April Lady

Chapter Three

Any scheme of intercepting her lover on his way out of the house which Letty might have cherished was frustrated by the Earl’s escorting him to the front-door, and seeing him safely off the premises. He strolled back to the library; and, after hesitating for a moment or two at the head of the stairs, from which post of vantage she had watched Mr. Allandale’s departure, Letty ran lightly down, and herself entered the library.

Cardross was engaged in mending a pen, but he looked up, and, when he saw his half-sister backed against the door, an urgent question in her speaking eyes, abandoned this task. A laugh quivered in his voice as he said: “Letty, you goose! Did you really think that I should succumb to that unfortunate young man’s oratory? Do forgive me! but surely he is a very dull dog?”

“I don’t care for that,” she said, swallowing a sob. “He is not dull to me. I love him!”

“You must do so indeed! I should have supposed him to be the last man to take your fancy, too.”

“Well, he is not, and even if you are my guardian I won’t submit to having my husband chosen for me by you!”

“Certainly not. It’s plain I should make a poor hand at it.”

Hope gleamed in her eyes; she moved towards him, and laid a coaxing hand on his arm. “Dear Giles, if you please, may I marry him?”

He gave the hand a pat, but said: “Why, yes, Letty, when you are older.”

“But, Giles, you don’t understand! He is going away to Brazil!”

“So he informed me.”

“Are you thinking that perhaps it might not suit me to live there? I believe the climate is perfectly healthy!”

“Salubrious,” he interpolated.

“Yes, and in any event I am never ill! You may ask my aunt if it’s not so!”

“I am sure it is. Don’t let us fall into another exhausting argument! I have already endured a great deal of eloquence today, but it would take much more than eloquence to make me consent to your marriage to an indigent young man who proposes to take you to the other end of the world before you are eighteen, or have been out a year.”

“That doesn’t signify! And although I own it would be imprudent to marry Jeremy if I were indigent too I am not indigent, so that’s of no consequence either!”

“I promise you I shan’t refuse my consent on that head, if, when he returns from Brazil, you still wish to marry him.”

“And what if some odious, designing female has lured him into marrying her?” she demanded.

“He assured me that his nature is tenacious, so we must hope that he will be proof against all designing females,” he replied lightly.

“You don’t hope that! You don’t wish me ever to marry him!”

“No, of course I don’t! Good God, child, how could I wish you to throw yourself away so preposterously, far less help you to do it when you are hardly out of the schoolroom?”

“If he were a man of rank and fortune you wouldn’t say I was too young!”

“If he were a man of rank and fortune, my dear, he would not be taking up a post as some kind of secretary in Rio de Janeiro. But if it comforts you at all I don’t wish to see you married to anyone for a year or two yet.”

“Oh, don’t talk to me as if I were a silly little child!” she cried passionately.

“Well, I don’t think you are very wise,” he said.

“No, perhaps I’m not wise, but I’m not a child, and I know my own mind! You aren’t very wise either, if you think I shall change it, or forget Jeremy! I shall remember, and be unhappy for two whole years, and very likely more! I daresay you don’t care for that, for I see that you aren’t kind, which I thought you were, but, on the contrary, perfectly heartless!”

“Not a bit of it!” he said cheerfully. “With the best will in the world to do it, I fancy you won’t fall quite into dejection. There will still be balls to attend, and new, and extremely expensive dresses to buy.”

“I don’t want them!”

“I wish I might believe you! Do you mean to abjure the fashionable life?”

She threw him a smouldering look. “You may laugh at me, but I warn you, Cardross, I am determined to marry Jeremy, do what you will to prevent me!”

He replied only with an ironical bow; and after staring defiantly at him for an instant, she swept from the room with an air of finality only marred by the unfortunate circumstance of her shutting a fold of her gown of delicate lilac muslin in the door, and being obliged to open it again to release the fabric.

Twenty minutes later Nell came softly into the room. The Earl looked up impatiently, but when he saw his wife standing on the threshold his expression changed, and he smiled at her, saying in a funning tone: “How do you contrive, Nell, always to appear prettier than I remembered you?”

She blushed adorably. “Well, I did hope you would think I looked becomingly in this gown,” she confessed naively.

“I do. Did you put it on to dazzle me into paying for it?”

