Devil’s Cub

“Foolish?” he said. “You were mad! Good God, what a damnable muddle!” He sprang up, and began to pace to and fro. Over his shoulder he threw at her: “You little fool, Sophia was never worth the risk you took. You may have saved her from me, but there will be others soon enough.”

“Oh no,” she said distressfully. “Oh no, my lord!”

“I tell you, yes. Now what the devil’s to be done to get you out of this coil?”

“If you would arrange a passage for me on the packet, my lord, I could manage very well,” she said.

A swift smile lit his eyes. “What, dare you brave the sea again?”

“I must,” she answered. “I dare say it will not be so rough this tune.”

The smile died; he shook his head impatiently. “No, you can’t do that. There’s no going home now.”

She looked startled. “Where else can I go? I must go home.”

“You cant,” he repeated. “Do you realize you’ve been in my company since yesterday? My poor girl, it’s you who are ruined, not Sophia.”

She said placidly: “But I am not ruined. I can think of some tale to tell that will satisfy people.”

He gave a short laugh. “Once it’s known you were aboard my yacht, no one will believe you innocent, my dear,” he said.

“But no one need—” She stopped, remembering the note she had left for her mother.

He read her thought. “Left a letter, did you? Of course you did! What woman ever did not?”

She felt abashed, and said nothing. He came back to the fireplace, and stood scowling down at her. “Let’s finish this bout with buttons off,” he said. “I don’t care to make mistakes. The fault may be mine, but what business have you with a mother—with a sister such as Sophia?”

“Sir,” said Miss Challoner, giving nun a very straight look,

“I don’t design to be thought above mamma or Sophia.”

“Design!” he said scornfully. “You are above them. They

—but I don’t wish to offend you more than I have done.”

Miss Challoner said with composure: “You have insulted me in every conceivable way, sir, so pray do not boggle at plain speaking now. I assure you I shall hear you with equanimity.”

“Very well,” said his lordship, cold as ice. “Then I shall take leave to inform you, ma’am, that the manners of your parent and sister are neither those of persons of Quality, nor those of virtuous females. You, upon the other hand, are apparently both virtuous and gently bred. And,” continued his lordship with a flash of anger, “it is not my custom to abduct respectable young females.”

“I did not want you to abduct me,” Miss Challoner pointed out. “I am very sorry for your mistake, and I fear that my own conduct may have been partially to blame.”

“Your conduct,” said the Marquis crushingly, “was damnable! The manners you assumed at Newhaven were those of the veriest trollop; your whole escapade was rash, wanton, and ill-judged. If I had used my riding whip to school you as I promised you would have had no more than your just deserts.”

Miss Challoner sat very straight in her chair, and looked steadfastly down into her lap. “I could not think of any other way to keep Sophia safe from you,” she said in a small voice. “Of course, I see now that it was madness.” She swallowed something in her throat. “I never thought that you would take me instead.”

“You are a little fool,” replied the Marquis irritably.

“I may be a little fool,” retorted Miss Challoner, plucking up spirit, “but at least I meant it for the best. While as for you, my lord, you meant nothing but wicked mischief right from the start. You tried to rum Sophia, and when I would not let you, you ruined me instead.”

“Acquit me,” said his lordship coldly. “I don’t ruin persons of your quality.” .

“If you call me a respectable young female again, my lord, you will induce a fit of the vapours in me,” interrupted Miss Challoner with asperity. “If you had discovered my respectability earlier, it would have been the better for both of us.”

“It would indeed,” he agreed.

Miss Challoner hunted for her handkerchief, and blew her little nose defiantly. It was a prosaic action. In her place Sophia would have made play with wet eyelashes. Further, Sophia would never have permitted herself to sniff. Miss Challoner undoubtedly sniffed. Lord Vidal, whom feminine tears would have left unmoved, was touched. He dropped his hand on her shoulder, and said in a softer voice: “You’ve no need to cry, my dear. I told you I don’t ruin ladies of your quality.”

She said, with a challenging gleam in her eye: “I am rather tired or I assure you I should not indulge in a weakness I despise.”

“Egad, I believe you wouldn’t,” said his lordship.

Miss Challoner put the handkerchief away. “If you know what I must do next, I wish you would tell me, sir.”

“There’s only one thing you can do,” said his lordship. “You must marry me.”

The inn parlour spun round before Miss Challoner’s eyes. She shut them, unable to bear a sight so reminiscent of all she had undergone aboard the Albatross. “What?” she said faintly.

Vidal raised his brows. “You seem amazed,” he said.

“I am amazed,” replied Miss Challoner, venturing to open her eyes again.

“You have a remarkably pretty notion of my character, ma’am,” he said ironically.

Miss Challoner rose from her chair, and curtsied. “You are extremely obliging, my lord, but I must humbly decline the honour of becoming your wife.”

“You will marry me,” said his lordship, “if I have to force you to the altar.”

She blinked at him. “Are you mad, sir? You cannot possibly wish to marry me.”

“Of course I don’t wish to marry you!” he said impatiently. “I scarcely know you. But I play my cards in accordance with the rules. I have a number of vices, but abducting innocent damsels and casting them adrift on the world is not one of them. Pray have a little sense, ma’am! You eloped with me, leaving word of it with your mother; if I let you go you could not reach your home again until tomorrow night at the earliest. By that time—if I know your mother and sister at all—the whole of your acquaintance will be apprised of your conduct. Your reputation will be so smirched not a soul will receive you. And this, ma’am, is to go down to my account! I tell you plainly, I’ve no mind to become an object of infamy.”

Miss Challoner pressed a hand to her forehead. “Am I to marry you to save my face, or yours?” she demanded. “Both,” replied his lordship.

She looked doubtfully at him for a moment. “My lord, I fear I am too tired to think very clearly,” she sighed.

“You’d best go to bed,” he said. He put his hand on her shoulder, and held her away from him, looking down at her. She met his gaze frankly, wondering what he would say next. He surprised her yet again. “Don’t look so worn, my dear; it’s the devil of a coil, but I won’t let it harm you. Good night”

Unaccountable tears stung her eyelids. She stepped back, and dropped a curtsy. “Thank you,” she said shakily. “Good night, my lord.”

Chapter VIII

miss challoner had pleaded fatigue, but it was long before she slept. Her desperate problem leered at her half through the night, and it was not until she had reached some sort of a decision that she could achieve slumber.

She was shocked to realize that for a few breathless moments she had forgotten Sophia in a brief vision of herself wedded to his lordship. “So that’s the truth, is it?” said Miss Challoner severely to herself. “You are in love with him, and you’ve known it for weeks.”

