Devil’s Cub

Chapter XIII

Meanwhile, to anyone who knew her, Miss Marling’s reckless air of gaiety that night would have betokened an inward disquiet. She seemed to be in the highest spirits, but her eyes were restless, always searching the fashionable throng.

Paris had gone to Miss Marling’s head, and the attentions of such a known connoisseur as the Vicomte de Valmé could not but flatter her. The Vicomte protested that his heart was under her feet. She did not entirely believe this, but a diet of admiration and compliments spoiled her for the criticisms of Mr. Comyn. When he first appeared at her cousin’s house she had tumbled headlong into his arms, but this first unaffected rapture suffered a check. She proceeded to pour into her Frederick’s ears a recital of all her pleasures and triumphs. He listened in silence, and at the end said gravely that although he could not but be glad that she had found amusement, he had not thought that she would be so extremely gay and happy away from him.

Partly because it was the fashion to be coquettish, partly from a feeling of guilt, Juliana had answered in an arch, provocative way that did not captivate Mr. Comyn in the least. Bertrand de Saint-Vire would have known just what to say. Mr. Comyn, unskilled in the art of flirtation, said that Paris had not improved his Juliana.

They quarrelled, but made it up at once. But it was an ill beginning.

Miss Marling made Mr. Comyn known to her new friends, amongst them the Vicomte de Valmé. Mr. Comyn, with a lamentable lack of tact, spoke disparagingly of the Vicomte, whom he found insupportable. Truth to tell, the Vicomte, who was well aware of Mr. Comyn’s pretensions, was impelled by an innate love of mischief to flirt outrageously with Juliana under the very nose of her stiff and disapproving lover. Juliana, anxious to awake a spark of jealousy in what at that moment seemed to her an unresponsive heart, encouraged him. All she wanted was to be treated to a display of ruthless and possessive manhood. If Mr. Comyn, later, had seized her in his arms in a decently romantic fashion there would have been an end to the Vicomte’s flirtation. But Mr. Comyn was deeply hurt, and he did not recognize in these signs a perverted expression of his Juliana’s love for him. He was young, and he handled the affair very ill. He was forbearing where he should have been violent, and found fault when he should have made love. Miss Marling determined to teach him a lesson.

It was this laudable resolve that took her to the Hôtel Saint-Vire. Mr. Comyn should learn that it was unwise to lecture and criticize Miss Marling. But because under her airs and graces she was really very much in love with him, she induced her cousin to provide him with a card for the ball.

The Vicomte de Valmé was her partner for the two first dances, and when they came to an end he took her off to a convenient alcove, and made intoxicating love to her. He was interrupted in this agreeable task by the sudden appearance of Vidal, who said unamiably: “Give me leave, Bertrand: I want a word with Juliana.”

The Vicomte flung up his hands. “But I find you quite abominable, Dominique! Always you want words with Juliana! J’y suis, j’y reste. Have you yet slain me this Frederick?”

“Vidal, did you give Frederick a card for the ball?” Miss Marling asked anxiously.

“I gave it him, but I don’t think he’ll use it.”

“A la bonne heure!” said the irrepressible Vicomte. He laughed impudently up at the Marquis. “For what do you wait, mon cher? You are infinitely de trop.”

“I await your departure — but not for long,” said his lordship.

The Vicomte gave an exaggerated start. “A threat, Juliana! I scent it unerringly. He will presently shoot me: I am as good as dead, but if you give me the roses you wear at your breast I shall die happy.”

Vidal’s eye gleamed. “Will you go as happily through that window?” he inquired.

“By no means!” said the Vicomte promptly. He rose, and kissed Miss Marling’s hand. “I surrender to force majeure, dearest Juliana. He has no finesse, our cousin. He will undoubtedly throw me out of the window if I linger.”

“Well, I don’t think it very brave of you to give way to him,” said Miss Marling candidly.

“But, my adored one, observe his size!” implored the Vicomte. “He would be very rough with me, and spoil my so elegant coat. I go, Vidal, I go!”

Miss Marling waved an airy farewell, and turned to her cousin. “I find him excessively amusing, you know,” she confided.

“I see you do,” said Vidal. “Where is Mary Challoner?”