This was said so quizzically that her spirits rose. It had taken a great deal of resolution to bring her to the library that morning, for a most unwelcome missive had been delivered by the penny post. Since the Earl paid five shillings to the General Post office every quarter for the privilege of receiving an early London delivery Madam Lavalle’s civil reminder to her ladyship that a court dress of Chantilly lace was still unpaid for had lain on Nell’s breakfast-tray. It was not an encouraging start to the day. It had quite destroyed Nell’s appetite, and had filled her with so much frightened dismay that for an unreasoning hour she could think of no other way out of her difficulties than to board the first mail-coach bound for Devonshire, and there to seek refuge with her mama. A prolonged period of reflection, however, showed her the unwisdom of this course, and convinced her that since it was extremely unlikely that a thunderbolt would descend mercifully upon her head there was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of the matter to Cardross, devoutly trusting that he would understand how it had come about that she had forgotten to give him Madame Lavalle’s bill with all the others which he had commanded her to produce.

But the more she thought of it the less likely it seemed that he could possibly understand. She felt sick with apprehension, recalling his stern words. He had asked her if she was quite sure she had handed all her bills to him; he had warned her of the awful consequences if he found she had lied to him; and although he had certainly begged her, later, not to be afraid of him, it was not to be expected that he would greet with equanimity the intelligence that his wife had overlooked a bill for three hundred and thirty-five guineas. It even seemed improbable that he would believe she really had overlooked it. She herself was aghast at her carelessness. She was so sure that she had given the bill to Cardross with all the others collected from a drawer crammed with them that her first thought on seeing Madame Lavalle’s renewed demand was that that exclusive modiste had erred. But an agitated search had brought the previous demand to light, wedged at the very back of the drawer. It was by far the heaviest single item amongst her debts, casting into the shade the milliner’s bill which had staggered Cardross. What he would say she dared not consider, even less what he might do. At the best he must believe her to be woefully extravagant (which, indeed, she knew she had been), and he would be very angry, though forgiving. At the worst—but to speculate on what he might do at the worst was so fatal to resolution that she would not let herself do it.

With a childlike hope of pleasing him, she had arrayed herself in a gown which she knew (on the authority of that arbiter of taste, Mr. Hethersett) became her to admiration. It had instantly won for her a charming compliment, and she was now able to reply, not without pride: “No, no, it is paid for!” She added honestly, after a moment’s reflection: “You paid for it!”

“It is a great satisfaction to me to know that I didn’t waste my money,” he said gravely, but with laughter in his eyes.

This was a much more promising start to the interview than she had expected. She smiled shyly at him, and was just about to embark on a painful explanation of her new embarrassment when he said: “Are you Letty’s envoy, then? I own, I might listen with more patience to you than to her, but on this subject I am determined to remain adamant!”

Not sorry to be diverted from her real errand, she said: “Of course, I do see that it would be throwing herself away quite shockingly, but I believe you will be obliged, in the end, to consent. Well, I thought myself that it was just a fancy that would pass when she had seen more of society, and had met other gentlemen, but it isn’t so, Cardross! She hasn’t swerved from her devotion to Mr. Allandale, even though she has been made up to by I don’t know how many others—and all of them,” she added reflectively, “of far greater address than poor Mr. Allandale!”

“Nell!” he interrupted. “Can you tell me what she perceives in that dead bore to dote upon?”

She shook her head. “No, there is no accounting for it,” she replied. “She doesn’t know either, which is what makes me feel that it is a case of true love, and certainly no passing fancy.”

“They are totally unsuited!” he said impatiently. “She would ruin him in a year, what’s more! She is as extravagant as you are, my love!” He saw the stricken look in her face, the colour ebbing from her cheeks, and instantly said: “What an unhandsome thing to say to you! I beg your pardon: that is all forgotten—a page which we have stuck down, and shan’t read again. My dear Nell, if you could but have heard that absurd young man addressing me in flowing periods this morning! Do you know that he proposed in all seriousness to carry Letty off to Brazil?”

Her thoughts were very far from Letty’s affairs, but she answered mechanically: “Yes, she told me of his appointment.”

He regarded her with a slight crease between his brows. “You are looking very troubled, Nell. Why? Are you taking this nonsense to heart?”

Now, if ever, was the moment to tell him that the page had not yet been stuck down. The words refused to be uttered. She said instead: “I can’t help but be sorry for them. I know it is a bad match, and indeed, Cardross, I understand what your sentiments must be.”