But it was not a notorious Marquis with whom she had fallen in love; it was with the wild, sulky, unmanageable boy that she saw behind the rake. “I could manage him,” she sighed. “Oh, but I could!” She did not permit herself to indulge in this dream for long. Marriage, on all counts, was out of the question. He did not give the snap of his fingers for her; he must marry, when the tune came, some demure damsel of his own degree; and—the greatest bar of all—she could not steal a bridegroom from under Sophia’s nose.

Having disposed thus of his lordship, Miss Challoner set herself resolutely to think of her own future. Vidal had shown her the impossibility of a return to Bloomsbury; it would be equally impossible to seek shelter with her grandfather. After pondering somewhat drearily upon this sudden isolation, she dried her eyes, and tried to think of an asylum. At the end of two hours, being a female of considerable strength of mind, she decided that her wisest course would be to remain in France, to assume a new name, and to try to obtain a post as governess in a respectable French household.

She began, eventually, to compose a letter to her mother, and in the middle of a phrase which had become strangely involved, she fell asleep.

She partook of chocolate and a roll in bed next morning, and when she at length came downstairs to the private parlour, she was met by the discreet Fletcher, who informed her, not without a note of severity in his voice, that his lordship’s arm had broken out bleeding again in the night, and looked this morning uncommon nasty. His lordship was still abed, but meant to travel.

“Has a surgeon been sent for?” inquired Miss Challoner, feeling like a murderess.

“His lordship will not have a surgeon, madam,” said Fletcher. “It is the opinion of Mr. Timms, his lordship’s valet, and myself, that he should see one.”

“Then pray go and fetch one,” said Miss Challoner briskly. Fletcher shook his head. “I daren’t take it upon myself, ma’am.”

“I don’t ask you to,” Miss Challoner replied. “Have the goodness to do as I bid you.”

“I beg pardon, madam, but in the event of his lordship desiring to know who sent for the surgeon—?”

“You will tell the truth, of course,” said Miss Challoner. “Where is his lordship’s bedchamber?”

Fletcher eyed her with dawning respect. “If you will allow me to show you, madam,” he said, and led the way upstairs.

He went ahead of her into the room. Miss Challoner heard Vidal say. “Oh, let her come in!” and awaited no further invitation. She went in, and when the door had shut behind Fletcher, walked up to the big four-poster bed and said contritely: “I did hurt you. Indeed, I am sorry, my lord.”

Vidal was sitting up in bed, propped by pillows; his eyes looked a little feverish, and his cheeks were flushed.

“Don’t apologize,” he said. “You did very well for a beginner. I regret receiving you like this. I hoped you’d sleep later. Will you be ready to set forward at noon?”

“No, I fear I shall not,” she answered. “We will stay where we are for to-day.” She picked up a pillow from the floor, and arranged it carefully under Vidal’s injured arm. “Is that more comfortable, sir?”

“Perfectly, I thank you. But whether you are ready, or not, we start for Paris today.”

She smiled lovingly at him. “It’s my turn to play the tyrant, sir. You will stay in bed.”

“You are mistaken; I shall do no such thing.”

He sounded cross; she wanted to take his face between her hands and kiss away his ill-humour. “No, sir, I am not mistaken.”

“May I ask, ma’am, how you propose to keep me a-bed?”

“Why yes, I have only to remove your clothes,” Miss Challoner pointed out.

“Very wifely,” he commented.

She winced a little at that, but said without a tremor: “I have sent your man for a surgeon. Pray do not blame him.”

“The devil you have!” said his lordship. “I’m not dying, you know.”

“Certainly not,” replied Miss Challoner. “But you drank a great deal too much wine yesterday, and I have little doubt it is that that has made you feverish, and maybe inflamed the wound. I think you should be blooded.”

My lord regarded her speechlessly. She drew a chair up and sat down. “Do you feel well enough to talk with me for a few minutes, sir?”

“Of course I am well enough to talk with you. What do you want to talk about?”

“My future, if you please.”

He looked frowningly at her. “That’s my affair, ma’am.”

She shook her head. “It is kind in you, my lord, but I do not aspire to be your wife. I have thought very deeply, and I believe I know what will be best for me to do. May I tell you what I have decided?”

He said with a flash of humour: “There seems to be a vast deal of decision about you this morning, my dear. Tell me, by all means.”

She folded her hands in her lap; it occurred to him that she was a very restful woman. “What you said last night, my lord, was true; I cannot return to my home. You must not think that this will grieve me overmuch. I have never been very happy there. So I have formed a plan for my future which I believe to be tolerably sensible. If you will take me to Paris I shall be grateful for your escort. Once I am there it is my intention to seek a post in a genteel family as governess. I thought, perhaps you would be able to put me in the way of it, since I suppose you have a large acquaintance in Paris.”

His lordship broke in at this point. “My good child, are you proposing that I should recommend you to some respectable matron?”

“Couldn’t you?” asked Miss Challoner anxiously.

“I could, of course, but—Lord, I’d give a monkey to see the matron’s face!”

“Oh!” said Miss Challoner. “I see. It was stupid of me not to think of that.” She relapsed into profound thought. “Well, if I cannot find anyone to recommend me as a governess, I think I shall become a milliner,” she announced.

He stretched out his right hand, and clasped both of hers in it. He was no longer laughing. “I don’t often suffer from remorse, Mary, but you are fast teaching me. Come, can’t you stomach me as a husband?”

“Even if I could, my lord, do you think I would steal you from my sister? It was not for that I took her place.”

“Steal me be damned!” said his lordship rudely. “I’d never the smallest notion of marrying Sophia.”

“Nevertheless, sir, I could not do it. The very thought of marriage is absurd. You do not care for me nor I for you, and my estate is too far removed from yours.”

“What is your estate?” he asked. “Who was your father?”

“Does it matter?” she said.

“Not a whit, but you puzzle me. You did not get your breeding on the distaff side.”

“I was fortunate enough to be educated at a very select seminary, sir.”

“You were, were you? Who placed you there?”

“My grandfather,” answered Miss Challoner unexpansively.

“Your father’s father? Is he alive? Who is her

“He is a general, sir.”

Vidal’s brows drew together. “What county?”

“He lives in Buckinghamshire, my lord.”

“Good God, never tell me you are Sir Giles Challoner’s grandchild?”

“I am,” said Miss Challoner calmly.

“Then I am undone, and we must be married at once,” said Vidal. “That stiff-necked old martinet is a friend of my father’s.”