Miss Marling opened her eyes very wide. “Don’t you like him, Vidal? I thought he was a friend of yours.”

“He is,” replied the Marquis.

“Well, it is very odd of you to threaten to throw your friends out of the window, I must say,” remarked Juliana.

He smiled. “Not at all. It is only my friends that I would throw out of the window.”

“Dear me!” said Juliana, finding the male sex incomprehensible.

His lordship picked up her fan, a delicate Cabriolet with ivory sticks and guards, pierced and gilt, and rapped her knuckles with it, “Attend to me, Ju. Do you mean to have Comyn, or not?”

“Good gracious, what in the world do you mean?” exclaimed Juliana.

“Answer, chit.”

“You know I do. But I don’t at all understand why — ”

“Then you’d best stop flirting with Bertrand.”

Miss Marling flushed. “Oh, I don’t — flirt!”

“Don’t you?” jibed his lordship. “I beg your pardon. But whatever it is that you do, stop. That’s a kind cousinly warning.”

She tilted her chin. “I shall do as I please, thank you, Vidal, and I’ll not be lectured and scolded by either of you.”

“Just as you like, Ju. Don’t blame me when you lose your Frederick.”

She looked startled. “I shan’t lose him!”

“You’re a fool, Ju. What’s the game you’re playing? Trying to make him jealous, eh? It won’t work.”

“How do you know it won’t?” demanded Miss Marling, stung.

He looked down at her with lazy affection. “You’ve chosen the wrong man for these tricks of yours. What is it you want?”

She began to pleat the stiff silk of her gown. “I do love him,” she said. “I do, Vidal!”

“Well?”

“If only he would — be a little more like you!” she said in a rush.

“Good God!” said the Marquis, amused. “Why the devil should he be?”

“I don’t mean that I want him to be really like you,” explained Miss Marling. “It’s merely that — oh, I can’t tell! But supposing you loved me, Dominic, and I — well, flirted, if you must use that horrid word — with another man: what would you do?”

“Kill him,” said the Marquis flippantly.

She shook his arm. “You don’t mean it, but I think perhaps you would. Vidal, you’d not let another man steal the lady you loved, would you? Do answer soberly!”

The smile still lingered on his lips, but she saw his teeth shut hard. “Soberly, Ju, I would not.”

“What would you do?” inquired Miss Marling, momentarily diverted by curiosity.

His lordship was silent for a minute, and the smile faded, leaving his face strangely harsh. A tiny snap sounded under his fingers. He glanced down at them, and the grim look left his face. “I’ve spoiled your fan, Ju,” he said, and gave it her back. Two of the sticks were broken at the shoulder. “I’ll give you another.”

Juliana was looking at him in considerable awe. “You haven’t answered me,” she said, with an uncertain laugh.

“What I might do is — happily for you — not in the least like what Comyn will do,” he replied.

“No,” she said sadly. “But can you understand that I wish it were?”

“My deluded child, one taste of my lamentable temper would send you flying into your Frederick’s arms,” said the Marquis, and rose. “Where’s Mary Challoner?”

“She wouldn’t come.”

“Why not?”

“To say truth, Vidal, I believe she did not desire to meet you.”

“Fiend seize her!” said his lordship unemotionally, and went off.

Miss Marling emerged from her alcove to find him gone. When he did not reappear she realized that he had left the ball, and had no difficulty in guessing his present whereabouts.

Nearly an hour later Mr. Comyn came up the wide stairway. His arrival was most inopportune, for he came in excellent time to see Miss Marling bestow one of her pink roses on the ecstatic Vicomte de Valmé.

She was standing just outside the ballroom, and she did not immediately perceive Mr. Comyn. The Vicomte took the rose reverently, and pressed it to his lips. He then bestowed it carefully inside his coat, and informed Miss Marling that it caused his heart to beat more strongly.

Miss Marling laughed at him, and at the same moment caught sight of Mr. Comyn. She had never seen so stern an expression on his face, and she was secretly rather frightened. She made the grave mistake of trying to brazen it out, and greeted him with a careless nod. “I vow I had quite given you up, sir!” she said.

“Yes?” said Mr. Comyn, icily civil. “Pray will you spare me five minutes alone, ma’am?”

Juliana gave a little shrug, but she dismissed the Vicomte. She showed Mr. Comyn a mutinous face, and said with a coldness that matched his: “Well, sir?”

“It does not seem to me to be well at all, Juliana. You could not bring yourself to forgo one ball to please me.”

“Pray do not be absurd, Frederick!” she said sharply. “Why should I forgo it?”

“Merely because I begged you to, ma’am. Had you loved me — ”

She was jerking her handkerchief between her fingers. “You expect a deal too much of me.”

“Is it too much, then, to expect that you would prefer an evening spent in my company to one here?”

“Yes, it is!” Juliana answered. “Why should I prefer to be scolded by you? For that is all you do, Frederick; you know it is!”

“If my remonstrances seem to you to be in the nature of scolding — ”

“Why must you remonstrate with me? I vow if that is how you mean to treat me when we are married I would rather remain single.”

Mr. Comyn grew paler. “Tell me in plain words, if you please, do you mean that?”

Juliana turned her face away. “Oh, well! I’m sure I don’t want to quarrel with you, only every time you see me you behave in this disagreeable fashion as though I had no right to be at parties but must be for ever thinking of you. You think because you are used to live buried in the country I must be as dull as you are, but I have been bred very different, sir, I’ll have you know.”

“It is unnecessary to tell me that, ma’am, believe me. You have been bred to think of nothing but your pleasure.”

“Indeed!” said Miss Marling, with rising colour. “Pray do not mince matters, sir! Inform me that I am selfish. I expect no less.”

“If I think so, ma’am, you have no one but yourself to blame,” said Mr. Comyn, deliberately.

Juliana’s lip trembled. “Let me tell you that there are others who do not think so at all!”

“I am aware,” bowed Mr. Comyn.

“I suppose you are jealous, and that is the whole truth!” cried Juliana.

“And if I am, have I no cause?”

“If you think I care for someone else I wonder that you don’t try to win me back,” said Miss Marling, stealing a look at him under her lashes.

“Then you have very little understanding of my character, ma’am. I do not desire a wife who could give me cause for jealousy.”

“You need not have one, sir,” said Miss Marling, her eyes very bright.

There was a short silence. Then Mr. Comyn said, holding himself very erect: “I take your meaning, ma’am. I hope you will not live to regret this night’s work.”

Juliana gave a defiant laugh. “Regret it? Lord, why should I? You need not think you are the only gentleman who has done me the honour to solicit my hand in marriage.”

“You have played fast and loose with my affections, ma’am. I could laugh at myself for having been so taken in. To be sure, I should have known what to expect from a member of your family.”

By this time each was in a royal rage. Juliana flashed back at him: “How dare you sneer at my family? ’Pon rep, it is the greatest piece of impudence ever I heard! Perhaps you are not aware that my family consider you a Nobody?”

Mr. Comyn managed to keep his voice very level. “You are wrong, ma’am: I am well aware of it. But I was not aware until this moment that you would be guilty of the vulgarity of boasting of your noble connections. Allow me to point out to you that your manners would not be tolerated in my family.”

“Your horrid family will hot be called upon to tolerate me!” Juliana replied, quivering with anger. “I cannot conceive how I could have been fool enough to fancy myself in love with you. Faith, I believe I pitied you, and mistook that for love. When I think what a mésalliance I have escaped, I vow I find myself shuddering!”

“You should thank God, as I do, ma’am, that you have been saved from an alliance that could only end in the lasting misery of us both. I beg leave to bid you farewell, and I trust, ma’am, that you will be fortunate enough to be solicited in marriage next time by a man who will be blind to the folly and conceit of your nature.” With which parting shot Mr. Comyn executed a low bow, and went downstairs without one backward look.

Rejecting the lackey’s offer to summon a chair, he left the Hôtel Saint-Vire, and strode off down the street in the direction of his own lodging. He had not covered more than half the distance, when all at once he seemed to change his mind, and retraced his steps till he came to a side road. He turned down this, traversed a broad place and arrived presently, and for the second time that evening, at the Hôtel Charbonne.

The lackey who opened the door to him had ushered the Marquis of Vidal out not twenty minutes earlier, and his well-trained countenance betrayed surprise. Upon being asked if Miss Challoner were still up, he said cautiously that he would inquire, and left Mr. Comyn (whom he began to suspect of clandestine intentions) to kick his heels in the hall.