“I imagine you might! To be wishing Letty joy of a shockingly bad bargain would be fine conduct in a guardian! To own the truth, I wish I were not her guardian—or that I had never permitted her aunt to take charge of her. That woman wants both manner and sense, and, as far as I can discover, reared her own daughters as well as my sister in a scrambling way, encouraging them in every extravagant folly, and allowing them to set up their flirts when they should have been in the schoolroom!”

“Well, yes,” admitted Nell. “I don’t like to abuse her, for she is always very civil and goodnatured, but she does seem to be sadly shatterbrained! But I can’t suppose that she encouraged Mr. Allandale, for she doesn’t at all wish Letty to marry him, you know. She talked to me about it the other evening, at the Westburys’ drum, and she seemed to feel just as she ought.” She paused, considering this. “At least,” she amended, “just as you think she ought, Cardross.”

He was amused. “Indeed! But not as you think, I collect?”

“Well, not precisely,” she temporized. “I must say, it has me quite in a puzzle to understand how it comes about that such a lively girl should fall in love with Mr. Allandale, for he is not at all sportive, and he doesn’t seem to have more than common sense, besides having such very formal manners,—but—but there is nothing in his disposition to make him ineligible, is there? I mean, it isn’t as if she wished to marry someone like Sir Jasper Lydney, or young Brixworth. And one wouldn’t have felt the least surprise if she had, because they have both been dangling after her ever since she came out, and no one can deny that they have very engaging manners, in spite of being such shocking rakes! You would not have liked her to marry either of them!”

“I should not, but there is a vast gulf between Brixworth and Allandale, my love! As for eligibility, though there may be nothing in Allandale’s disposition to dislike, there is nothing in his circumstances to recommend him. He has neither rank nor fortune.”

“Letty doesn’t care for rank, and she has fortune,” Nell pointed out.

“Unequal marriages rarely prosper. Letty may imagine she doesn’t care for rank: she doesn’t know how it would be to marry a man out of her own order.”

Nell wrinkled her brow over this. “But, Giles, I think she does know!” she objected. “For it is not as if she had been accustomed all her life to move only in circles of high fashion. Mrs. Thorne is perfectly respectable, but not at all exclusive, and you yourself told me that Letty’s mama was not of the first rank.”

“You are a persuasive advocate, Nell! But I must hold to my opinion—and to what I conceive to be my duty. I have said that I won’t withhold my consent, if both are of the same mind when Allandale returns from Brazil, and that must suffice them. I shan’t conceal from you that I hope Letty, by that time, will have transferred her affections to some more worthy object.”

“You want her to make a good match, don’t you?”

“Is that so wonderful?”

“Oh, no! Perhaps, if she doesn’t see Mr. Allandale for some years, she will do so. Only—only—it would be so very melancholy!”

“My dear child, why?”

She tried haltingly to express the thought in her mind. “She loves him so much! And I cannot think that she would be happy if she married—only to oblige her family!”

His brows had drawn together. He said harshly: “As you did?”

She stared at him almost uncomprehendingly. “As—as I did?” she faltered.

A smile, not a very pleasant smile, curled his lips. “Had I not been possessed of a large fortune, you wouldn’t have married me, would you, Nell?”

She was conscious of a pain at her heart, but she heard him without resentment. She thought of her debts, and of those mysterious Settlements, and could only be thankful that she had not disclosed to him Madame Lavalle’s bill. Its existence weighed so heavily upon her conscience that she found herself unable to utter a word. A deep flush stained her cheeks, and her eyes, after a hurt moment, dropped from his.

“You must forgive me!” His voice had an ironical inflexion that made her wince. “My want of delicacy sinks me quite below reproach, doesn’t it? I fancy it gave Allandale a disgust of me too.”

She managed to say, in a stifled tone: “I didn’t think—I didn’t know about your fortune!”

“Didn’t you?” he said lightly. “How charming of you, my dear! Your manners make mine appear sadly vulgar. Don’t look so distressed! I am persuaded no man ever had so beautiful, so polite, or so amiable a wife as I have!” He glanced at his watch. “I must go. I don’t know what nonsense Letty may have taken into her head, but I hope I may trust you not to encourage her in it. Happily, it appears to be out of Allandale’s power to marry her without a substantial portion. She’s under age, of course, but I’d as lief not be saddled with that kind of a scandal!”

