraved upon it. This of Ludovic’s was, as I have said, very old. The characters on it were supposed to be magical. It should, according to ancient belief, have protected him from any harm. More important, it was an heirloom. I don’t know its precise value. Tristram, you are a judge of such things—you must make him show you his collection, Eustacie—what was the value of the ring?”

“I don’t know,” answered Shield curtly. “It was very old—perhaps priceless.”

“Such a rash creature, poor Ludovic!” sighed the Beau. “I believe there was no stopping him—was there, Tristram?”

“No.”

Eustacie turned towards Shield. “But were you there, then?”

“Yes, I was there.”

“But no one, not even Tristram, could manage Ludovic in his wilder moods,” explained the Beau. “He pledged the ring, and continued to lose. Sir Matthew, with what one cannot but feel to have been a lamentable want of taste, left the Cocoa-Tree with the ring upon his finger. To redeem it Ludovic was forced to go to the Jews—ah, that means moneylenders, my dear!”

“There was nothing new in that,” said Shield. “Ludovic had been in the Jews’ hands since he came down from Oxford—and before.”

“Like so many of us,” murmured the Beau.

“And did he get the money from the Jews?” asked Eustacie.

“Oh yes,” replied the Beau, “but the matter was not so easily settled. When Ludovic called upon Plunkett to redeem the ring our ingenious friend pretended that the bargain had been quite misunderstood, that he had in fact staked his guineas against the ring, and won it outright. He would not give it up, nor could anyone but Tristram be found who had been sober enough to vouch for the truth of Ludovic’s version of the affair.”

Eustacie’s eyes flashed. “I am not at all surprised that Ludovic killed this canaille! He was without honour!”

The Beau played with his quizzing-glass. “People who collect objects of rarity, my dear Eustacie, will often, so I believe, go to quite unheard-of lengths to acquire the prize they covet.”

“But you!” said Eustacie, looking fiercely at Sir Tristram. “You knew the truth!”

“Unfortunately,” replied Sir Tristram, “Plunkett did not wait for my ruling. He retired into the country—to Furze House, in fact—and somewhat unwisely refused to see Ludovic.”

“Did Grandpère know of this?” Eustacie asked.

“Dear me, no!” said the Beau. “Sylvester and Ludovic were so rarely on amicable terms. And then there was that little matter of Ludovic’s indebtedness to the Jews. One can hardly blame Ludovic for not taking Sylvester into his confidence. However, Ludovic came home to this house, bringing Tristram, with the intention of confronting Plunkett with the one—er—reliable witness to the affair. But Plunkett was singularly elusive—not unnaturally, of course. When Ludovic called at Furze House he was never at home. One must admit that Ludovic was not precisely the man to accept such treatment patiently. And he was drinking rather heavily at that time, too. Discovering that Plunkett was to dine at a house in Slaugham upon the very day that he had been refused admittance to Furze House for the third time, he conceived the plan of waylaying him upon his return home, and forcing him to accept bills in exchange for the ring. Only Tristram, finding him gone from here, guessed what he would be at, and followed him.”

“The boy was three parts drunk!” said Sir Tristram over his shoulder.

“I have no doubt he was in a very dangerous humour,” agreed the Beau. “It has always been a source of wonderment to me how you persuaded him to relinquish his purpose and return home.”

“I promised to see Plunkett in his stead,” replied Shield. “Like a fool I let him take the path through the spinney.”

“My dear fellow, no one could have expected you to have foreseen that Plunkett would return by that path,” said the Beau gently.

“On the contrary, if he came from Slaugham it was the most natural way for him to take,” retorted Shield. :’And we knew he was riding, not driving.”

“So what happened?” breathed Eustacie.

It was Shield who answered her. “Ludovic rode back through the Longshaw Spinney, while I went on towards Furze House. Not ten minutes after we had parted I heard a shot fired in the distance. At the time I made nothing of it: it might have been a poacher. Next morning Plunkett’s body was discovered in the spinney with a shot through the heart, and a crumpled handkerchief of Ludovic’s lying beside it.”

“And the ring?” Eustacie said quickly.

“The ring was gone,” said Shield. “There was money in Plunkett’s pockets, and a diamond pin in his cravat, but of the talisman ring no sign.”

“And it has never been seen since,” added the Beau.

“By us, no!” said Sir Tristram.

“Yes, yes, I know that you think Ludovic has it,” said the Beau, “but Ludovic swore he did not meet Plunkett that night, and I for one do not think that Ludovic was a liar. He admitted freely that he carried a pistol in his pocket, he even admitted that he had fired it—at an owl.”

“Why should he not shoot this Plunkett?” demanded Eustacie. “He deserved to be shot! I am very glad that he was shot!”

“Possibly,” said Sir Tristram in his driest tone, “but in England, whatever it may be in France, murder is a capital offence.”

“But they did not hang him just for killing such a one as this Plunkett?” said Eustacie, shocked.

“No, because we got him out of the country before he could be arrested,” Shield answered.

The Beau lifted his hand. “Sylvester and you got him out of the country,” he corrected. “I had no hand in that, if you please.”

“Had he stayed to face a trial nothing could have saved his neck.”

“There I beg to differ from you, my dear Tristram,” said the Beau calmly. “Had he been permitted to face his trial the truth might have been found out. When you—and Sylvester, of course—smuggled him out of the country you made him appear a murderer confessed.”