Miss Challoner smiled. “You need not be alarmed, sir. My grandfather has been very kind to me in the past, but he disowned my father upon his marriage, and has washed his hands of me since I choose to live with my mother and sister. He will not concern himself with my fate.”

“He’ll concern himself fast enough if he gets wind of his granddaughter in a milliner’s shop,” said Vidal.

“Of course I shall not become a milliner under my own name,” Miss Challoner explained.

“You won’t become one under any name, my girl. Make the best of it: marriage with me is the only thing for you now. I am sorry for it, but as a husband I believe you won’t find me exacting. You may go your own road—I shan’t interfere with you so long as you remain discreet—I’ll go mine. You need see very little of me.”

The prospect chilled Miss Challoner to the soul, but observing my lord’s heightened colour she judged it wiser not to argue with him any further at present. She got up, saying quietly: “We will talk of it again presently, my lord. You are tired now, and the surgeon will soon be here.”

He caught her wrist and held it. “Give me your word you’ll not slip off while I’m laid by the heels!”

She could not resist the temptation of touching his hand. “I promise I’ll not do that,” she said reassuringly. “I won’t leave your protection till we reach Paris.”

When the surgeon came he talked volubly and learnedly, with a great many exclamations and hand-wavings. His lordship suffered this for some time, but presently became annoyed and opened his eyes (which he had closed after the first five minutes) and disposed of the little surgeon’s diagnosis and proposed remedies in one rude and extremely idiomatic sentence.

The doctor started back as from a stinging nettle unwarily grasped: “Monsieur, I was informed that you were an Englishman!” he said.

My lord said, amongst other things, that he did not propose to burden the doctor with the details of his genealogy. He consigned the doctor and all his works, severally and comprehensively described, to hell, and finished up his epic speech by a pungent and Rabelaisian criticism of the whole race of leeches.

Whereupon the doctor, who had listened rapt to the unfaltering diatribe, said with enthusiasm: “But it is wonderful! An Englishman to have so great a command of the French tongue! It is what compels the admiration! I shall now bleed you. Madame will have the goodness to hold the basin. The English have such phlegm!”

Vidal became aware of Miss Challoner standing demurely by the door. “What, are you here?” he said. “Do you understand French?”

“Tolerably well, sir,” she replied placidly. “How well?” demanded his lordship. A glint of amusement shone in her grey eyes. “Well enough to understand the doctor, my lord. But I could not follow very much of what you said. Most of the words you used were strange to me.”

“Thank God for that!” said Vidal. “Now go away, there’s a good girl, and leave me to deal with this fellow.”

“Having phlegm, sir, I am to hold the basin,” replied Miss Challoner. “You did as much for me, after all.”

He grinned. “I’d a notion you’d never forgive me for that, whatever else you forgave.”

“Forgive you? I was exceedingly grateful,” said Miss Challoner matter-of-factly.

“You’re a remarkable woman,” he said. “But I’ll have none of this blood-letting for all that.”

Miss Challoner had the bowl ready. She said kindly: “It will not hurt you, sir, I assure you.”

For the second time that morning his lordship was bereft of speech.

Miss Challoner said, as one reasoning with a rebellious child: “If you desire to be well, and able to make .the journey to Paris, you will do as the surgeon advises. But if you are minded to be stupid and obstinate, I shall find the means to go to Paris by myself.”

His lordship sat up. “Thunder and turf, how old do you take me for?”

“Not very old,” said Miss Challoner, “or you would have more sense.” She smiled at him, a warm smile of understanding. “Please permit this poor man to blood you, my lord.”

“Oh, very well!” snapped his lordship, relaxing again. “And for the future, ma’am, I’ll thank you not to interfere in my concerns.”

“I’ll try and remember your expressed wish, sir,” promised Miss Challoner.

My lord gave his wrist up to the surgeon, but continued to look at Mary. “If I don’t end by wringing your neck, my girl, you will be in no way to blame,” he informed her.

The cupping left his lordship too weak to attempt the journey to Paris. He slept most of the day, and when he lay awake seemed disinclined to talk. Miss Challoner, a capable female, took charge of the entire party, and issued a number of orders concerning my lord’s well-being that made Mr. Fletcher exchange startled looks with Mr. Timms. Both these highly discreet gentlemen treated her from the first with proper respect (which surprised her), but by the end of the day their respect was no longer due to their fear of his lordship.

The Marquis had the first intimation of the change that was taking place in his household at four in the afternoon, when Fletcher, his face like a mask, presented him with a bowl of thin gruel. He had received it from Miss Challoner, and meeting Mr. Timms upon the stairs, had said with great presence of mind: “You may take this to his lordship, Horace.”

Mr. Timms, after one glance at the tray, declined the office. “And if I was you, Mr. Fletcher, I would send it by one of these Frenchies,” he recommended.

The suggestion offended Mr. Fletcher’s dignity, and he said stiffly: “And why, my lad, can you not wait upon his lordship?”

“Because I don’t want a basin of gruel thrown at my head,” replied Mr. Timms with brutal frankness.

The Marquis looked at the contents of the bowl in the silence of amazement. Then he looked at his major-domo, who stared woodenly at the bed-post. “My good fool,” said the Marquis, “what is this repulsive pap?”

“Gruel, my lord,” replied Fletcher, expressionless. The Marquis leaned his head back on the pillows, and continued to survey his henchman. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he inquired softly.

“No, my lord.”

“Then what the devil do you mean by bringing me a bowl of gruel? Where did you get it? Don’t dare to tell me a Frenchman perpetrated such an abomination!”

The lady prepared it, my lord.”

There was a short but pregnant silence. “Take it away,” said his lordship, with dangerous restraint.

“The lady told me, my lord, that I was on no account to do so,” said Fletcher apologetically.

My lord’s fingers crooked themselves round one of the handles of the bowl. “Are you going to take it away, Fletcher?” he inquired very gently.

Fletcher, with one eye warily on the movement of that white hand, said, abandoning the struggle: “Certainly, my lord.”

Vidal removed his hand from the bowl. “I thought so. Bring me something fit to eat, and a bottle of claret.”

Fletcher bowed and removed both himself and the tray. Three minutes later the door was opened again. Miss Challoner came in bearing the same tray. She set it down on the table by the bed, and handed his lordship a napkin. “I am sorry I cannot let you have your bottle of claret, sir,” she said. “But I think you won’t find my gruel so very bad. I am thought to make it tolerably well.”

There was a spark of anger in Vidal’s eyes. “You’re outside your r61e, ma’am,” he told her. “I don’t require either your solicitude or your gruel. Have the goodness to refrain in future from meddling in my concerns.”