A smile, a brief bow, and he was gone, leaving her with her brain in a whirl. There was little thought of Letty in it. For the first time in their dealings Cardross had hinted that he had looked for more than complaisance in his wife; and his words, with their edge of bitterness, had made Nell’s heart leap. It was almost sacrilege to doubt Mama, but was it, in fact, possible that Mama had been wrong?

She went slowly upstairs, to be pounced on by Letty, bursting with indignation, and the desire to unburden herself. She listened with half an ear to that impassioned damsel, saying yes, and no, at suitable moments, but assimilating little from the molten discourse beyond the warning that her sister-in-law would be forced to take desperate measures if Cardross continued on his present tyrannical course. Before it had dawned on Letty that she had no very attentive auditor to the tale of her wrongs a message was brought up to the drawing-room that the Misses Thorne had called to take up their cousin on a visit to some exhibition.

Nell soon found herself alone, and at leisure to consider her own problems. These very soon resolved themselves into one problem only: how to pay for a court dress of Chantilly lace without applying to Cardross. If Cardross had offered for her hand not as a matter of convenience but for love, this was of vital importance. Nothing could more surely confirm his suspicion than to be confronted with that bill; and any attempt to tell him that she had fallen in love with him at their first meeting must seem to him a piece of quite contemptible cajolery.

No solution to the difficulty had presented itself to her by the time the butler came to inform her that the barouche had been driven up to the door, and awaited her convenience. She was tempted to send it away again, and was only prevented from doing so by the recollection that civility obliged her to make a formal call in Upper Berkeley Street, to enquire after the progress of an ailing acquaintance.

She directed the coachman, on the way back, to drive to Bond Street, where she had a few trifling purchases to make; and there, strolling along, with his beaver set at a rakish angle on his golden head, and his shapely legs swathed in pantaloons of an aggressive yellow, she saw her brother.

The Viscount had never been known to extricate himself from his various embarrassments, much less anyone else; but to his adoring sister he appeared in the light of a strong ally. She called to the coachman to pull up, and when Dysart crossed the street in response to her signal leaned forward to clasp his hand, saying thankfully: “Oh, Dy, I am so glad to have met you! Will you be so very obliging as to come home with me? There is something I particularly wish to ask you!”

“If you’re wanting me to escort you to some horrible squeeze,” began the Viscount suspiciously, “I’ll be dashed if I—”

“No, no, I promise you it’s no such thing!” she interrupted. “I—I need your advice!”

“Well, I don’t mind giving you that,” said his lordship handsomely. “What’s the matter? You in a scrape?”

“Good gracious, no!” said Nell, acutely aware of her footman, who had jumped down from the box, and was now holding open the door of the barouche. “Do get in, Dy! I’ll tell you presently!”

“Oh, very well!” he said, stepping into the carriage, and disposing himself on the seat beside her. “I’ve nothing else to do, after all.” He looked her over critically, and observed with brotherly candour: “What a quiz of a hat!”

“It is an Angouleme bonnet, and the height of fashion!” retorted Nell, with spirit. “And as for quizzes—Dy, I never saw you look so odd as you do in those yellow pantaloons!”

“Devilish, ain’t they?” agreed his lordship. “Corny made me buy ‘em. Said they were all the crack.”

“Well, if I were you I wouldn’t listen to him!”

“Oh, I don’t know! Always up to the knocker, is Corny. If you ain’t in a scrape, why do you want my advice?”

She gave his arm a warning pinch, and began to talk of indifferent subjects in a careless way which (as he informed her upon their arrival in Grosvenor Square) made him wish that he had not chosen to walk down Bond Street that morning. “Because you can’t bamboozle me into believing you ain’t in a scrape,” he said. “I thought you were looking hagged, but I set it down to that bonnet.”

Nell, who had led him upstairs to her frivolous boudoir, cast off her maligned headgear, saying wretchedly: “I am in a dreadful scrape, and if you won’t help me, Dy, I can’t think what I shall do!”

“Lord!” said the Viscount, slightly dismayed. “Now, don’t get into a fuss, Nell! Of course I’ll help you! At least, I will if I can, though I’m dashed if I see—However, I daresay it’s all a bag of moonshine!”

“It isn’t,” she said, so tragically that he began to feel seriously alarmed. She twisted her fingers together, and managed to say, though with considerable difficulty: “Dysart, have—have you still got the—the three hundred pounds I gave you?”