Miss Challoner, who had been sitting in a brown study, by the fire, started when the servant came in, and glanced at the clock. The hands pointed to a quarter past midnight.

“The Englishman who was here first to-night, mademoiselle, is here again,” announced the lackey severely.

“Mr. Comyn?” she asked, surprised.

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

Wondering very much what could have happened to bring him back, Miss Challoner requested the man to admit him. The lackey withdrew, and said later to his colleagues downstairs that the customs of English demoiselles were enough to shock a decent Frenchman.

Meanwhile Mr. Frederick Comyn stood once more before Miss Challoner, and said with less than his usual precision: “I beg pardon, ma’am, to intrude upon you at this hour, but I have a proposal to make to you.”

“A proposal to make to me?” repeated Mary.

“Yes, ma’am. Earlier this evening I informed you that if it lay within my power to serve you I should count myself honoured.”

“Oh, have you found a way of escape for me?” Mary said eagerly. “Is that what you mean? I would welcome any way!”

“I am glad to hear you say as much, ma’am, for I fear that what I have to propose to you will take you by surprise, and even, perhaps, be repugnant to you.” He paused, and she noticed how hard his eyes were. “Miss Challoner, in touching upon the extreme delicacy of your situation I do not desire, believe me, to offend you. But your story is known to me; you yourself have divulged as much to me as my Lord Vidal. Your plight is desperate indeed, and while I can readily understand your reluctance to wed his lordship, I am bound to hold with him that nothing save marriage can extricate you from a predicament that must necessarily blacken — though unjustly — your fair name. Madam, I humbly beg to offer you my hand in marriage.”

Miss Challoner, who had listened to this amazing speech with an expression of frank bewilderment on her face, recoiled. “Good gracious, sir, have you gone mad?” she cried.

“No, ma’am. Mad I have been for the past weeks, but I am now in the fullest possession of my faculties.”

Her suspicion that he had been drinking gave place to a more exact comprehension of the true state of affairs. “But, Mr. Comyn, you are plighted to Juliana Marling,” she said.

He replied very bitterly: “I am happy to be able to inform you, ma’am, that Miss Marling and I have cut the knot of what each of us has been brought to regard as our entanglement.”

“Oh!” said Mary in distress. “Have you quarrelled with Juliana, then? Dear sir, I do not know what has passed between you, but if Juliana is to blame she will be sorry soon enough. Go back to her, Mr. Comyn, and you will see that I am right”

“You mistake, ma’am,” he replied curtly. “I have not the smallest desire to return to Miss Marling. Pray do not imagine that I am come to you in a fit of pique. I have for a week past realized the unwisdom of our betrothal. Miss Marling’s conduct is not what I wish for in my wife, and her decision to release me from my obligations I can only regard as the greatest favour she has ever bestowed upon me.”

Miss Challoner turned quite pale at this awful pronouncement, and sat weakly down on the couch. “But this is dreadful, sir!” she said. “You are speaking in anger, in a way that you will regret when you have had time to reflect.”

“Madam, I speak not from anger but from infinite relief. Whether you choose to accept of my offer or not my betrothal to Miss Marling is at an end. I shall not conceal from you that I fancied myself to be much in love with her; nor shall I insult your intelligence by pretending an ardour for yourself which I can naturally have had no time to acquire. If you will be content with my respect and deep regard, ma’am, I shall count myself fortunate to have secured the hand of one whose character and conduct command my sincere admiration.”

“But it is impossible!” Mary said, still feeling dazed. “Surely, surely all cannot be at an end between you and Juliana?”

“Irrevocably, ma’am!”

“Oh, I am sorry!” Mary said pitifully. “As for your offer, indeed I thank you, but how should we two wed without love, or even acquaintance?”

He said seriously: “At any other time, ma’am, such haste would be strange indeed. But your situation being what it is, you are bound to seek refuge in wedlock with all possible speed. Ma’am, allow me to speak with a plainness you may deem impertinent; I think you, as well as I, come to this marriage with a bruised heart. Forgive me, Miss Challoner, but having watched you I could not but suspect that you are not indifferent to my Lord Vidal. I do not inquire what are the reasons that induce you to refuse his suit; I say only, each of us is disappointed: let us endeavour, together, to heal our separate hurts.”

She covered her face with her hands. She was so taken by surprise that her brain reeled. Here indeed was the answer to her prayer, yet all she could say was: “Please leave me. I must think, sir; I cannot answer you now. I know that I ought to refuse your offer, but such is the hopelessness of my position that I dare not even do that without a pause for calm reflection. I must see Juliana; I can scarcely believe that all is indeed as you say.”

He picked up his hat at once. “I will withdraw, ma’am. Pray think well over what I have said. I shall remain at my present lodging until noon to-morrow, then, if I do not hear from you, I shall depart from Paris. Permit me to wish you good night.” He bowed, and left the room, and after a few moments Miss Challoner rose, and went slowly up to her bedchamber.

She heard her hostess and Miss Marling come in an hour later, and presently got up out of her bed, and slipped on a dressing-gown, and went to scratch softly on Juliana’s door. Juliana called to her to come in. A sleepy tirewoman was undressing her, and closely as she scrutinized the vivid little face Mary could perceive nothing in it but a natural weariness. “Oh, is it you, Mary?” Juliana said. “You should have come; it was vastly entertaining, I do assure you.” She began to chatter of the people she had met, and the dresses she had seen. Her eyes were bright and hard, her good spirits perhaps rather feverish, but she deceived her friend. She sent the abigail to bed when her dress was safely hung in the wardrobe, her jewels locked up, and her hair brushed free of powder, and Mary ventured to ask whether Mr. Comyn had been at the ball.

Juliana jumped into bed, saying: “Oh, don’t speak to me of that man! I cannot conceive how I was ever fool enough to fancy myself in love with him. ’Tis all over between us; you cannot imagine how glad I am!”

Mary looked at her worriedly. “But, Juliana, you did love him — you do still!”

“I?” Miss Marling gave a scornful laugh. “Lord, how solemn you are, my dear! I thought it would be famous good fun to let him think I’d elope with him, but if you must know, I never meant to marry him at all.” She shot a quick look at Miss Challoner’s grave face. “I shall marry Bertrand de Saint-Vire,” she said, to clinch the matter.

This announcement startled Miss Challoner almost as much as it would have startled the Vicomte, had he been privileged to hear it. She said: “How can yon talk so, Juliana? I don’t believe you!”

Miss Marling laughed again. “Don’t you, my dear? I make no doubt you think me monstrous heartless. Oh, yes, I can see you do! Well, we don’t have hearts in our family, as you’ll discover, I fear.”

“You need not fear for me,” said Mary calmly. “I am not going to marry Lord Vidal, I assure you.”

“You don’t know my cousin,” replied Juliana. “He means to wed you, and he will — in Uncle Justin’s teeth, too! Lord, I would give a guinea to see my uncle’s face when he hears! Not that it would tell me much,” she added pensively. She clasped her hands round her knees. “You’ve not yet met his grace, Mary. When you do — ” she paused. “I can’t advise you. I am for ever making up my mind just what I shall say to him, and then when the time comes I am not able to.”

Miss Challoner ignored this. “Juliana, be frank with me: have you quarrelled with Mr. Comyn?”

“Lord, yes, a dozen times, and I thank heaven this is the last!”

“You will be sorry in the morning, my dear.”

“It don’t signify in the least. My mamma would never permit me to marry him, and though it is very good sport to plan an elopement it would be amazingly horrid to be really married to someone quite outside one’s own world.”

“I did not know you were as selfish as that, Juliana,” said Miss Challoner. “I’ll bid you good night.”

Juliana nodded carelessly, and waited until the door was firmly shut behind her friend. Then she cast herself face downwards on her pillows and wept miserably.

Meanwhile Miss Challoner sought her own bed, and lay thinking of the strange proposal she had received. Her disgust at Juliana’s behaviour was untempered by surprise. By now she had reached the conclusion that the manners of the whole family of Alastair were incomprehensible to a less exalted person. My Lord Vidal was reckless, prodigal, and overbearing; his cousin Bertrand appeared to be a mere pleasure-seeker; Juliana, too, in whom Miss Challoner had suspected a warmer heart, was frivolous and calculating. From Juliana’s and Vidal’s conversation she had gleaned what she believed to be a fair estimate of the remaining members of the family. Lady Fanny was worldly and ambitious; Lord Rupert apparently wasted his time and substance on gambling and other amusements; his grace of Avon seemed to be a cold, unloving and sinister figure. The only one whom Miss Challoner felt any desire to know was the Duchess. She was inclined to think that Mr. Comyn was well rid of a bad bargain, and this conclusion brought her back once more to the consideration of her own difficulties. It seemed ridiculous in an age of civilization, but Miss Challoner had no doubt that in some way or other Vidal would contrive to carry her off to Dijon. She believed that he was prompted more by his love of mastery than by his first chivalrous impulse. What he had said he would do he must do, reckless of consequence. He could not, she realized, drag an unwilling bride to the altar, but if he succeeded in transporting her all the way to Dijon she felt that she would be then in so much worse a predicament that marriage with him would be the only thing left to her. Against this marriage she was still firmly set. God knew she would ask nothing better than to be his wife, but she had sense enough to know that nothing but unhappiness could result from it. If he had loved her, if she had been of his world, approved by his family — but it was useless to speculate on the impossible. She might steal away from this house very early in the morning, and lose herself in some back-street of Paris. She could not forbear a smile at her own simplicity. She would certainly lose herself, but it seemed probable that his lordship, who knew Paris, would have little trouble in finding her. She was without money and without friends; if she left the protection of Mme. de Charbonne’s house she could see only one end to her career. Marriage with Mr. Comyn would be preferable to that. At least his degree was not immeasurably superior to hers; he did not seem to be a gentleman of very passionate affections, and she felt that she could succeed in making him tolerably happy. After all, she thought, neither of us is of a romantic disposition, and at least I shall be rid of this dread of sudden exposure.

Mr. Comyn was eating his breakfast some hours later when a surprised serving-maid ushered Miss Challoner into the room. The visit of a young and personable lady, quite unattended, and at such an unseasonable hour, roused all the abigail’s curiosity. Having shut the door on Miss Challoner, she naturally put her ear to the keyhole. But as the conversation inside the room was conducted in English she soon withdrew it.

Mr. Comyn got up quickly from the table, and laid aside his napkin. “Miss Challoner!” he said, coming forward to greet her.

Mary, who was dressed in the grey gown and hooded cloak she had worn on the night of her abduction, gave her hand into his, and as he bent to kiss it, said in her quiet way: “Please inform me, sir, now that you have had time in which to reflect, do you not desire to return to Miss Marling?”

“Indeed, no!” said Mr. Comyn, releasing her hand. “Is it possible — do you in fact come in the guise of an envoy?”

She shook her head. “Alas, no, sir.”

He was careful not to allow the disappointment he felt to creep into his voice. “I imagined, ma’am, that you had come to give me your answer to my offer. I need hardly assure you that if you will accept of my hand in marriage I shall count myself extremely fortunate.”

She smiled, but rather wanly. “You are very kind, sir. I do not feel that I have any right to accept what I can only regard as a sacrifice, but my situation is desperate, and I do accept it.”

He bowed. “I shall endeavour to make you comfortable, ma’am. We must now decide what were best to do. Will you not be seated?”

“You are breakfasting, sir, are you not?”

“Pray do not regard it, ma’am; I have had all I need.”

Miss Challoner’s eyes twinkled. “I, sir, on the other hand, am fasting.”

He slightly pressed her hand. “Believe me, I perfectly understand that food at this moment is repugnant to you. Let us be seated by the fire.”

Miss Challoner said meekly: “Food is by no means repugnant to me, Mr. Comyn. Pray allow me to share your breakfast. I am very hungry.”

He looked rather surprised, but at once handed her to a chair by the table. “Why, certainly, ma’am! I will send to procure you a clean cup and plate.” He went to the door and nearly fell over the serving-maid, who had not yet abandoned hope of catching a phrase spoken in her own tongue. His command of the French language being what it was, he was unable to deliver a rebuke, but he managed to ask for a cup and plate.

When these were brought Miss Challoner poured herself out some coffee, and spread butter on a roll. She proceeded to make a hearty meal. Mr. Comyn was assiduous in plying her with food, but he could not help feeling in a dim way that her attitude in face of a dramatic situation was a trifle mundane. Miss Challoner, biting a crust with her little white teeth, had also her private thoughts, and remembered other meals partaken in the company of a gentleman. This gave her a heartache, and since she had no notion of indulging in such a weakness, she said briskly: “Where are we to be married, sir? How soon can we leave Paris?”

Mr. Comyn poured her out another cup of coffee. “I have considered the matter, ma’am, and I have two plans to submit to you. It must, of course, be as you wish. We can, if you like, return to England, where I apprehend there will be no difficulty in arranging our immediate nuptials. I should point out to you, however, that in England our marriage must necessarily give occasion for comment The alternative is to travel to Dijon, and there to find the English divine, whose direction was given to me by Lord Vidal. Should you choose this course, ma’am, I suggest that following upon the ceremony we should journey into Italy for a space. Against this scheme must be set my natural scruples, which urge me not to make use of the information provided by his lordship.”

“I don’t think that need trouble you,” said Miss Challoner matter-of-factly. “Which of these plans do you prefer?”

“It is entirely for you to decide, ma’am.”

“But really, sir — ”

“Whatever you choose will be agreeable to me,” said Mr. Comyn.

Miss Challoner, feeling that the argument might be interminable if embarked on, gave her vote for Dijon. She had no desire to return to England until comment had died down. Mr. Comyn then found several points in favour of her choice, and promised that they should set forward before noon. Miss Challoner informed him that she would need to buy herself some few necessities, as she had nothing but the clothes she stood in. Mr. Comyn was quite shocked, and asked her very delicately whether she had sufficient money for her needs. She assured him that she had, and while he went to order a post-chaise, she sallied forth to the nearest shops. Pride had forbidden her to bring any of the clothes of the Marquis’s providing. She had, perforce, worn them at the Hôtel de Charbonne, but they were all carefully packed away now; gowns of tiffany with blonde scallops, gowns of taffetas, of dimity, of brocaded satin, cloaks richly trimmed with black lace, négligées so soft and fine they slid through the fingers, lawn shifts, point-lace tuckers, Turkey handkerchiefs — all the fineries of a lady of fashion, or — she thought, with a wry smile — of a light-of-love. She would not keep so much as one comb or haresfoot.

Shortly before noon they set forth on their journey. Both were rather silent, and until the chaise drew out of Paris they sat looking absently out of the windows, each one thinking sadly of the might-have-been.

Mr. Comyn roused himself at last from his abstraction to say: “I think it only right to tell you, ma’am, that I left a billet to be delivered to my Lord Vidal.”

Miss Challoner sat bolt upright. “What, sir?”

“I could not but consider that I owed it to him to inform him of your safety and my intentions.”

“Oh, you should never have done that!” Miss Challoner said, horrified. “Good God, what a fatal mistake!”

“I regret that you should disapprove, but I remembered that his lordship had made himself responsible for your well-being, and I could not reconcile it with my conscience to make this journey without apprising him of our contract.”

Miss Challoner struck her hands together. “But don’t you see, sir, that we shall have him hard on our heels? Oh, I would not have had you tell him for the world!”

“I beg you will not distress yourself, ma’am. Much as I dislike the least appearance of secretiveness I thought it advisable to write nothing of our destination to his lordship.”

She was only partly reassured, and begged him to order the postillions to drive faster. He pointed out to her that greater speed would court disaster, but when she insisted he obediently let down the window, and shouted to the postillions. Not immediately understanding what he called to them these worthies drew up. Miss Challoner then assumed the direction of affairs, and whatever doubts the postillions had had concerning the nature of the journey were set at rest. Upon the chaise resuming its progress Mr. Comyn, pulling up the window, said gravely that he feared the men now suspected an elopement. Miss Challoner agreed that this was probably true, but maintained that it did not signify. Mr. Comyn said with a touch of severity that by informing the men, as well as he could, that he was her brother he had hoped to avert the least suspicion of impropriety.

Miss Challoner’s ever lively sense of humour was aroused by this, and she slightly disconcerted Mr. Comyn by chuckling. She explained apologetically that after the events of the past week considerations of propriety seemed absurd. He pressed her hand, saying with feeling: “I believe you have suffered, ma’am. To a delicately nurtured female Lord Vidal’s habits and manners must have caused infinite alarm and disgust.”

Her steady grey eyes met his unwaveringly. “Neither, sir, I do assure you. I don’t desire to pose as a wronged and misused creature. I brought it all on myself, and his lordship behaved to me with more consideration than perhaps I deserved.”

He seemed to be at a loss. “Is that so, ma’am? I had supposed, I confess, that you had suffered incivility — even brutality — at his hands. Consideration for others would hardly appear to be one of his lordship’s virtues.”

She smiled reminiscently. “I think he could be very kind,” she said, half to herself. “I am indebted to him for several marks of thoughtfulness.” Her smile grew, though her eyes were misty. “You would scarcely credit it in one so ruthless, sir, but his lordship, though excessively angry with me at the time, was moved to provide me with a basin on board his yacht. I was never more glad of anything in my life.”

Mr. Comyn was shocked. “It must have been vastly disagreeable to you, ma’am, to be — ah — unwell and without a female companion.”

“It was quite the most disagreeable part of the whole adventure,” agreed Miss Challoner. She added candidly: “I was vilely sick, and really I believe I should have died had his lordship not forced brandy down my throat in the nick of time.”

“The situation,” said Mr. Comyn austerely, “seems to have been sordid in the extreme.”

Miss Challoner perceived that she had offended his sensibilities, and relapsed into a disheartened silence. She began to understand that Mr. Comyn, for all his prosaic bearing, cherished a love for the romantic, which Lord Vidal, a very figure of romance, quite lacked.

The journey occupied three days, and neither the gentleman nor the lady enjoyed it. Miss Challoner, of necessity the spokesman at every halt on the route, found herself comparing this flight with her previous journey to Paris, when the best rooms at all the inns were prepared for her, and she had nothing to do but obey my lord’s commands. Mr. Comyn, in his turn, could not but feel that his companion behaved with a matter-of-factness quite out of keeping with the circumstances. She seemed more concerned with the ordering of meals at the inns, and the airing of sheets which she declared to be damp, than with the unconventional daring of the whole expedition. A natural female agitation would have given his chivalry more scope, but Miss Challoner remained maddeningly calm, and, far from betraying weakness or nervous fears, assumed the direction of the journey. The only betrayal of uneasiness which she permitted herself was her continual plea to travel faster. Mr. Comyn, who did not at all care to be bumped and jolted over bad roads, and who thought, moreover, that such a feverish pace made their progress appear like an undignified flight, several times remonstrated with her. But when he condemned the speed as dangerous, Miss Challoner laughed, and told him that if he had ever travelled with the Marquis he would not consider himself to be moving fast now.

This remark, and various others which had all to do with his lordship, at last induced Mr. Comyn to observe, not without a touch of asperity, that Miss Challoner did not seem to have disliked her late abduction so much as he had supposed. “I confess, ma’am,” he said, “that I had imagined you desperate in the power of one whose merciless violence is, alas, too well know. Apparently I was mistaken, and from your present conversation I am led to assume that his lordship behaved with a respect and amiability astonishing in one of his reputation.”

Her eyes twinkled a little. “Respect and amiability ...” she repeated. “N-no, sir. His lordship was peremptory, overbearing, excessively quick-tempered, and imperious.”

“And yet, ma’am, not repugnant to you.”

“No. Not repugnant to me,” she said quietly.

“Forgive me,” said Mr. Comyn, “but I think you cherish a warmer feeling for Lord Vidal than I was aware of.”

She looked gravely at him. “I thought, from something you said to me, that you had guessed I was not — indifferent to him.”

“I did not know, ma’am, that it had gone so deep. If it is so indeed, I do not immediately perceive why you were so urgent to be quit of him.”

“He does not care for me, sir,” said Miss Challoner simply. “Nor am I of his world. Conceive the very natural dismay that must visit his parents were he to ally himself with me. Fathers have been known to disinherit their sons for such offences.”

Mr. Comyn was greatly moved. “Madam, the nobility of your nature is such that I can only say, I honour you.”

“Nonsense!” said Miss Challoner sharply.