Miss Challoner was not noticeably dashed. “Very well, sir, but will you not, to oblige me, at least taste my gruel?”

“No, ma’am, I will not.”

Miss Challoner picked the tray up again, with a small unhappy sigh. “I did not mean to offend you, my lord,” she said wistfully. “I thought, perhaps, that if I prepared it very carefully you would not be so unkind as to refuse even to partake of a spoonful.”

“Then you are wrong, ma’am,” replied his lordship icily.

“Yes,” Miss Challoner said rather sadly “I see that I was. I suppose it was presumptuous of me. I am sorry, sir.”

She went slowly to the door. My lord said, in the voice of one goaded beyond endurance: “Oh, bring it back, girl—bring it back! I’ll swallow the brew if it will please you.”

Miss Challoner seemed to hesitate. “Yes, indeed, it would please me, but I do not at all desire to plague you with it.”

“For God’s sake let’s have no more words!” besought Vidal. “Give it to me, and have done!”

Miss Challoner obediently brought back the tray. She sat down by the bed, and watched his lordship drink the gruel. He looked suspiciously at her, but she preserved an innocent front. He finished what was left in the bowl, and put it down. “Mary,” said he, “come a little closer and present your left cheek.”

A dimple quivered. “Why, sir?”

“Don’t you know?” said Vidal.

She laughed. “Why yes, sir. You would dearly love to box my ears.”

“I should,” he said. “Don’t think I’m deceived by that meek face! Where are you going?”

“Down to the parlour, sir.”

“Stay with me. I want to talk to you.” This was decidedly a command. Miss Challoner raised her eyebrows in fault hauteur. Vidal grinned. “Dear Mary, pray do me the honour of remaining at my side.”

She sat down again, slightly inclining her head. “Certainly, sir, but I do not think I gave you leave to call me Mary.”

“Give me leave now, then,” said Vidal. “Are we not betrothed?”

She shook her head. “No, my lord.”

“Dominic,” he corrected.

“No, my lord,” repeated Miss Challoner steadily.

“Mary,” said his lordship, “may I proffer a piece of good advice?” She looked inquiring. “Do not be for ever arguing with me,” said the Marquis. “It will be very much better for you to refrain. My intentions are admirable, but I seldom act up to them, and I should not like to lose my temper with you again.”

“But, indeed, my lord, I cannot—”

“Dear Mary,” said his lordship, “hold your tongue!”

“Very well, sir,” replied Miss Challoner obediently.

“First,” Vidal said, “I must ask you to keep within doors while we remain in Dieppe. I don’t want a chance traveller to see you here.”

Miss Challoner wrinkled her brow thoughtfully. “I will do as you wish, of course, but I do not think I number among my acquaintance anyone likely to be visiting France at ibis season.”

“Possibly not,” answered the Marquis. “But I number many. Second, I much regret that it will not be possible for me to marry you immediately we arrive in Paris.”

“Do you mean, sir, that you have, upon reflection, perceived the wisdom of my plans?”

“No, ma’am, I do not,” Vidal said. “I mean that there are Certain difficulties attendant upon the marriage of English Protestants in France.”

“Oh!” said Miss Challoner hopefully.

“The obvious course is to visit the Embassy,” said my lord, “but since the Ambassador is related to me and I know personally at least three of the Secretaries, the Embassy is the last place I shall visit.”

“If,” said Miss Challoner, “you feel so much aversion from displaying me to your numerous friends, sir, I wonder that you still persist in this determination to wed me,”

“And if,” said the Marquis with some asperity, “you would put yourself to the trouble of employing the brain I imagine you must possess, you might possibly perceive that my reluctance to display you to my numerous friends arises from motives of the most disinterested chivalry.”

“Indeed?” Miss Challoner said, unabashed. “Well, I could scarce be expected to think that, could I?”

“Oho!” said his lordship. “So you’ve claws, have you?” Miss Challoner said nothing. “To put it plainly, Miss Challoner, the Ambassador, my esteemed cousin, and his Secretaries, my unregenerate friends, have not infrequently visited my hôtel when a lady was there to act as hostess. They would not consider the presence of a lady under my roof worthy of comment. But were I to walk into the Embassy with a request to be married at once to a lady, Irving already under my protection, I should cause, not comment, but something in the nature of an uproar. Within a week, my dear, it would be all over town that you’d run off with me, and trapped me into wedding you.”

“Oh!” said Miss Challoner, flushing.

“Precisely, my love,” said his lordship sardonically. “So since the reason for our marriage is to stop any breath of scandal attaching to your fair name, we shall be wed as quietly as I can contrive. After which, I can easily make it appear that I met you, very properly, in Paris, where you were sojourning with friends, and married you, most romantically, out of hand.”

“I see,” said Miss Challoner. “And how do you propose to achieve all this, my lord?”

“There are still Protestants in France, my dear. All I have to do is to find a pastor. But it may not be easy, and until I have done it you will have to remain hidden in my house. I can’t trust my aunt or I’d place you in her charge.” He paused. “There is of course my obese great-uncle Armand de Saint-Vire. No. His tongue wags too much.”

“You would appear to have many relatives in Paris, sir,” remarked Miss Challoner. “I felicitate you.”

“You need not,” said Vidal. “I am more in the habit, myself, of consigning ’em all to the devil. Not only is my mother a Frenchwoman, but my paternal grandmother must needs have been one too. The result, ma’am, is that my damned French cousins litter Paris. There is the aunt in whose charge I’ll not place you. She is more properly a cousin, but is known to my generation as Tante Elisabeth. You’ll meet her. She has a fondness for me. The rest of the family need not concern you. I never permit ’em to disturb me.”

“And your obese great-uncle?” inquired Miss Challoner.

“Ah, he don’t belong to that side of the family. He’s the head of my mother’s family. He married upon coming into the title, very late in life. He is a friend of my father’s, and like him, has one son, my cousin Bertrand. You’ll meet him, too.”

“Shall I?” said Miss Challoner. “When?”

“When I’ve married you.”

“The prospect is naturally alluring, sir,” said Miss Challoner, rising, “but even these treats in store don’t tempt me to marriage.” Upon which she curtsied gracefully and walked to the door.

“Vixen,” said his lordship, as she opened it.

Miss Challoner curtsied again, and withdrew.

Upon the following morning she found his lordship partaking of a substantial breakfast, and since he seemed to be very much better, she made no demur. The surgeon visited the inn at noon, and although he exclaimed aloud against Vidal’s intention to travel that day, he had no objection, he said, to his patient leaving his bed for a short time. When he had gone Miss Challoner prevailed upon the Marquis to postpone their departure one more day. She spent the afternoon in her own room, but came down to the private salle shortly before the dinner hour, and walked plump into an agitated conference at the foot of the stairs.

Several excited persons were gathered about a neat and unemotional gentleman in travelling dress of unmistakable English cut. M. Plançon, the landlord, was apparently trying to make himself intelligible to this gentleman, but in the intervals of volubility, he cast up despairing hands to heaven, while two serving-men and an ostler took up the tale with the maximum amount of gesticulation and noise.

Miss Challoner hesitated, mindful of his lordship’s instructions, but at that moment the traveller said in a placid voice: “I regret, my good fellows, that I do not understand more than one word in ten of your extremely obliging advice, but I am English—Anglais, vous savez, and I do not speak French. Ne comprenny pas.”

Miss Challoner’s motherly instincts were aroused. She moved forward. “If I could be of assistance, sir?”

The neat gentleman turned quickly, and executed a bow. “You are very kind, madam. I find myself unable to converse with these fellows. It is amazing to me that amongst them all there is not one with a knowledge of the English tongue.”

Miss Challoner smiled. “It is most reprehensible, sir, I agree. But if you will explain your difficulties to me, I may be able to interpret them to the landlord.”

“I shall be excessively indebted to you, ma’am. Permit me to make myself known to you. My name is Comyn, and I have but this moment landed from the packet. It is my intention to travel by the stage-coach to Paris, and I was endeavouring when you came upon me to ascertain from these fellows when and where I may find the diligence.”

“I will ask Plançon,” said Miss Challoner, and turned to the landlord.

Perceiving that she had constituted herself interpreter, M. Plangon opened negotiations with an impassioned plea to be preserved from these mad Englishmen who expected honest Frenchmen to understand their own barbarous language—and this in France, voyez-vous!

At the end of an animated dialogue lasting for five minutes, Miss Challoner was able to inform Mr. Comyn that the diligence would start for Paris in an hour’s time, and from this very inn.

Mr. Comyn thanked her, and begged that she would add to her kindness by informing the landlord that he required dinner immediately.

Cheered by this information, M. Plançon disappeared to execute the order, and his hirelings drifted away upon their respective businesses.

Mr. Comyn said that he had been prodigiously fortunate to have found a countrywoman in Dieppe, and inquired politely whether Miss Challoner was also bound for Paris.

Miss Challoner replied tranquilly that her plans were uncertain, and was about to retreat to the shelter of the parlour when Timms came down the stairs, bowed to her and said with distressing clarity: “His lordship’s compliments, madam, and he will do himself the honour of dining with you at five o’clock.”

Miss Challoner blushed scarlet, felt herself quite unable to meet Mr. Comyn’s look of mild surprise, and fled.

Ten minutes later, one of the inn-servants scratched at Vidal’s door, and upon being bidden to come in, presented his lordship with a note.

Vidal was seated before the dressing-table. He took the note and read in Miss Challoner’s handwriting: “Pray, my lord, be careful. There is an Englishman here, of the name of Comyn. I fear I have been indiscreet, but I was obliged to speak with him, and while I was still in his company, your message was delivered to me, so that I was quite undone.”

My lord swore softly and appeared to meditate for a moment. Then he tore up the note and resumed his toilet. In a few minutes he was ready, and made his way downstairs to the coffee-room. Mr. Comyn was standing by the window, consulting his watch. He looked up as the Marquis came in, and exclaimed: “Lord Vidal! So it was—” He broke off, and coughed.

“It was,” said his lordship. “But why in the fiend’s name you must needs come to Dieppe is a matter passing my comprehension.”

“I cannot conceive why it should pass your comprehension, sir,” replied Mr. Comyn. “Considering that it was yourself who told me to journey to France.”

“I seem to spend my time telling people to do things I have not the smallest desire they should do,” said the Marquis bitterly. “Mr. Comyn, you have, I think, met a lady in this inn.”

“I have, sir.”

The Marquis said: “Contrive to forget it”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Comyn, bowing.

Vidal smiled. “Egad, I’m beginning to like you, my prospective relative. That lady is shortly to become my wife.”

“You surprise me,” said Mr. Comyn truthfully.

“I am sure I do. Permit me to inform you that her presence in this inn is due, not to her own choice, but to my forcible abduction of her. She is a lady of unimpeachable virtue, and I shall be obliged if you will forget that you have ever seen her in my company.”

“Sir,” said Mr. Comyn, a stickler for exactitude, “I never have seen her in your company, and I have therefore nothing to forget.”

“You’re a good fellow,” said his lordship, with unusual kindness. “I’ll trust you.” He sat himself down in the window, and favoured Mr. Comyn with a brief, unvarnished account of the happenings of the past two days.

Mr. Comyn listened with grave attention, and remarked at the end that it was an edifying story. He added that he was honoured by his lordship’s confidence, and begged to proffer his felicitations upon his approaching nuptials.

“Oh, go to the devil!” snapped the Marquis, exasperated.

Chapter IX

His lordship’s remarks to Miss Challoner on the impropriety and folly of addressing strangers in French inns were caustic and denunciatory, but had no visible effect upon the lady. She continued to eat her dinner, lending no more than a polite ear to his homily, and appeared to consider Mr. Comyn’s inability to speak French an adequate excuse. My lord speedily undeceived her. “You do not seem to me to comprehend the extreme delicacy of your situation,” he said.

Miss Challoner subjected a dish of sweetmeats to close inspection, and finally selected the best of them. “I do,” she replied. “I have had plenty of time for reflection, my lord, and I cannot but realize that I’ve not a shred of reputation left to me.”

The Marquis laughed. “You’re mighty cool over it, ma’am.”

“You should be glad of that,” Miss Challoner said serenely. “The task of conveying to Paris a female suffering from a series of strong hysterics would, I imagine, be vastly distasteful to you.”

“It would,” said the Marquis with conviction.

“Moreover,” pursued Miss Challoner, once more inspecting the dish of sweetmeats, “I cannot discover that a display of agitation on my part would achieve much beyond my own exhaustion and your annoyance.” She bit into a sugar plum. “Also,” she said meditatively, “you have upon several occasions threatened me with extreme violence, so that I should be excessively fearful of the results of driving you to distraction.”

The Marquis brought his open hand down upon the table, and the glasses jumped. “Don’t lie!” he said. “You are not in the least afraid of what I may do to you! Are you?”

“Not at the moment, sir,” she admitted. “But when you have broached your second bottle, I own to some qualms.”

“Let me inform you, ma’am, that I am not considered dangerous until the third bottle.”

Miss Challoner looked at him with a faint smile. “My lord,” she said frankly, “you become dangerous immediately your will is crossed. I find you spoiled, impetuous, and shockingly overbearing.”

“Thank you,” said his lordship. “Perhaps you prefer the sedate demeanour of your friend Mr. Comyn?”

“He seemed to be a gentleman of ordinary propriety, certainly,” concurred Miss Challoner.

“I, on the other hand, am a gentleman of extraordinary impropriety, of course.”

“Oh, not a gentleman, sir, a nobleman,” said Miss Challoner with irony.

“You hit hard, ma’am. Pray, was there anything else in Mr. Comyn that you found worthy of remark?”

“To be sure, sir. His manners were of the most amiable.”

“I’ve none at all,” said his lordship blandly. “Being a nobleman, ma’am, I don’t need ’em. Pray let me pass you this second, dish of comfits which has apparently escaped your notice.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Challoner.

The Marquis sipped his wine, watching her over the rim of his glass. “I think it only fair to warn you, ma’am, that this paragon is secretly contracted to a cousin of mine. In fact, his business in Paris, and I mistake not, is to elope with her.”

“Indeed?” Miss Challoner said innocently. “Your cousin is no doubt very like you?”

“Oh, just a family likeness, ma’am,” retorted his lordship. “She should be pleased with you,” he added thoughtfully.

“I cannot conceive why, sir.”

“She’d be pleased with any female who married me.”

Miss Challoner looked at him curiously. “She is so fond of you?”

“No, that ain’t the reason. Her mamma, my ambitious Aunt Fanny, intends her to be my bride—a prospect Juliana dislikes as much as I do.”

Miss Challoner said quickly: “Juliana?”

“My cousin.”

“Yes, I understand that, my lord. But what is her surname?”

“Marling,” said his lordship. “Now what’s to do?”

Miss Challoner jumped in her chair. “Your cousin! Juliana Marling! But I know her!”

“Do you?” said Vidal, not visibly excited. “A mad piece, ain’t she?”

“Oh, she was my very dearest friend!” Miss Challoner said. “But I never dreamed she was your cousin! We were at the same seminary, you see.”

“I’ll wager Juliana learned precious little there,” remarked Vidal.

“Not very much,” allowed Miss Challoner. “They nearly sent her away once, for—er—flirting with the drawing-master. She always said they only forgave her because her uncle was a duke.”

“Kissed the drawing-master, did she? She would!”

“Is she really going to marry Mr. Comyn?” inquired Miss Challoner.

“She says so. But she can’t run off with him now until our affair is settled. Egad, it’s providential that you know her!” He pushed back his chair and got up. “She’s staying with my cousin Elisabeth—bundled off too young to be out of Comyn’s way. I’ll go and pay my respects to her immediately we reach Paris, and tell her the whole story. She’s a rattle-pate, but she’s fond of me, and she’ll do as I bid her. She shall have met you in Paris, just as you were on the point of returning to England with—oh, an aunt, or some such thing. She will tell Tante Elisabeth that she has prevailed upon you to visit her for a week or two and you will go to the Hotel Charbonne surrounded by a positive fog of respectability. From whence, my dear, I shall presently elope with you—before, I trust, Tante has had time to discover the truth.”

Miss Challoner was thinking fast. If Juliana were in Paris, Juliana could help her to obtain a post in some genteel household. Knowing that lively damsel, she had no fear that she might be shocked at her friend’s extraordinary escapade. “Yes, my lord, that is a very good notion—some of it, but I believe you have not perceived the whole good of Juliana’s presence in Paris. You have said yourself, sir, that I shall be surrounded by a positive fog of respectability. I have only to pretend to my mother that Juliana was with you from the start of our journey, and my reputation is saved.”

He shook his head. “I fear not, Mary. It’s a good lie, but too many people would know it for a lie. Moreover, my dear, if I know aught of your mamma, her first care will have been to apprise my parents of your abduction, and to create as much stir as possible. I am well aware that she meant to try and force me into marriage with Sophia by some such method. Didn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Miss Challoner, flushing and shamefaced.

The Marquis touched her cheek with a careless finger as he passed her chair. “No need to look like that, child; I know. Happily, these plans will be delayed a little by the absence of both my parents from town. My father was to have left for the races at Newmarket upon the day I took my leave of him; and my mother was to have gone with him as far as Bedford, where she will be at this moment, staying with the Vanes. We have, therefore, at least a fortnight’s grace, I imagine, but certainly not longer. Write to your mother, apprising her of your betrothal: that should silence her.”

“And you?” she said, watching him as he wandered restlessly about the room. “Do you intend to write your father?”

An involuntary smile twisted his mouth. He refrained from telling her that it was not his libertine behaviour that would annoy his grace, but his honourable intention to marry. He said only: “No need: his grace is not likely to concern himself with my affairs.”

“I do not desire to speak with any disrespect of your father, sir, but from the little I have heard of him I take it that though he might not concern himself with your more clandestine affairs, he would do all in his power to prevent your marriage with one so unsuitable as myself.”

“I devoutly hope you are wrong, my dear,” replied his lordship humourously. “For when my father uses every means to achieve an end, he invariably does achieve it.”

Miss Challoner got up, smiling a little ironically. “Vastly pretty, my lord. I could almost suppose that you wanted to marry me.”

She moved towards the door which his lordship held open for her. “I assure you, ma’am, I am becoming hourly more reconciled to the prospect,” he said, and surprised her by taking her hand and kissing it, very much in the grand manner.

She reflected on her way upstairs that the sooner she left his lordship’s protection the better it would be for her peace of mind.

Upon the following day they resumed their journey, travelling by easy stages, and, at Miss Challoner’s request, at a moderately decorous pace.

She was somewhat amused at the Marquis’s entourage. Besides the chaise that carried her, there was a light coach bearing a quantity of luggage, and Mr. Timms. His lordship rode, and seemed to be accompanied by half his household. Miss Challoner remarked on the size of the cortege, and learned that the Marquis had thought himself to be travelling light. He described his mother’s frequent progresses, and made her feel sad to think that she would never meet the Duchess of Avon. Her grace, it appeared, had only two ways of travelling. Either she set forth carrying all her wardrobe, and most of her furnishings, with a small army of servants preceding her to make ready at every inn she stopped at, or she started out in an immense hurry, forgetting to provide herself with so much as a change of dress.