“Do you want it back?” he demanded.

She nodded, her eyes fixed anxiously on his face.

“Now we are in the basket!” said his lordship.

Her heart sank. “I am so very sorry to be obliged to ask you!”

“My dear girl, I’d give it you this instant if I had it!” he assured her. “What is it? a gaming debt? You been playing deep, Nell?”

“No, no! It is a court dress of Chantilly lace, and I cannot—cannot!—tell Cardross!”

“What, you don’t mean to say he’s turned out to be a screw?” exclaimed the Viscount.

“No! He has been crushingly generous to me, only I was so stupid, and it seemed as if I had so much money that—Well, I never took the least heed, Dy, and the end of it was that I got quite shockingly into debt!”

“Good God, there’s no need to fall into flat despair, if that’s all!” said the Viscount, relieved. “You’ve only to tell him how it came about: I daresay he won’t be astonished, for he must know you haven’t been in the way of handling the blunt. You’ll very likely come in for a thundering scold, but he’ll settle your debts all right and regular.”

She sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands. “He did settle them!”

“Eh?” ejaculated Dysart, startled.

“I had better explain it to you,” said Nell.

It could not have been said that the explanation, which was both halting and elusive, very much helped Dysart to a complete understanding of the situation, but he did gather from it that the affair was far more serious than he had at first supposed. He was quite intelligent enough to guess that the whole had not been divulged to him, but since he had no desire to plunge into deep matrimonial waters he did not press his sister for further enlightenment. Clearly, her marriage was not running as smoothly as he had supposed; and if that were so he could appreciate her reluctance to disclose the existence of yet another debt to Cardross.

“What am I to do?” Nell asked. “Can you think of a way, Dy?”

“Nothing easier!” responded Dysart, in a heartening tone. “The trouble with you is that you ain’t up to snuff yet. The thing to do is to order another dress from this Madame Thing.”

“Order another?” gasped Nell.

“That’s it,” he nodded.

“But then I should be even deeper in debt!”

“Yes, but it’ll stave her off for a while.”

“And when she presses me to pay for that I buy yet another! Dy, you must be mad!”

“My dear girl, it’s always done!”

“Not by me!” she declared. “I should never know a moment’s peace! Only think what would happen if Cardross discovered it!”

“There is that, of course,” he admitted. He took a turn about the room, frowning over the problem. “The deuce is in it that I’m not in good odour with the cents-per-cent. I’d raise the wind for you in a trice if the sharks didn’t know dashed well how our affairs stand.”

“Moneylenders?” she asked. “I did think of that, only I don’t know how to set about borrowing. Do you know, Dy? Will you tell me?”

The Viscount was not a young man whose conscience was overburdened with scruples, but he did not hesitate to veto this suggestion. “No, I will not!” he said.

“I know one shouldn’t borrow from moneylenders, but in such a case as this—and if you went with me, Dy—”

“A pretty fellow I should be!” he interrupted indignantly. “Damn it, I ain’t a saint, but I ain’t such a loose-screw that I’d hand my sister over to one of those bloodsuckers!”

“Is it so very bad? I didn’t know,” she said. “Of course I won’t go to a moneylender if you say I must not.”

“Well, I do say it. What’s more, if you did so, and Cardross discovered it, there would be the devil to pay! You’d a deal better screw up your courage, and tell him the whole now.”

She shook her head, flushing.

“You know, it queers me to know what you’ve been doing,” said Dysart severely. “It sounds to. me as though you’ve had a quarrel with him, and set up his back. It ain’t my business, but I call it a cork-brained thing to do!”

“I haven’t—it isn’t that!” she stammered.

“You must have done something!” he insisted. “I thought he doted on you!”

Her eyes lifted quickly to his face. “Did you, Dy? Did you indeed think so?”

“Of course I did! Well, good God, what would anyone think, when he no sooner clapped eyes on you than nothing would do for him but to pop the question? Lord, it was one of the on-dits of town! Old Cooling told me no one had ever seen him sent to grass before, no matter who set her cap at him. I thought myself he must be touched in his upper works,” said the Viscount candidly. “I don’t say you ain’t a pretty girl, but what there is in you to make a fellow like Cardross marry into our family I’m dashed if I can see!”

“Oh, Dysart!” breathed Nell, trembling. “You’re not—you’re not roasting me?”

He stared at her. “Have you got windmills in the head too?” he demanded. “Why the devil should he have offered for you, if he hadn’t been head over ears in love with you? You aren’t going to tell me you didn’t know you’d given him a leveller!”

“Oh—! Don’t say such things! I did think, at first—but Mama told me—explained to me—how it was!”

“Well, how was it?” said the Viscount impatiently.

“A—a marriage of convenience,” faltered Nell. “He was obliged to marry someone, and—and he liked me better than the other ladies he was acquainted with, and thought I should suit!”

“If that isn’t Mama all over!” exclaimed Dysart. “It was a dashed convenient marriage for us, but if he thought it was convenient to be obliged to pay through the nose for you (which I don’t mind telling you my father made him do!), let alone saddling himself with a set of dirty dishes who have been under the hatches for years, he must be a regular cod’s head!”

“Dysart!” she cried, quite horrified.

“Dirty dishes!” he repeated firmly. “I can’t remember when my father last had a feather to fly with, and the lord knows I’ve never had one myself! In fact, it’s my belief we should have been turned-up by now if you hadn’t happened to hit Cardross’s fancy. It’s the only stroke of good fortune that ever came in our way!”

“I knew—I knew he had made a handsome settlement!”

Dysart gave a crack of laughter. “Ay, and towed my father out of the River Tick into the bargain!”

She sprang up, pressing her hands to her hot cheeks. “Oh, and I have been so wickedly extravagant!”

“No need to fret and fume over that,” replied Dysart cheerfully. “They say his fortune knocks Golden Ball’s into flinders, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it was true.”

“As though that should excuse my running into debt! Oh, Dy, this quite overpowers me! No wonder he said that!”

He looked uneasily at her. “Said what? If you mean to have a fit of the vapours, Nell, I’m off, and so I warn you!”

“Oh, no! Indeed, I don’t! Only it is such an agitating reflection—I didn’t tell you, Dy, but he said something to me which made me think he believes I married him for the sake of his fortune!”

“Well, you did, didn’t you?”

“No!” she cried hotly. “Never, never!”

“What, you don’t mean to tell me you fell in love with him?” said the Viscount incredulously.

“Of course I did! How could I help but do so?”

“Of all the silly starts!” said his lordship disgustedly. “What the devil should cast you into this distempered freak if that’s the way of it? What have you been doing to make Cardross think you don’t love him, if you do?”

She turned away her face. “I—I was trying to be a conformable wife, Dy! You see, Mama warned me about not making demands, or—or hanging upon him, or appearing to notice it, if he should have Another Interest, and—”

“Oh, so the blame lies at Mama’s door. I might have known it! Never knew such a henwitted creature in my life!”

“Oh, Dysart, hush! Indeed, she meant it for the best! You will not repeat it, but she was so anxious I shouldn’t suffer a mortifying disillusionment, as, I am afraid, she did!”

“Did she, though?” said the Viscount, interested. “I didn’t know my father was pitching it rum in those days. I must say I should have thought even Mama could have seen that Cardross ain’t a bird of that feather. Never been a man of the town from anything I ever heard. How came you to swallow all that humdudgeon, Nell? Dash it, you must have known he was in love with you!”

“I thought—I thought it was all consideration, because he is so very kind and gentlemanlike!” she confessed.

“Kind and gentlemanlike?” repeated Dysart, in accents of withering scorn. “Well, upon my soul, Nell, seems to me you’re as big a ninnyhammer as Mama! To be taken in by one of her Banbury tales, when there was Cardross making a regular cake of himself over you! If that don’t beat the Dutch!”

She hung her head, but said in a faint voice: “It was stupid of me, but there was more than that, Dy. You see, I knew about Lady Orsett. Letty told me.”

“That girl,” said the Viscount severely, “wants conduct! Not but what I shouldn’t have thought that you needed telling, because everyone knew she was his chère amie for years. And don’t you put on any die-away airs to me, my girl, because, for one thing, it’s no use bamming me you didn’t know anything about my father’s light frigates; and, for another, Cardross’s way of life before you married him ain’t your concern! Lady Orsett’s got Lydney in tow now, so that’s enough flim-flam about her!”

“Has she, Dy?” Nell said eagerly.

“So they say. I don’t know!”

“Oh, if it were not for this dreadful debt how happy I should be!” she sighed.

“Nonsense! Make a clean breast of the whole to Cardross, and be done with it!”

“I’d rather die! Don’t you understand, Dy? How could he believe me sincere, if I told him now, when I am in debt again, that I didn’t care a button for his fortune?”

The Viscount checked the scoffing retort that sprang to his tongue. He did understand. After a thoughtful moment, he said: “He’d think it was cream-pot love, would he? Ay, very true: bound to! Particularly,” he added, in a voice of censure, “if you’ve been treating him with a stupid sort of indifference, which I’ve a strong notion you have! Oh, well! we shall have to think of some way of raising the blunt, and that’s all there is to it!”

Too grateful for his willingness to come to her aid to cavil at his freely-worded criticisms, Nell waited hopefully, confident that he would be able to tell her how to extricate herself from her difficulty. Nor was she mistaken. After a turn or two about the room, he said suddenly: “Nothing easier! I can’t think why I didn’t hit upon it at once. You must sell some of your jewellery, of course!”

Her hand went instinctively to her throat. “The pearls Mama gave me? Her very own pearls? I could not, Dysart!”

“No need to sell them, if you don’t care to. Something else!”

“But I haven’t anything else!” she objected. “Nothing of value, I mean.”

“Haven’t anything else? Why, I never see you but what you’re wearing something worth a king’s ransom! What about all those sapphires?”

“Dysart! Giles’s wedding-gift!” she uttered.

“Oh, very well! But he’s always giving you some new trinket: you must be able to spare one of two of ‘em. He’ll never notice. Or if you think he might, you can have ‘em copied. I’ll attend to that for you.”

“No, thank you, Dy!” she said, with desperate firmness. “I won’t do anything so odiously shabby! To sell the jewels Giles has given me—to have them copied in paste so that he shouldn’t know of it—Oh, how detestable I should be to deceive him in such a way!”

“Well, what a high flight!” said Dysart. “It’s no worse than going to a cent-per-cent—in fact, it ain’t as bad!”

“It seems worse!” she assured him.

“I’ll tell you what it is, Nell!” he said, exasperated. “If you let this excessive sensibility of yours rule you, there will be no way of helping you out of this fix! If you don’t care to have your trinkets copied, tell Cardross you lost them! I daresay you would not like to lose the sapphires, but you aren’t going to tell me your heart would break for every one of the trinkets he’s given you!”

“No, indeed it would not, if I really did lose them, but every feeling revolts from the thought of selling them for such a reason!”

She spoke with so much resolution that it seemed useless to persist in argument. The Viscount, never one to waste his time over lost causes, abandoned his promising scheme, merely remarking that of all the troublesome goosecaps he had encountered his sister bore away the palm. She apologized for being so provoking, adding, with an attempt at a smile, that he must not tease himself any more over the business.

But every now and then the Viscount’s conscience, in a manner as disconcerting to himself as to his critics, cast a barrier in the way of his careless hedonism. It intervened now, inst as he was congratulating himself on being well out of a tiresome imbroglio.

“Very pretty talking, when you know dashed well I can’t help but tease myself over it!” he said bitterly. “If there’s one thing more certain than another, it’s that if I hadn’t borrowed that three hundred from you, you wouldn’t be in this fix now! Well, there’s nothing for it: I shall have to get you out of it. I daresay I shall hit on a way when I’ve had time to think it over, but I shan’t do it with you sitting there staring at me as though I was your whole dependence! Puts me out. There’s no saying, of course, but what I may have a run of luck, in which case the matter’s as good as settled. I’ve got a notion I ought to give up hazard, and try how it will answer if I stick to faro.”

He took his leave, bestowing an encouraging pat on his sister, and recommending her to put the whole business out of her mind. There were those who would have taken the cynical view that he would speedily put it out of his, but Nell was not of their number: it did not so much as cross her mind that her dear Dy, either from indolence or forgetfulness, might leave her to her fate. And she was quite right. There was an odd streak of obstinacy in Dysart, which led him, at unexpected moments, to pursue with dogged tenacity the end he had in view; and although his intimates considered that this streak was roused only by the most cork-brained notions, they were agreed that once such a notion had taken firm possession of his mind he could be depended on to stick to it buckle and thong.

Emerging from the house after a genial discussion with his brother-in-law’s porter on the chances of several horses in a forthcoming race, he paused at the foot of the steps, considering whether he should summon a hackney, and take a look-in at Tattersall’s, or stroll to Conduit Street, where, at Limmer’s, he would be sure to encounter a few choice spirits. While he hesitated, a tilbury, drawn by a high-stepping bay, swept round the angle of the square, and he saw that the down-the-road-looking man in the tall hat, and the box-coat of white drab, who was handling the ribbons with such admirable skill, was Cardross. He had no particular desire to meet the Earl, with whom he knew himself to be no favourite, but he waited civilly for the tilbury to draw up beside him.

“Hallo, Dysart!” said the Earl, handing the reins over to his groom, and lumping down from the carriage. “Are you just going in, or just coming out?”

“Just coming out.” replied Dysart, watching the tilbury being driven away, “that’s a nice tit you have there: looks to be a sweet goer. Welsh?”

“Yes, I’m pretty well pleased with him,” agreed Cardross. “Very free and fast, and has a good knee action. Oh, yes! pure bred Welsh: I bought him from Chesterford last week. Do you care to come in again?”

“No, I’m bound for Limmer’s,” said the Viscount. He eyed his brother-in-law speculatively. The Earl appeared to be in an amiable frame of mind; it was common knowledge that he was rich enough to be able to buy an abbey; and if there was the least chance of getting three hundred pounds out of him merely for the asking, the Viscount was not the man to let this slip. “You wouldn’t care to lend me three hundred, would you?” he suggested hopefully.

“Three hundred?”

“Call it five!” offered the Viscount, recollecting certain of his own more pressing obligations.

Cardross laughed. “I’ll call it anything you choose, but I shouldn’t at all care to lend you money. And I’ll thank you, Dysart, not to apply to Nell!”

“Nothing of the sort!” said the Viscount, repressing a strong inclination to tell him that the boot was on quite the other leg.

“Dipped again?” enquired Cardross. “You ought to be tied, you know!”

“I see no sense in that,” returned Dysart. “Wouldn’t do me a bit of good! The only way to come about is to make a big coup. I don’t doubt I’ll do it, for it stands to reason the luck must change one day! However, I’ve been thinking seriously of devoting myself to faro, and I believe I’ll do it. The devil’s in the bones, and has been, this year past.”

The news that he was about to reform his way of life met with a disappointing lack of enthusiasm. “What other entertainments have you in store for us?” asked Cardross. “I didn’t see you driving a wheelbarrow blindfold down Piccadilly last week, but I’m told you contrived to dislocate all the traffic for a considerable space of time. I must congratulate you. Also on your latest feat, of cutting your initials on all the trees in St. James’s Park.”

“An hour and fifteen minutes!” said Dysart, with simple pride.

“Very creditable.”

“Oh, lord!” Dysart said petulantly, “what else is there to do but kick up a lark now and then?”

“You might see what can be done to put your estates in order.”

“They ain’t my estates,” retorted Dysart. “I fancy I see my father letting me meddle! What’s more, if there’s anything to be done old Moulton will do it far better than I could. He’s been our agent for years, and he don’t mean to let me meddle either. Not that I want to, for I don’t.”

“I’ll make you an offer,” said Cardross, scanning him not unkindly. “I won’t lend you three hundred pence to fling away at faro, but I’m prepared to settle your debts, and to buy you a commission in any serving regiment you choose to name.”

“By Jove, I wish you would!” Dysart said impulsively.

“I will.”

The Viscount’s blue eyes had kindled, but that eager glow faded, and he laughed, giving his head a rueful shake. “No use! The old gentleman wouldn’t hear of it. God knows why he’s so set on keeping me in England, for putting aside the fact that I’m not his only son it don’t seem to be any pleasure to him to have me at home. Fidgets him to death! I did go down to Devonshire after he had that stroke, you know. Went to oblige my mother, but the end of it was she was obliged to own it didn’t answer. But he wouldn’t let me join for all that.”

“If you wanted it, I might be able to persuade him.”

“Grease him in the fist, eh? Take my advice, and fund your money! Or wait till I do something so outrageous he’ll be glad to see me off to Spain on any terms!” said Dysart, pulling on his gloves.

“Don’t be a fool! Come into the house: we can’t discuss it in the road!”

“If you’re so anxious to waste the ready, lend me a monkey!” mocked Dysart. “As for the rest—oh, lord, I don’t know what I want, and it wouldn’t be a particle of use if I did!”

He waited for a moment, and then, as Cardross made no reply, laughed rather jeeringly, and strode off down the flagway.