Black Sheep

Chapter VI

But Mr Calverleigh called in Sydney Place on the following day. Mitton, recognizing him as the gentleman who had escorted Miss Abby home on the previous afternoon, admitted him without hesitation, and took him up to the drawing-room, where Abby, under her sister’s instruction, was engaged in directing cards of invitation to their projected rout-party. She was unprepared, and gave such a start that her pen spluttered. Turning quickly, and almost incredulously, she encountered the blandest of smiles, and the slightest of bows, before Mr Calverleigh advanced towards her sister. What excuse he meant to offer for his visit was a puzzle that was speedily solved: Mr Calverleigh, taking Selina’s tremblingly outstretched hand in his, and smiling reassuringly down into her agitated countenance, told her that he had known her elder brother, and found himself unable to resist the impulse to extend his acquaintance with Rowland’s family. “Two of whom I had the pleasure of meeting yesterday,” he said, nodding with friendly informality at Abby. “How do you do, Miss Abigail?”

She acknowledged this greeting in the frostiest manner, but so far from being abashed, he laughed, and said: “Still out of charity with me? I must tell you, ma’am, that your sister was as cross as crabs with me for escorting her home. But in my day it was not at all the thing for girls of her quality to go out walking alone.”

Selina, already flustered by the style and manner of her unexpected visitor, lost herself in a tangle of words, for while on the one hand, she shared his old-fashioned prejudice, on the other, she knew very well that to agree with him would be to incur Abby’s wrath. So after floundering between a number of unfinished sentences, she begged him to be seated, and asked him where he had met her brother. Abby held her breath, but he returned a vague answer, and she let it go again.

“And you knew my sister-in-law too!” pursued Selina. “It seems so odd that I never—not that I was acquainted with all their friends, of course, but I thought—that is to say—dear me, how stupid! I have forgot what I was going to say!”

He regarded her confusion with a twinkle. “No, no, don’t turn short about! You thought I had been sent packing to India before your brother was married, and you were perfectly right: I knew Celia when she was still Miss Morval.”

“A long time ago,” said Abby. “Too long for me, I am afraid: you see, I didn’t.”

The unmistakable boredom in her voice scandalized Selina into uttering a protesting: “Abby dear—!”

Abby shrugged pettishly. “Oh, well, it is so tedious to be obliged to discuss old times in which one played no part! Anecdotes, too! I have a surfeit of them from General Exford. I wish you will rather tell us of your Indian experiences, Mr Calverleigh.”

“But that would be merely to exchange one form of anecdote for another,” he pointed out. “And much more boring, I assure you!”

“Oh, no! I am persuaded—so very interesting! All those Mahrattas, and things!” fluttered Selina, aghast at her sister’s behaviour. “Not that I should care to live there myself—and the climate far from salubrious—well, only think of poor young Mr Grayshott! But I daresay you had many exciting adventures!”

“Not nearly as many as I had in England!” He looked at Abby, wickedly quizzing her. “No need to look so dismayed, Miss Abigail: I don’t mean to recount them! Let us instead discuss the amenities of Bath! Do you mean to attend the concert this evening?”

For one sulphurous moment it was on the tip of her tongue to disclaim any intention of attending the concert, but the recollection that she was engaged to do so with a select party of friends checked her. She replied, with a glittering smile: “Yes, indeed! The Signora Neroli is to sing, you know—a high treat for those of us who love music. You, I daresay, would find it a dead bore, for I believe you don’t love music!”

“On the contrary: I find it wonderfully sopor—wonderfully soothing!”

A smile quivered at the corners of her mouth. “I doubt if you will find the benches wonderfully sopor-soothing, sir!”

“That card takes the trick!” he said approvingly.

She chuckled, and then as she caught sight of her sister’s face, blushed.

At that moment, Fanny came into the room, much to Abby’s relief. She greeted Mr Calverleigh with unaffected pleasure: just as she would have greeted any other of her aunt’s elderly admirers, Abby watched in some amusement, wondering how much Mr Calverleigh liked the touch of pretty deference which paid tribute to his advanced years. She was obliged to own that he took it with unshaken composure, responding in a manner that was positively avuncular. He did not stay long: a circumstance which caused Selina to say, when he had taken his leave, that although his manners were very odd, which was due, no doubt, to his having lived in India, he did know better than to remain for more than half-an-hour on a visit of ceremony.