Miss Challoner soon discovered that the Marquis adored his mother, and by the end of the journey she had learned much concerning the engaging Duchess. She learned something, too, of the Duke, enough to make her feel thankful that the sea separated her from him. He seemed to be a somewhat sinister person, with uncanny powers of penetration.

They spent four days upon the road to Paris, and the Marquis only twice lost his temper. The first occasion was at Rouen, when Miss Challoner slipped off to see the cathedral, narrowly escaped being seen by a party of English persons, and was treated by her return to a furious tirade; and the second was induced by her refusal to wear the clothes of his lordship’s providing. This quarrel began to assume alarming proportions, and when the Marquis announced his intention of dressing Miss Challoner with his own hands, she thought it prudent to capitulate. His eyes were still smouldering when she reappeared in a gown of blue dimity, and it took her some time to coax him out of his wrath.

Upon their arrival in Paris his lordship conducted Miss Challoner immediately to the Hotel Avon and left her there while he went in search of his cousin. It was already late in the evening, and neither Miss Marling nor Mme. de Char-bonne was to be found at home. The Marquis learned that they had gone to a ball at the house of one Mme. de Chateau-Morny, and promptly followed them there. He had taken the precaution of changing his travelling clothes for a coat of yellow velvet rather heavily laced with gold, and satin breeches. Mr. Timms, on his mettle in this land of exquisites, managed to powder his raven locks with fair thoroughness, and further to fix a diamond buckle over the black riband that tied them back. There were diamond buckles on the Marquis’s shoes, and a diamond pin in the foaming lace at his throat. Mr. Timms would dearly have liked to slip a few rings on to my lord’s long white fingers, but the Marquis pushed them all aside, and would wear nothing but his gold signet. He was impatient of the hares-foot, and the patch-box, but when Timms besought him almost in tears not to go to a ball in Paris with his face entirely free from rouge, he laughed, and submitted. Consequently when he took his leave of Miss Challoner, cosily ensconced beside the fire in the big library, she thought for a moment that a stranger had entered the room. The sight of his lordship in full ball dress with diamonds glinting, ruffles of the finest lace falling over his hands, his hah: adequately powdered and arranged in neat curls, and a patch at the corner of his mouth, almost took her breath away. She laughed at him, but thought privately that he looked magnificent. He grimaced at his reflection in the mirror over the mantelpiece. “I look like a damned Macaroni, dont I?” he said. “If I know anything of Juliana, I shall find her at some ball or rout. Don’t go to bed till I get back.”

He had no difficulty in entering Mme. de Chateau-Morny’s hotel, and when he reached the head of the stairway Madame herself greeted him with a cry of mingled surprise and delight, and laughed to scorn his apology for coming uninvited to her party. He escaped from her presently, and, entering the ballroom, stood looking round through his eye-glass. His very height at once attracted attention; several persons hailed him, demanding to know whence he had sprung, and more than half the young ladies in the room determined to dance with him before the night was done.

Miss Marling, at the moment of the Marquis’s entry, was going down the dance with a slim young gentleman dressed in the very latest mode. She caught sight of her cousin, gave an unmaidenly shriek, and seizing her partner by the hand, left the dance without ceremony, and rushed to greet him.

“Vidal!” she exclaimed, and gave him both her hands.

Half the young ladies in the room regarded her enviously. “Don’t be a hoyden, Ju,” said his lordship, raising first one hand and then the other to his lips. “God defend me, is it you, Bertrand?”

“It is her cousin, the wicked Marquis,” whispered a brunette to a languishing blonde.

“How she is fortunate!” sighed the blonde, gazing soulfully at Vidal.

The modish young gentleman swept a deep bow, flourishing a handkerchief strongly scented with amber. He had a mobile and somewhat mischievous countenance, and was known to every anxious parent as a desperate flirt. “Cher Dominique, it is even I, thy so unworthy cousin. What villainy has brought you here?”

“Damn your impudence,” said his lordship cheerfully. “And what’s the meaning of all this, Bertrand?” He let fall his glass, and took the lively Vicomte’s ear between finger and thumb.

“English, you understand,” murmured a dowager to her vis d-vis. “They are all quite sans gêne, I have heard.”

“My earrings? But it is de règle, my dear! Oh, but the very, very latest mode!” the Vicomte answered. “Let go, barbarian!”

Juliana tugged at his lordship’s sleeve. “Vidal, it is amazingly pleasant to see you again, but what in the world are you doing here? Never will you tell .me my uncle has sent you to—to be a dragon because of my dearest Frederick!”

“Lord, no!” replied Vidal. “Where is your dearest Frederick? Not here tonight?”

“No, but he is in Paris. Oh, Vidal, where can we talk? I have so much to tell you!”

The Vicomte broke in on this and said in English: “Vidal, I am with pistols quite incompetent, but you who are so much in the habit of it, will you not shoot me this abominable Frederick?”

Juliana gave a little crow of laughter, but told the Vicomte she would not permit him to talk in such a fashion.

“But he must be slain, my adored one! It is well seen that he must be slain. Anyone who aspires to steal you from me must be slain. Behold Vidal, the very man to do it!”

“Do it yourself, puppy,” said his lordship. “Pink him with that pretty sword of yours. Juliana would love to have a duel fought in her honour.”

“It is an idea,” agreed the Vicomte. “Decidedly it is an

idea. But I must ask myself, can I do it? Is he perhaps a master of sword-play? That gives to think! I cannot fight for the hand of the peerless Juliana unless I am sure I win. You perceive how ridiculous that would make me to appear.”

“It won’t make you more ridiculous than those earrings,” said his lordship. “I wish you would go away; I want to talk to Juliana.”

“You inspire me with jealousy the most profound. Do I find you at the Hôtel Avon? I shall see you perhaps tomorrow, then.”

“Come and dine with me,” Vidal said, “but no earrings, mind!”

The Vicomte laughed, waved an airy good-bye, and went off in search of further amusement.

“Ju, I want your help,” the Marquis said quickly. “Where can we be undisturbed?”

Her eyes sparkled. “My dearest Vidal, what can you have done now? Tell me at once, dreadful creature. Of course, I’ll help you! I know of a little room where we shall be quite alone.”

The Marquis followed her to where a curtain hung over an archway, and held it back for her to pass through.

“Juliana, you minx, were you ever at a ball without finding a little room where you could be quite alone?”

“No, never,” answered Miss Marling with simple pride. She seated herself on a couch, and patted the place beside her invitingly. “Now tell me!”

He sat down, and began to play with her fan. “Do you recall the blonde piece you once saw me with at Vauxhall Gardens?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, she had blue eyes and looked stupid.”

“She was stupid. I’ve run off with her sister instead of her, and the devil’s in it, I must marry the girl.”

“What?” shrieked Miss Marling.

“If you screech again, Ju, I’ll strangle you,” said his lordship. “This is serious. The girl’s not like the one you saw. She’s a lady. You know her.”

“I don’t contradicted Miss Marling positively. “Mamma would never let me know the sort of female who would run off with you, Dominic.”

“Don’t keep interrupting!” commanded Vidal. “I meant to bring the other sister to Paris, since I had to leave England—”

“Merciful heavens, what have you done that you had to leave England?” cried Miss Marling.

“Shot a man in a duel. But that’s not important. The fair sister was to have come with me, but this one got wind of it and took her place to save her.”

“I expect she wanted you herself,” said the sceptical Miss Marling.

“She don’t want me; she’s too strait-laced. I didn’t discover the cheat till Newhaven was reached. The girl thought to make me believe Sophia had planned the trick. I did believe it.” He frowned down at the fan he still held. “You know what I’m like when I lose my cursed temper, Ju?” Miss Marling shuddered dramatically. “Well, I did lose it. I forced the girl to come aboard the Albatross, and brought her over to France. At Dieppe, I discovered the mistake I’d made. She was no Sophia, but a lady, and virtuous to boot.”

“I’ll be bound she enjoyed it prodigiously for all that,” sighed Miss Marling. “I should.”

“I dare say,” said his lordship crushingly, “but this girl is not a minx. There’s nothing for it but to marry her. I want to do that as quickly as may be, and until I can arrange it I want you to befriend her.”

“Vidal, I never, never thought that you would turn romantic!” said Miss Marling. “Tell me her name at once!”

“Challoner—Mary Challoner,” replied the Marquis.

She fairly leaped up from the couch. “Mary! What, my own dear Mary, who left school and was never more heard of? Dominic, you wicked, abominable creature! Where is she? If youVe frightened her, I vow I’ll never speak to you again!”

“Frightened her?” he said. “Frightened Miss Challoner? Don’t you know her better than that? She’s the coolest woman that ever I met.”

“Oh, do take me to her at once!” begged his cousin. “I should like of all things to see her again. Where is she?”

“At the H6tel Avon. Listen to what I want you to do.”

He told her his plan; she nodded her approval, and straightway dragged him off to the card-room where Mme. de Char-bonne was playing at euchre. “Tante, here is Vidal!” she announced.

Madame gave him her hand and a preoccupied smile. “Cher Dominique!” she murmured. “One told me that you were here. Come and visit me tomorrow.”

“Tante, only fancy!—Vidal tells me one of my dearest friends is in Paris. Tante, pray listen to me! I am going to see her at this very moment, for Vidal says she leaves tomorrow for England with her aunt.”

“But how can you go this moment?” objected madame.

“Vidal says he will escort me. You know mamma will let me go anywhere with Vidal. And he will bring me safe home when I’ve seen Mary. So do not wait for me, will you, Tante Elisabeth? Not here, I mean.”

“It’s all very irregular,” complained madame, “and you interrupt the game, my dear. Take her away, Dominique, and do not be late.”

Half an hour later Miss Challoner, dozing before the fire, was roused by an opening door, and looked up to see her friend Juliana come quickly into the room. “Juliana!” she cried joyfully.

“Mary!” squeaked Juliana, and flung herself into Miss Chal-loner’s arms.

Chapter X

mrs. challoner’s emotions upon reading her elder daughter’s letter found expression in a series of loud shrieks that brought Sophia running to her room. “Read that!” gasped the afflicted parent, and thrust the note into Sophia’s hands.

When Sophia had mastered its contents she wasted no time, but went off into strong hysterics, drumming her feet on the carpet, and becoming alarmingly rigid. Mrs. Challoner, a practical woman, dashed the contents of a jug of water over her, and upon Sophia recovering sufficiently to break into a flood of tears mixed with sobbing complaints of her sister’s wickedness, she sat down by her dressing-table, and thought very deeply. After some time, during which Sophia had worked herself into a white heat of fury, Mrs. Challoner said abruptly: “Hold your tongue, Sophy. It may do very well, after all.”

Sophia stared at her. Mrs. Challoner threw her a look of unusual impatience, and said: “If Vidal has run off with Mary, I’ll make him marry her.”

Sophia gave a choked scream of rage, “She shan’t have him! She shan’t, she shan’t! Oh, I shall die of mortification!”

“I never thought to marry Mary well,” went on her mother, unheeding, “but I begin to see that nothing in the world could be better than this. Lord, the Gunnings will be nothing to it! To think I was intending Joshua for Mary, and all the time the sly minx was meaning to steal Vidal from under your nose, Sophy! I declare I could positively laugh at myself for being so simple,”

Sophia sprang up, clenching her fists. “Mary to be a Marchioness? I tell you I’ll kill myself if she gets him!”

“Oh, don’t fret, Sophy,” Mrs. Challoner reassured her. “With your looks you will never want for a husband. But Mary, whom I never dreamed would be wed, unless it were to Joshua—! La, it is the most amazingly fortunate thing that could ever be.”

“She isn’t going to marry Vidal!” Sophia said in a voice that shook with passion. “She’s gone to save my honour, the interfering, hateful wretch! And now it’s her honour will be ruined, and I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it!”

Mrs. Challoner folded up Mary’s letter. “It’s for me to see she’s not ruined, and I promise you I shall see to it. My Lady Vidal—oh, it is famous! I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.”

Sophia’s fingers curled like a kitten’s claws. “It’s me Vidal wants, not Mary!”

“Lord, what has that to say to anything?” said Mrs. Challoner. “It’s Mary he has run off with. Now don’t pout at me, miss! You will do very well, I don’t doubt. There’s O’Halloran, mad for you, or Fraser.”

Sophia gave a little scream. “O’Halloran! Fraser! I won’t marry a plain mister! I won’t! I’d sooner drown myself!”

“Oh well, I’m not saying you might not do better for yourself,” replied Mrs. Challoner. “And if only I can get Mary safe wedded to Vidal there’s no saying who she may not find you. For she has a good heart; I always said Mary had a good heart; and she’ll not forget her mamma and sister, however grand she’s to become.”

The prospect of having a husband found for her by Mary proved too much for Sophia’s self-control. She fell into renewed hysterics, but was startled into silence by a smart box on the ear from a mother who had suddenly discovered that her elder daughter was of more account than her pampered self.

She was bundled off to bed; