April Lady

Chapter Seven

Not very many hours later Nell was surprised and gratified to receive a visit from her brother. She had been hopeful that he would call that day, but since his habits were by no means matutinal she had had no expectation of seeing him until after noon. She and Letty had returned to Grosvenor Square at eleven o’clock, after spending more than an hour walking in Hyde Park, and the Viscount reached the house just as they were rising from the breakfast-table. He declined an offer of breakfast, saying that all he wanted was a word with his sister. From his tone Nell was not encouraged to hope that he had hit upon a solution to her problem; and the look on his face warned her that something had happened to put him out of humour. Letty, with deplorable want of tact, informed him that he looked to be as cross as a cat, and demanded to know the reason. He replied that he was not at all cross, but wished to be private with his sister. Since this could only be regarded as a heavy set-down, Letty instantly took umbrage, and a very spirited dialogue ensued, during the course of which several personalities of an uncomplimentary nature were exchanged. The Viscount emerged victorious from the engagement, taking unhandsome advantage of his greater years, and informing Letty, with all the air of a sexagenarian, that pertness was neither proper nor pleasing in chits of her age. Unable to think of anything crushing enough to say in reply, Letty flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

“How could you, Dy?” exclaimed Nell reproachfully. “I never heard anything so uncivil! And if we are to talk of impropriety, you know it is quite improper for you to be scolding Letty! You are not her brother.”

“No, and thank God for it!” he returned. “If she don’t take care she’ll grow into one of those hurly-burly women there’s no bearing.”

“But, Dy, why are you so out of reason cross?”

“I’ll tell you!” he said awfully. “And don’t put on any innocent airs, my girl, because you can’t gammon me, or turn me up sweet by making sheep’s eyes at me! You’ve been playing an undergame, and well you know it! What the devil did you mean by going off to Jew King after I’d told you I wouldn’t have you dealing with a cent-per-cent?”

She looked a little conscience-stricken, but demanded hotly, “Did Felix tell you that? I had not thought he could use me so shabbily!”

The Viscount was incensed with Mr. Hethersett, but he informed his erring sister, in a few pithy words, that she might think herself much obliged to him. He then drew a picture of the horrifying fates that overtook persons so cork-brained as to walk into the clutches of usurers; moralized in a very edifying way on the evils of improvidence; and demanded from Nell a solemn promise that she would never again try to visit Jew King, or any other moneylender. “And if you think jauntering to ruin is something to go into whoops over,” he added wrathfully, “let me tell you that you much mistake the matter!”

“Oh, no, indeed I don’t!” Nell said, trying to speak soberly. “It—it was just that I c-can’t help laughing when you talk like that about being improvident, and careless, and—and all the things you are yourself, Dy!” She saw that this remark had had anything but a softening effect, and said contritely: “I will never do so again! Of course it would be very bad if I were to continue borrowing, but that I had not the least intention of doing. I should have paid the money back after quarter-day, I promise you!”

“I daresay! And have found yourself in the basket again before the cat had time to lick her ear! Don’t I know it!” returned the Viscount, with feeling. “And why the devil you had to meddle, when you knew I had the business in hand, the lord alone knows!”

“Yes, but I thought perhaps it would be better if I did the thing myself,” said Nell frankly. “In case you did anything dreadful!”

“Oh, you did, did you? Coming it too strong, Nell! What the deuce should I do, pray?”

“Well, to own the truth,” she confessed, “I was afraid you might hold someone up!”

“Afraid I might hold someone up?” gasped Dysart. “Well, upon my soul! A pretty notion you have of me, by God!”

“You held me up!” Nell pointed out. “And if I hadn’t recognized you you would have robbed me—you know you would!”

“If that doesn’t beat all hollow!” ejaculated Dysart. “When all I meant to do was to have sold your curst jewellery for you! If you think I should have kept a groat of the ready for myself, you’re fair and far off, my girl!”

“No, but it was a desperate thing to do, Dy, and it quite cut up my peace. I can’t but wonder what next you may do, which puts me in high fidgets. Because—”

“Gammon!” interrupted Dysart. “Why, I wasn’t even going to take Letty’s trinkets! What’s more, this is all humdudgeon! You wouldn’t have cared a button for losing your jewels—now, would you?”

“N-no, but—”

“And you’d have been devilish thankful not to have recognized me, if I’d handed over the dibs to you next day. And it’s my belief,” pursued the Viscount relentlessly, “that you’d have taken good care not to have asked me how I’d come by them!”

Stricken, she said: “Oh, Dy, I am sadly afraid that that is true! It is the most mortifying reflection, too!”

“Stuff!” said the Viscount contemptuously. “Now, there’s no need for you to sit there looking as blue as a razor, Nell! I don’t mean to leave you in the lurch, I promise you. I’ve got one or two capital notions in my head, but I can’t raise the wind all in a trice, so it ain’t a bit of use fretting like a fly in a tar-box, and wanting to know every time you see me what I’ve been doing! Give me a week, and see if I don’t have the business blocked at both ends!”

She regarded him in some apprehension. “What notions have you in your head, Dy?”

“Never you mind!” he replied crushingly. “One notion I’ve got is that the less you know about it the better!”

Her apprehension grew; she said: “I won’t tease you, but I think I would rather know!”

“Yes, I daresay, but you can’t expect me to pull you out from under the hatches if you turn maggotty every time I hit on a scheme,” said the Viscount. “And that’s just what you would do, for you seem to me to be regularly betwattled!”

“I am very sorry!” she said humbly. “I do try to take it with composure, but it is excessively hard to do so when one is in such affliction, Dy! Every time I hear the door-knocker I think it may perhaps be Lavalle, coming to demand her money from Cardross, and alarm suspends all my faculties!”

“Now, don’t be such a goosecap, Nell!” recommended the Viscount, putting his arm round her shoulders and giving her a slight hug. “She won’t do that. Not for a week or two, at all events. You may depend upon it she knows, if you don’t, that it must take you a little while to raise the ready. Ay, and unless she’s as big a greenhead as you are yourself which it stands to reason she can’t be, she knows you will pay her,” he added shrewdly. “All she meant to do was to frighten you into paying down the dust as soon as possible. She’ll give you a week’s grace at the least, and very likely longer. When does Cardross come back to town?”

“On Monday, I think. I am not perfectly sure, but he said that he would be away for a se’enight.” Nell was silent for a moment, and then said, turning her face away: “I quite dread his coming, and that is more lowering than all the rest!”

He was spared the necessity of answering her by Letty’s coming back into the room at that moment. She was wearing her hat, and a light shawl, draped gracefully across her elbows; and she had come merely to take leave of Nell, and to inform her that she should send the carriage back immediately from her aunt’s house, in case her sister should be needing the services of the coachman. She pointedly ignored the Viscount, but kissed Nell’s cheek very affectionately, and told her not to dream of sending the carriage to fetch her away from Bryanston Square, since her aunt would undoubtedly provide for her safe return.

“All that finery just for an aunt?” said Dysart, critically surveying her. “I must say, that’s a deuced fetching bonnet!”

Becoming aware of his existence, Letty raised her brows as haughtily as she could, and said in freezing accents: “You are too kind, sir!”

“Silly chit!” said Dysart indulgently.

Her eyes flashed, but Nell intervened hastily, before she could again cross swords with her incorrigible tormentor. “You look charmingly,” she assured her, edging her towards the door. “I will come and see you into the carriage. Will you be warm enough, do you think, with only that shawl?”

“No, I daresay I shan’t be,” Letty replied candidly, “but it is so dowdy to wear a pelisse!” She paused in the hall to draw on her gloves, and said in a brooding tone: “I don’t wish to distress you, Nell, but I think Dysart is the most odious, uncivil person I ever met!”

Nell laughed. “Yes, indeed! I am sure you must. The thing is, you see, that because you are my sister he treats you as though you were his as well.”

“My brother has a great many faults, but he doesn’t use me in that fashion!”

“No, for he is so much older than you. If you had had one of your own age you wouldn’t be such a goose as to let Dy put you in a miff,” Nell said, smiling.

“I am excessively thankful that I have not one, and I assure you, Nell, I feel for you!”

“Thank you! Mine is a hard case indeed,” Nell said, her eyes brimful of amusement. “You nonsensical creature! There, don’t take me in aversion as well! Good-bye: you will say everything from me to your aunt that is proper, if you please. I fear she may hold me to blame for your neglect of her, but I hope she may give me credit for sparing you to her today.”

She spoke lightly, but she was very sensible of Mrs. Thorne’s claims on Letty. Cardross, believing that Letty’s faults were to be laid at the poor lady’s door, might wish to detach her from that household, but Nell could never bring herself to promote this object. Indeed, she had more than once suggested to Letty that she should pay her aunt a morning visit. It did not surprise her to learn that Mrs. Thorne thought herself ill-used, for she too thought that Letty showed sadly little observance to one who had stood to her in place of her mother. She would, in fact, have been very much surprised had she known that so far from begging her niece to visit her that morning Mrs. Thorne had not the smallest notion that she was to receive this treat, and had gone out with her daughter Fanny on a tour of the silk warehouses.

It was Miss Selina Thorne who awaited Letty; and as soon as she saw the carriage draw up outside the house she came running down from the drawing-room to greet her, which she did with every manifestation of surprise and delight, whispering, however, in a very dramatic way, as she kissed her: “Have no fear! All is safe!”

She then said, for the benefit of the servant who had admitted Letty into the house: “How glad I am I didn’t go with Mama and Fanny! Come upstairs, love: I have a hundred things to tell you!”

She was a fine-looking girl, a little younger than Letty, but very much larger. Beside her exquisite cousin she appeared over-buxom, a little clumsy, but she did not resent this in the least. She was as good-natured as her mother, liked to think that she had a great deal of sensibility, and had so romantic a disposition that she was inclined to think real life wretchedly flat, and to fancy that she would have found herself very much more at home in one of Mrs. Radclyffe’s famous novels. Having swept Letty up to the drawing-room, she shut the door, and said, lowering her voice conspiratorially: “My sweetest life, such a morning as I have had! I thought we must be wholly undone, for Mama almost commanded me to go with her! I was obliged to prevaricate a little: I said that I had a head-ache, and so it passed off at last, though I was frightened almost out of my senses by her dawdling so much that it seemed she and Fanny would not be gone before you reached the house! How delightfully you look! Mr. Allandale will be in raptures!”

“If he doesn’t fail!” Letty said. “I begged him most particularly to meet me here today, but it might not be possible, perhaps. If there is a press of business, you know, he might be detained all day at the Foreign Office. Only would he not have contrived to send me word?”

Miss Thorne was strongly of the opinion that the violence of Mr. Allandale’s feelings would outweigh all other considerations. She drew Letty to the window, to watch for his arrival, for she had formed the intention of running down to admit him into the house before he could advertize his presence to the servants by knocking on the door. “For it would be fatal if Mama were to discover that he had been here! If her suspicions were aroused, depend upon it, she would instantly go to your brother, for she likes the connection as little as he does. She was talking about it only yesterday, calling it a shockingly bad match, and wondering that Mr. Allandale should be so encroaching! I kept my eyes lowered, and my thoughts locked in my bosom, but you may guess how I felt, on hearing such words from one whom I had believed to be all sensibility! Oh, my dearest Letty, I vowed to myself that if any exertion on my part could save you from the misery of being sacrificed to pride and consequence it should not be lacking!”

Letty thanked her, but said in a more practical spirit that since it was very unlikely that Cardross would listen to her advice there was really nothing that she could do to achieve this noble end. Miss Thorne, who had embraced with enthusiasm the role of go-between so suddenly thrust upon her, was daunted. Upon reflection, she was obliged to own that the ways in which a young lady in her seventeenth year could aid a pair of star-crossed lovers were few. In the fastness of her bedchamber it was possible to weave agreeable romances in which she played a leading and often heroic role. “Noblest of girls! We owe it all to you!” declared Mr. Allandale, having been joined in wedlock to Letty upon the eve of her marriage to a nobleman of dissolute habits (chosen for her by her brother), by a clergyman smuggled into the house at dead of night through the agency of her devoted cousin. In these romances, Selina overcame all difficulties by ignoring them, but in the cold light of day she was not so lost in dreams as to be unable to perceive that in a world depressingly humdrum certain insurmountable obstacles stood in the way of her ambition, not the least of which was Mr. Allandale himself. Though Letty would perceive in a flash the beauty of the marriage-scene in a dim room lit by a single branch of candles held up by her cousin, it would probably take a great deal of persuasion to induce the ardent lover to lend himself to such an improper proceeding. As for the indispensable cleric, not the wildest optimist could suppose that the Reverend William Tuxted, who happened to be the only clergyman with whom Selina was well acquainted, could be suborned by any means whatsoever into performing his part in the affair.

Melancholy though they were, these considerations had not the power to depress Selina for long. Letty’s love affair might not attain the heights of drama, but it was still a very romantic story; and there was comfort in the thought that without her cousin’s assistance she would have been hard put to it to have contrived a clandestine meeting with her suitor. Selina’s good offices had not been required to promote her elder sisters’ espousals; and nothing, in her opinion, could have been more insipid than Maria’s marriage to Mr. Thistleton unless it were Fanny’s betrothal to Mr. Humby: an event which had taken place on the previous evening. Neither lady had encountered the least opposition, each gentleman being possessed of a genteel fortune, and a situation in life which made him a very eligible suitor. Fanny’s betrothal was perhaps more tolerable than Maria’s, Mr. Humby having been unknown to the Thornes until he began to dangle after her. This, it must be allowed, was less deplorable than Maria’s marriage to John Thistleton, whom she had known all her life; but Miss Selina Thorne was going to think herself pretty hardly used if Fate did not provide for her a dashing lover of such hopeless ineligibility as must assure for her the most determined parental opposition, accompanied by persecution, which she would bear with the greatest heroism, and culminating in an elopement. Pending the appearance on the horizon of this gentlemen, she was prepared to throw herself heart and soul into Letty’s cause. She found no difficulty in crediting Cardross with all the attributes of a tyrant; and if Mr. Allandale’s propriety seemed at first to indicate that there was little hope of his engaging on any desperate action she soon decided that this was the expression not of an innate respectability, but of interesting reserve.

She was giving Letty an account of the degrading congratulations which had greeted the news of Fanny’s betrothal when she caught sight of Mr. Allandale approaching the house. She at once put her plan into execution, flying with such swift feet down the stairs that she reached the front door considerably in advance of him, and found herself inviting only the ambient air to come in and fear nothing. However, Mr. Allandale soon arrived; and from having rehearsed (though involuntarily) her speech of welcome she was able to improve on it. “I knew you would not fail!” she uttered. “I will lead you to her immediately. Do not fear that you will interrupted! Not a soul knows of your coming! Hush!”

Mr. Allandale, already surprised to find the front door being held open by one of the daughters of the house, blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?” he said.

“Do not speak so loud!” she admonished him. “The servants must not suspect your presence.”

“But how is this?” he demanded. “Is not Mrs. Thorne at home?”

“No, no, you have nothing to fear!” she assured him. “She and my sister are gone into the City. If they should return, you may depend on me to warn you of their approach!”

“I should not be here,” he said, looking vexed. “It is quite improper for me to be visiting the house in Mrs. Thorne’s absence.”

She was somewhat daunted by this prosaic attitude, but she made a gallant recover. “This is no time to be considering the proprieties!” she said earnestly. “Your case is now desperate, and strive though she may to support her spirits under this crushing blow, my cousin is in the greatest affliction! You must come to her immediately!”

The thought of his Letty’s agony made Mr. Allandale turn pale; but still he hung back. “I had not supposed that the assignation was of a clandestine nature,” he said. “I cannot think it right! I assured Lord Cardross that such conduct was repugnant to me, and to be visiting your cousin behind his back, and in such a way, cannot be thought to be the part of a man of honour!”

None of Selina’s romantic schemes had included a lover who had to be urged into the presence of his inamorata, and could she but have found a substitute to take his place in the drama she would then and there have thrust Mr. Allandale out of the house. But since she knew of no substitute, and was rather doubtful of Letty’s willingness to accept one, she was obliged to make the best of the unpromising material to her hand. “I am persuaded you will not permit such trifling scruples to keep you from Letty’s side!” she said. “Only consider her agitation! She is quite worn down by despair, and I should not wonder at it if her mind were to become wholly overset!”

Mr. Allandale was but human. The dreadful picture conjured up by these words took from him all power of resistance, and without further argument he followed Selina up the stairs.

“I have brought him to you, dearest!” announced Selina, throwing open the door into the drawing-room.

Mr. Allandale’s afflicted love, who had been trying the effect of a slightly different tilt to her fetching new hat, turned away from the look-glass, and showed him a countenance glowing with health and beauty. “Thank goodness you are come!” she said. “I have been quite in a worry, thinking that perhaps you might not be able to. To be sure, I should have known that you would contrive it by some means or other. Dear Jeremy!”

Selina could have improved upon this speech, but she had no fault to find with the way in which Letty cast herself upon Mr. Allandale’s broad bosom, and flung both arms about his neck. This was a spectacle which might well have impelled Cardross to have consigned his ward to a strict seminary for young ladies of quality, but it afforded Selina intense, if vicarious, gratification. Lingering for long enough to see that Mr. Allandale, his propriety notwithstanding, was returning this artless embrace with a fervour that made Letty squeak, and protest that he was crushing her ribs, she withdrew reluctantly, to take up a post of vantage on the half-landing.

Mr. Allandale, casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder, was relieved to see that she had left the room. Relaxing his hold on Letty, he said seriously: “You know, my love, this is not at all the thing! That cousin of yours—!”

“Oh, do not mind her!” Letty said. “She will never betray us!”

“No, but for a girl of her age—why, she is not yet out, I believe! It is very shocking.”

“Fiddle!” said Letty, drawing him to the sofa, and sitting down beside him there. “We have so much to discuss, Jeremy! This dreadful news which you sent me! Six weeks! Oh, dearest, pray tell them you won’t go!”

Mr. Allandale was by this time pretty well acquainted with his love, but this ingenuous plea startled him. “Not go! But, my sweetest life—!”

“It is too soon!” she urged. “If you are to sail in six weeks’ time, only consider the difficulties that confront us! I have the most melancholy persuasion that I can never, in so short a time, prevail upon Giles to consent to our marriage.”

He possessed himself of her hands, and sat holding them in a close grasp. “Letty, you will never prevail upon him to do so,” he said heavily.

She stared at him, her eyes round in astonishment. “‘Never? Oh, how absurd! Of course I shall! It is merely that this comes so suddenly, before he has grown accustomed to the notion, you know!”

He shook his head. “He will do everything that lies within his power to prevent our marriage. I have been as sure as a man may be of that ever since the day I called in Grosvenor Square. Nor can I blame him. From the worldly standpoint—”

“Well, I can blame him!” Letty interrupted, her eyes flashing, and her colour considerably heightened. “If I do not care a fig for worldly considerations I am sure he need not! And if my happiness means so little to him I shall think myself perfectly justified in marrying you in despite of anything he may say!”

He got up, and began to pace about the room, kneading one fist into the palm of his other hand. “If it were only possible! I do not know but what, with this appointment and my prospects, which I do not scruple to say are excellent, I too should think myself justified—But it is to no purpose! Circumstances have placed us wholly in his power.”

“What?” cried Letty. “No such thing! I am not in anyone’s power, and I hope you are not either!”

“You are under age,” he said gloomily.

“Oh, well, yes!” she conceded. “But if we were to be married he would be obliged to countenance it, because he would dislike excessively to make a scandal.”

He was silent for a moment. When he did speak it was in a voice of deep mortification, and as though the words were forced from him. “In his power—because I am unable to support a wife. That is what renders my position so hopeless!”

“I would try not to be expensive,” offered Letty.

He threw her a warm look, but said: “You are used to enjoy the elegancies of life. As my affairs now stand I cannot even offer you its comforts. To remove you from the protection of your brother only to place you in a situation where you would be obliged to practise the most stringent economy would be the action of a scoundrel! I must not—indeed, I will not do it!”

“No, for I don’t think I could practise stringent economies,” agreed Letty, considering the matter in an impartial spirit. “But we could live upon my expectations, couldn’t we?”

“Borrow on your expectations? No!—a thousand times no!” declared Mr. Allandale, with every evidence of repulsion.

“Well, it is what Nell’s brother does,” argued Letty. “I don’t know precisely how he contrives to do it, but if he can I am persuaded I could too, for mine are much better than his, you know.”

“Put it out of your mind!” begged Mr. Allandale, blanching visibly at the appalling vision of debt conjured up by her artless suggestion. “Nothing shall prevail upon me to take Lord Dysart for my model!”

“No, very true!!” she replied, recalling his lordship’s unamiable behaviour. “I am sure he is the most ramshackle person—besides being excessively disagreeable! Only what is to be done, if you don’t think my allowance sufficient? I have five hundred pounds a year, you know, and I need spend very little of it on my dresses, because I have a great many already.” She stopped, and her eyes brightened. “Yes, and besides that I have suddenly had an excellent notion! I can very well buy hundreds of ells of silk, and muslin, and cambric—enough to set me up for years, I daresay—and tell all the mercers to send their bills to Giles!”

“Good God!” ejaculated Mr. Allandale, pausing in his perambulations to gaze upon her with starting eyes.

She perceived that her suggestion had not found favour. “You don’t think that is what I should do? But consider, Jeremy! Even if he refused to pay—and I don’t think that in the least likely—they couldn’t dun me, because I should be in South America, and so all would be well.”

It spoke volumes for the depth of Mr. Allandale’s love that after the first stunned moment he recovered from an involuntary recoil, and realized that this ingenious solution to their difficulties arose not from depravity but from a vast and touching innocence. “That,” he said gently, “would be dishonest, my dearest.”

“Oh!” said Letty.

It was plain that she was unconvinced. Mr. Allandale was aware that it behoved him to bring her to a more proper frame of mind, but he felt, at this present, unequal to the task, and merely said: “Besides, if I were to marry you out of hand there can be little doubt that Cardross would discontinue your allowance.”

She was quite incredulous. “No! He would not be so shabby!”

“He warned me that your fortune remains in his hands until you attain the age of twenty-five. How much of its income you may enjoy is at his discretion. I could not mistake his meaning.”

“Twenty-five?” gasped Letty. “Oh, of all the infamous things! Why, I shall be quite old! I declare I am excessively thankful that I can’t remember my papa, for if he served me such a trick as that he must have been a most detestable man! You would think he meant Giles to chouse me out of my inheritance!”

“No, there is no question of such a thing as that,” said Mr. Allandale painstakingly. “It is only—”

“Well, I don’t mean to be worsted by either of them, and so I promise you!” Letty said briskly. “Depend upon it, I shall hit upon a way of bringing Giles about. But I must own, love, that it makes it very hard if you must sail so soon. Jeremy, pray do not!”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I could not refuse such an adventitious appointment! You would not have me do so.”

“Oh, no! Not refuse it, but could you not tell them that it is not perfectly convenient to you to go to Brazil so soon? Tell them that you will go in three months! I am persuaded we shall have come about by then.”

This drew a slight, melancholy smile from him, but he shook his head. “No, indeed I could not do such a thing! Consider, dearest, how unwise in me it would be to offend my kind patron! I owe this advancement to Lord Roxwell, you know, and to give the least appearance of ingratitude—”

“I have been thinking about that,” she interrupted. “I daresay he was anxious to oblige you, only the thing is that he has quite mistaken the matter.”

“How so?” he demanded, looking bewildered. “He was good enough to say that he had my advancement very much to heart, certainly. I believe I told you that he held my father in great affection.”

“Yes, you did, and it has given me a very good notion. You must go to him instantly, and tell him that you would prefer to be made ambassador!”

“Tell him that I would prefer to be made ambassador?” repeated Mr. Allandale, in a bemused voice.

“In a very civil way, of course,” she urged, seeing that her notion was not having that success with him which it deserved. “You could say that now you have had time to consider the matter you feel that it would be better if you became an ambassador; or—But you will know just how to say it in an unexceptionable way!”

“No!” said Mr. Allandale, with a good deal of conviction. “I do not know! My dearest life, you don’t know—you have not the least conception—! It will be many years before I can hope to be so elevated. As for asking Lord Roxwell—Good God!”

“Should you prefer it if I were to ask him?” enquired Letty. “I am not particularly acquainted with him, but Giles knows him, and we meet him for ever at parties.”

Mr. Allandale sat down again beside her, and grasped both her hands. “Letty, promise me you will do no such thing!” he begged. “It is not to be thought of! Believe me, it would be quite disastrous!”

“Would it? Then I won’t, of course, and I expect it will answer best for you to approach him, after all,” said Letty sunnily. “The only thing is that perhaps you might not like to tell him that you would make an excellent ambassador, while for me there could be nothing easier.”

Much moved, Mr. Allandale pressed several kisses on to her hands, ejaculating in a thickened voice: “So sweet! so innocent! Alas, no, my love! it cannot be! I must be content with what is offered to me—and, indeed, it is more than ever I expected!”

“Well, I am sure it is not more than you deserve,” said Letty warmly. “However, if you believe it would be useless to apply to Lord Roxwell, I won’t tease you. We must think of some other scheme.”

She spoke with optimism, but Mr. Allandale sighed. “I wish we might! But my thoughts lead me only to the melancholy necessity of waiting. If your present allowance were secured to you I should be tempted indeed, though I trust I should find the strength to withstand the impulse of my heart. Situated as we both are—you dependent upon your brother’s caprice, I with such charges upon my purse as I cannot but consider sacred—our case is hopeless. One of my sisters is on the point (I hope) of contracting an eligible marriage; my uncle has always promised to present Philip to a living, as soon as he shall have been inducted into Holy Orders, which, I trust, will be this year; but Edward is still at school, and Tom must be sent to join him in September. I could not reconcile it with my conscience, love, to leave my widowed parent to bear, without assistance, these heavy charges.”

Letty agreed to this, but without enthusiasm. She ventured to say: “You don’t feel that perhaps Tom would as lief not go to school?”

Mr. Allandale dismissed unhesitatingly a tentative suggestion which would have won for Letty her future brother-in-law’s esteem and approval.

“Perhaps your uncle would pay for Tom?”

He shook his head. “I fear—You must know that he has himself a numerous progeny, and has, besides, been responsible for a part of Philip’s education. Philip is his godson, but it would not be right to expect him to provide for Edward or Tom.”

A depressed silence fell. Mr. Allandale broke it, saying with a praiseworthy attempt to speak cheerfully: “We must be patient. It will be very hard, but we shall have the future to look forward to. Cardross has said that if we are of the same two minds when I return from Brazil he will not then withhold his consent. I believe him to be a man of his word; and that thought, that hope, will help us to bear with fortitude our separation. I do not consider him unfeeling, and I trust he will not forbid us to correspond with each other.”

“He may forbid it if he chooses, but I shall pay not the least heed!” declared Letty, her voice trembling. “Only I am not a good hand at letter-writing, and I don’t wish to correspond with you! I wish to be with you! Oh, don’t talk of our being separated, Jeremy! I can’t bear it, and I won’t bear it! Cardross must and shall continue to pay my allowance!”

He could not feel hopeful; nor did he think well of a scheme for Cardross’s subjection which depended for its success on her ability to bring herself to the brink of a decline by refusing to let a morsel of food pass her lips. Letty then broke into a passion of weeping, and by the time he had soothed and petted her into a calmer state he was obliged to tear himself from her side. His haggard countenance, when he emerged from the drawing-room, did much to restore Selina’s good opinion of him; and when she found her cousin still hiccupping on convulsive sobs she felt that matters were progressing just as they should. It now only remained for Letty to suffer abominable persecution at the hands of her cruel guardian.

“Well, I had as lief not be persecuted, I thank you!” said Letty crossly. “Besides, he is persecuting me!”

“Not enough!” declared Selina positively. “Do you think, if you threatened to run away, that he would lock you in an attic at the top of the house?”

“No, of course he wouldn’t, you silly creature!”

“They do in general,” argued Selina. “If only you could prevail upon him to, you could throw a note down from the window to me, and I would instantly deliver it to Mr. Allandale. He would feel himself bound to rescue you, and then you could fly to the border.”

“That only happens in novels,” said Letty scornfully. “I should like to know how Jeremy could possibly rescue me! Why, he could not even enter the house without knocking on the door, and what, pray, would you have him say to the porter?”

“I suppose there isn’t a secret way into the house?” asked Selina, rather daunted.

“Of course not! You only find them in castles!”

“No, that is not true at all!” Selina cried triumphantly. “Because I have seen a secret way into quite a commonplace house! I don’t precisely remember where it was, but I drove there when Mama took Fanny and me to stay with my uncle, in Somerset!”

“It’s of no consequence where it is, because there are no secret doors in Grosvenor Square.”

“No,” agreed Selina regretfully. Another idea presented itself to her, but although her eyes brightened momentarily they clouded at the thought of Mr. Allandale gaining an entrance to Cardross House in the disguise of a sweep.

“And now I come to think of it,” said Letty, clinching the matter, “the attics are all as full as they can hold with servants. I wish you will stop talking nonsense, like a goose!”

“It is not nonsense! You did not think it so, when we read that capital story about the girl who was imprisoned by her uncle, so that she should consent to wed his son—the one that had a villainous aspect, and two savage mastiffs, and—”

“Books!” cried Letty impatiently. “But this is real!”