“I warned you that his manners are deplorable!” said Abby. “I shouldn’t think he has the least notion of ceremony.”

“To be sure, it is not at all the thing to call on us in breeches and topboots—at least, gentlemen may do so in the country, of course, but not in Bath, without a horse, and it would have been more correct merely to have left his card—but I saw nothing in his manners to disgust me, precisely. He has a great deal of ease, but he is not at all vulgar. In fact, he has a well-bred air, and it would be very unjust to blame him for his complexion, poor man, because you may depend upon it that was India, and excessively unfeeling I think it of his father to have sent him there, no matter what he did!”

“Why, did he do something dreadful?” exclaimed Fanny, round-eyed with surprise.

“No, dear, certainly not!” said Selina hurriedly.

“But you said—”

“My love, I said nothing of the sort! How you do pick one up! It is not at all becoming! And that puts me in mind of something! Abby, never did I think to be put to the blush by a want of conduct in you! I declare, I was so mortified—so petulant and uncivil of you! And then, after placing yourself on far too high a form, besides snubbing him in the rudest way, you laughed in his face! As if you had known him for years!”

“Good God, why did no one ever tell me that I mustn’t laugh at what a man says until I have known him for years ? “ countered Abby.

Before Selina could assemble her inchoate thoughts, Fanny said suddenly: “Yes, but one has! I mean, one feels as if one has! For my part, I don’t care a straw for his being shabbily dressed, and not having formal manners: I like him! I should have thought you would too, Abby, because he is just such a joke-smith as you are yourself! Don’t you?”

“I must say,” interpolated Selina, “that he was very diverting. And when he smiles—”

“Mr Calverleigh’s smile must be reckoned as his greatest—if not his only—asset!” said Abby tartly. “As to whether I like him or not, how can I possibly say ? I am barely acquainted with him, Fanny!”

“That doesn’t signify! He is barely acquainted with you, but anyone can see that he likes you very much!” retorted Fanny saucily. “Do you think he will be at the concert this evening?”

“I haven’t the least notion,” replied Abby. “Certainly not, if riding-dress is his only wear!”

“Poor man!” said Selina, her compassion stirred. “I daresay he may be sadly purse-pinched.”

However this might have been, Mr Calverleigh had either the means, or the credit, to have provided himself with the long-tailed-coat, the knee-breeches, and the silk stockings which constituted the correct evening-wear for gentlemen, for he appeared in the New Assembly Rooms, thus arrayed, a few minutes before the conceit began, escorting Mrs Grayshott. But as he wore it as casually as his riding-dress, and appeared to set more store by comfort than elegance, no aspirant to fashion would have felt the smallest inclination to discover the name of his tailor.

Miss Abigail Wendover observed his arrival from under her lashes, and thereafter confined her attention to her own party. She was herself looking (as her niece very improperly told her) as fine as fivepence, in one of the new gowns made for her in London, of Imperial muslin, with short sleeves, worn low on her shoulders, a narrow skirt, and a bodice trimmed with a double pleating of ribbon. It became her slender figure to admiration, and it had not been her original intention to have wasted it on a mere out-of-season concert; but when she had looked more closely at her lilac crape she had realized that it was really too shabby to be worn again. This, at least, was the explanation that she offered to her surprised sister. As for her hair, which she had dressed in loose curls, with one shining ringlet disposed over her left shoulder, what did Selina think of it? It was all the kick in London, but perhaps it would not do in Bath?

“Oh, my dearest, I never saw you look so becoming!” said Selina, in a gush of sentimental tears. “In such high bloom! I know you will be ready to eat me, but I must and I will say that no one would take you for Fanny’s aunt!”

So far from showing a disposition to take umbrage, Abby laughed, cast an appraising look at her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace, and said candidly: “Well, I never was a beauty, but I’m not a mean bit yet, am I?”

Certainly no one who was present at the concert that evening thought so. In the octagon room, where they waited for the rest of the party to assemble, Abby received quite as many compliments as Fanny; and on her way through the concert-room had the doubtful felicity of being ogled by a complete stranger.

During the interval, she did not immediately follow Mrs Faversham into the adjoining room, where tea was being served, being waylaid by Mr Dunston, who came up with his mother on his arm. Civility obliged her to exchange commonplaces with Mrs Dunston, and when that amiable and platitudinous lady’s attention was claimed by one of her acquaintances her son stepped instantly into the breach, saying simply: “Fair as is the rose of May! Do you know, that line has been running through my head ever since I set eyes on you this evening? You shine everyone else down, Miss Abby!”

“Flummery!” said an amused voice at Abby’s elbow, “You can’t have seen her niece!”

“Sir!” uttered Mr Dunston, outraged. “I believe I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance?”

“Let me make you known to one another!” said Abby hastily. “Mr Dunston, Mr Calverleigh—Mr Miles Calverleigh!”

Mr Dunston executed a small, stiff bow, received in return a nod, and, for the first time in his stolid career, wished that the days of calling a man out on the slightest provocation did not belong to the past.

“I’ve come to carry you off to drink tea with Mrs Grayshott,” said Mr Calverleigh, taking Abby’s hand, and drawing it within his arm. “I left her guarding a chair for you, so come along!” He favoured Mr Dunston with another nod, and a brief smile, and led Abby inexorably away, saying: “He did empty the butter-boat over you, didn’t he? Who the devil is he?”

“He is a very respectable man, who lives with his mother a few miles distant from the town,” she replied severely. “And even if he was talking flummery it was not at all handsome of you to say so!”

“I don’t offer Spanish coin, if that’s what you mean,” he retorted. “Do you wish for it?”

“Surely, Mr Calverleigh, your wide experience of females must have taught you that compliments are always acceptable to us?” she said demurely.

“To nine out often females, yes! but not to you, Miss Abigail Wendover! You’re more than seven! You know very well that in point of beauty you don’t shine every other lady down: there are at least three real diamonds here tonight, leaving Fanny out of the reckoning.”

“My dear sir, only point them out to me, and I’ll present you! I expect I’m acquainted with them—indeed, I’ve a shrewd notion I know who they are!”

He shook his head. “No. I prefer to admire them from a distance. My wide experience warns me that they lack that certain sort of something which you have in abundance.”

“My—sufficiently wide experience of you, Mr Calverleigh, warns me that you are about to say something outrageous!”

“No, I assure you! Nothing derogatory! Charming girls, all of them! Only I don’t want to kiss them!”

She gave a startled gasp. “You don’t want—Well, upon my word! And if you mean me to understand from that—”

“I do,” he said, smiling down at her. “I should dearly love to kiss you—here and now!”

“W-well you can’t!” said Abby, rocked off her balance.

“I know I can’t—not here and now, at all events!”

“Ever!” she uttered, furiously aware of flaming cheeks.

“Oh, that is quite another matter! Do you care to wager a small sum on the chance?”

Making a desperate recovery, she said: “No! I never bet on certainties!”

He laughed. “You know, you are a darling!” he said, completing her confusion.

“Well, what you are is a—a—”

“Hedge-bird?” he suggested helpfully, as she stopped, at a loss for words opprobrious enough to describe him. “Gull-catcher? Bermondsey boy? Rudesby? Queer Nabs?”

She broke into laughter, and threw at him over her shoulder, as she went before him into the tea-room: “All of those—and worse! In a word, infamous! Mrs Grayshott! How do you do? And—which I know you will think more important!—How does your invalid do?”

She sat down beside Mrs Grayshott as she spoke, wholly withdrawing her attention from the infamous Mr Calverleigh, who lounged away to procure her a cup of tea. Mrs Grayshott said: “My invalid is not as stout as I could wish, nor as docile! Dr Wilkinson has seen him, however, and assures me that I have no need to fear that any permanent damage has been done to his health. He recommends a course of hot baths, which, he tells me—and, indeed, I know from my own experience—do much to restore a debilitated frame. Abby, my dear, you must let me compliment you on this new way you have of dressing your hair! You look delightfully—and have set a new fashion in Bath, if I am any judge of the matter! Yes, I know you only care for compliments on Fanny’s appearance, so not another word will I say in your praise! I imagine you have had a surfeit of compliments already—if not from Mr Dunston, who appeared to me to be quite moonstruck, certainly from Mr Calverleigh!”

“Not at all!” replied Abby. “Mr Calverleigh thinks me a candle in the sunshine of three veritable diamonds present tonight! Four, including Fanny!”

“Does he, indeed?” replied Mrs Grayshott, a good deal amused. “I suspect he is what Oliver calls a complete hand! You know, my dear, I must own that I am glad to see you on such good terms with him, for it has been very much on my conscience that I almost forced him upon you, which, as I hope you know, I never meant to do!”

“Oh, I know you didn’t, ma’am! I wish you won’t give it another thought. Sooner or later I must have met him, you know.”

“And you like him? I was afraid that his free-and-easy manners might offend you.”

“On the contrary! They amuse me. He is certainly an original!”

Mrs Grayshott smiled, but said rather wistfully: “Why, yes! But not only that! He is so very kind! He makes light of the services he rendered Oliver throughout that weary voyage, but I’ve heard the truth from Oliver himself. But for Mr Calverleigh’s unremitting care I don’t think that my poor boy would have survived, for he tells me that he suffered a recrudescence of that horrible fever within two days of having been carried aboard! It was Mr Calverleigh, rather than the ship’s surgeon, who preserved his life, his long residence in India having made him far more familiar with the disorder than any ship’s surgeon could be! I must be eternally obliged to him!” Her voice shook; she overcame the little surge of emotion, and said, with an effort at liveliness: “And, as though he bad not done enough for me, what must he do but procure tickets for this concert tonight, and positively bully me into accompanying him! Something I must have said gave him the notion that I should very much like to hear Neroli, and I think it particularly kind in him to have given me the opportunity to do so, because I am afraid he is not himself a music-lover.”

Having very good reason to suppose that Mr Calverleigh’s kindness sprang from pure self-interest, Abby was hard put to it to hold her tongue. It was perhaps fortunate that he rejoined them at this moment, thus putting an end to any further discussion of his character. She accepted the tea he had brought, with a word of thanks and a charming smile, but could not resist the impulse to ask him if he was not ravished by Neroli’s voice.

He replied promptly: “Not entirely. A little too much vibrato, don’t you agree?”

“Ah, I perceive that you are an expert!” said Abby, controlling a quivering lip. “You must enlighten my ignorance, sir! What does that mean, if you please?”

“Well, my Latin is pretty rusty, but I should think it means to tremble,” he said coolly. “She does, too, like a blancmanger. And much the same shape as one,” he added thoughtfully.

“Oh, you dreadful creature!” protested Mrs Grayshott, bubbling over. “I didn’t mean that,when I said I thought she had rather too much vibrato! You know I didn’t!”

“I thought she had too much of everything,” he said frankly.

Mrs Grayshott cried shame upon him; but Abby, caught in the act of sipping her tea, choked.

When he presently restored her to her own party, she was spared the necessity of introducing him to Mrs Faversham by that lady’s greeting him by name, and with a gracious smile: Lady Weaverham had already performed that office, in the Pump Room that morning.

Mr Faversham said, taking his seat beside Abby: “So that’s young Calverleigh’s uncle!” He looked critically after Mr Calverleigh’s tall, retreating figure. “Got the look of a care-for-nobody, but I like him better than his nephew: too insinuating by half, that young man!”

“You don’t like him, sir?”

“No, I can’t say I do,” he replied bluntly. “Fact of the matter is I set no store by these young sprigs of fashion! My wife calls me an old fogey: daresay you will too, for the ladies all seem to have run wild over him! Haven’t met him yet, have you?”

“No, that pleasure hasn’t been granted me,” she said, in a dry tone.

It was to be granted her on the following day. Mr Stacy Calverleigh, coming down from London on the mail-coach, arrived at the White Hart midway through the morning, and stayed only to change his travelling-dress for the corbeau-coloured coat of superfine, the pale pantaloons, and the gleaming Hessian boots of the Bond Street beau, before setting out in a hack for Sydney Place.

The ladies were all at home, Abby, who had just come in from a visit to Milsom Street, submitting to her sister’s critical inspection some patterns of lace; Selina reclining on the sofa; and Fanny wrestling with the composition of an acrostic in the back drawing-room. She did not immediately look up when Mitton announced Mr Calverleigh, but as Stacy advanced into the room he spoke, saying in a rallying tone: “Miss Wendover! What is this I hear about you? Mitton has been telling me that you have been quite out of frame since I saw you last! I am so very sorry!”

His voice brought Fanny’s head up with a jerk. She sprang to her feet, and almost ran into the front room, exclaiming with unaffected joy: “ Stacy! Oh, I thought it was only your uncle!”

She was holding out her hands to him, and he caught them in his, carrying first one and then the other to his lips with what Abby, observing her niece’s fervour with disapprobation, recognized as practised grace. “You thought I was my uncle? Now, I begin to suspect that it is you rather than Miss Wendover who must be out of frame!” he said caressingly. “Indeed I am not my uncle!” He gave her hands a slight squeeze before releasing them, and moving forward to drop on his knee beside the sofa. “Dear Miss Wendover, what has been amiss? I can see that you are sadly pulled, and my suspicion is that you have been trotting too hard!”

The demure laughter in his voice robbed his words of offence. Selina all too obviously succumbed to the charm of a personable and audacious young man, scolding him for his impertinence, in the manner of an indulgent aunt, and favouring him with an account of her late indisposition.

Abby was thus afforded an opportunity to study him at her leisure. She thought that it was easy to see why he had made so swift a conquest of Fanny: he was handsome, and he was possessed of ease and address, his manners being distinguished by a nice mixture of deference and assurance. Only in the slightly aquiline cast of his features could she detect any resemblance to his uncle: in all other respects no two men could have been more dissimilar. His height was not above the average, but, in contrast to Miles Calverleigh’s long, loosely-knit limbs, his figure was particularly good; he did not, like Miles, look as if he had shrugged himself into his coat: rather, the coat appeared to have been moulded to his form; the ears of his collars were as stiff as starch could make them; his neckcloths were never carelessly knotted, but always beautifully arranged, whether in the simple style of the Napoleon, or the more intricate folds of the Mathematical; and he showed exquisite taste in his choice of waistcoats. Such old-fashioned persons as Mr Faversham might stigmatize him as a tippy, a dandy, a bandbox creature, but their instinctive dislike of the younger generation of dashing blades on the strut earned them too far: Stacy Calverleigh was a smart, but not quite a dandy, for he affected few of the extravagances of fashion. His shirt-points might be a little too high, his coats a trifle too much padded at the shoulder and nipped in at the waist, but he never overloaded his person with jewellery, or revolted plain men by helping himself to snuff with a silver shovel.

His profile, as he knelt beside the sofa, was turned towards Abby, and she was obliged to acknowledge that it was a singularly handsome profile. Then, when Fanny seized the opportunity offered by a pause in Selina’s garrulity to present him to her other aunt, and he turned his head to look up at Abby, she thought him less handsome, but without quite knowing why.

He jumped up, exclaiming, with a boyishness which, to her critical ears, had a false ring: “Oh! This is a moment to which I’ve been looking forward—and yet dreading! Your very humble servant, ma’am!”

“Dreading?” said Abby, lifting her brows. “Were you led to suppose I was a gorgon?”

“Ah, no, far from it! A most beloved aunt!”

His ready smile curled his lips as he spoke, but Abby, looking in vain for a trace of the charm which awoke instant response in her when the elder Calverleigh smiled, realized that it did not reach his eyes. She thought they held a calculating look, and suspected him of watching her closely to discover whether he was making a good or a bad impression on her.

She said lightly: “That doesn’t seem to be a reason for your dread, sir.”

“No, and it’s moonshine!” Fanny said. “How can you talk such nonsense, Stacy?”

“It isn’t nonsense. Miss Abigail loves you, and must think me unworthy of you—oh, an impudent jackstraw even to dream of aspiring to your hand!” He smiled again, and said simply: “I think it too, ma’am. No one knows better than I how unworthy I am.”

A sentimental sigh and an inarticulate murmur from Selina showed that this frank avowal had moved her profoundly. Upon Abby it had a different effect. “Trying to take the wind out of my eye, Mr Calverleigh?” she said.

If he was disconcerted he did not betray it, but answered immediately: “No, but, perhaps—the words out of your mouth?”

Privately, she gave him credit for considerable adroitness, but all she said was: “You are mistaken: I am not so uncivil.”

“And it isn’t true!” Fanny declared passionately. “I won’t permit anyone to say such a thing—not even you, Abby!”

“Well, I haven’t said it, my dear, nor am I likely to, so there is really no need for you to fly up into the boughs! Tell me, Mr Calverleigh, have you made the acquaintance of your uncle yet?”

“My uncle?” he repeated. He glanced at Fanny, a question in his eyes. “But what is this? You said, when I came in, that you thought I was my uncle! The only uncle I possess—if I do still possess him—lives at the other end of the world!”

“No, he doesn’t,” replied Fanny. “I mean, he doesn’t do so now! He brought Lavinia Grayshott’s brother home from Calcutta, and he is here, at the York House!”

“Good God!” he said blankly.

“He is not at all like you, but very agreeable, isn’t he, Aunt Selina?”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Selina. “He is quite an oddity—so informal, but I daresay that comes of having lived for so long in India, which does not sound to me at all the sort of place anyone would wish to live in, but that, after all, was not his fault, poor man, and he is perfectly gentlemanly!”

“I’m glad to know that at least!” Stacy said ruefully. “I never met him in my life, but I heartily wish him otherwhere, for I fear he may destroy what little credit I may have with you! Alas, the round tale is that he is the black sheep in my family!”

“Oh, I fancy you have met him!” said Abby, showing hackle. “He has no recollection of having done so, I own, but thinks he might have seen you when you were, as he phrased it, a grubby brat!”

He shot a quick look at her, but said, smiling again: “Ah, very likely! I can’t be blamed for having forgotten the circumstance, can I ? I wonder what has brought him back to England ?’’

“But I told you!” Fanny reminded him. “He brought poor Mr Oliver Grayshott home! And such good care did he take of him that Mrs Grayshott feels she cannot be sufficiently obliged to him! As for Ol’—as for Mr Grayshott, he says he is a trump, and won’t listen to a word in his disparagement!”

“Worse and worse!” he declared, with a comical grimace. “A male attendant, in fact! A faint—a very faint—hope that he might have made his fortune in India withers at the outset!”

“Much might be forgiven in the prodigal son who returned to the fold with well-lined pockets, might it not?” said Abby, bestowing upon him a smile as false as she believed his own to be.

“Oh, everything!” he assured her gaily. “That’s the way of the world, ma’am!”

“Very wrong—most improper!” interpolated Selina, trying, not very successfully, to assemble her inchoate ideas into comprehensible words. “I mean—I mean, money ought not, and cannot re-establish character! And to expect a man who had been cast off in a perfectly inhuman way (for so it seems to me, and I don’t care what anyone says!) to come home to—to shower guineas on his most unnatural relations, is—is monstrous! Or, at any rate,” she temporized, “absurd!”

“Bravo, Selina!” exclaimed Abby.

Faintly blushing under this applause, Selina said: “Well, so it seems to me, though it had nothing to do with you, Mr Calverleigh, so you must not be thinking that I mean to censure you,and in any event poor Mr Miles Calverleigh hasn’t made his fortune—at least, he doesn’t look as if he had, because he wears the shabbiest clothes! On the other hand, he is putting up at York House, and that, you know, is by no means dagger-cheap,as some dear friends of ours, who are staying there, tell me.”

“The reverse!” he said. “You terrify me, ma’am! He had always the reputation of being excessively expensive, and with never a feather to fly with! I only hope he doesn’t tip them the double at York House, leaving me to stand the reckoning!” He saw that this speech had shocked Selina, and had made Fanny look gravely at him, and quickly and smoothly retrieved his position, saying: “The truth is, you know, that he caused my grandfather, and my father too, a great deal of embarrassment, so that I never heard any good of him. I own, however, that I have often wondered if he could be quite as black as he was painted to me. Indeed, if you do not dislike him, Miss Wendover, he cannot be! I shall lose no time in making his acquaintance.” He turned towards Fanny, his smile a caress. “Tell me all the latest Bath-news!” he begged. “Has Lady Weaverham forgiven me for having been obliged to cry off from my engagement to dine with her? Has Miss Ancrum summoned up the courage to have that tooth drawn, or is she still wearing a swollen face? Did—oh, tell me everything! I feel as if I had been absent for a twelvemonth!”

Since the most interesting event which had lately occurred in Bath was the return of Oliver Grayshott to his mother’s fond care it was not long before Fanny was telling him all about this, and demanding his help with the acrostic she was composing for Oliver’s amusement. “You see, I am doing what I may to entertain him,” she explained. “Poor boy, he is so dreadfully pulled that he can’t join in any of our expeditions, or attend the assemblies, or anything, so when Lavinia asked me to lend her my aid in keeping up his spirits of course I said I would!” She added, to her younger aunt’s suppressed indignation: “I thought you could not object?”

He responded suitably, but Abby, who was rapidly taking him in strong dislike, received (and welcomed) the impression that he did not regard the intrusion on the Bath scene of Mr Oliver Grayshott with favour.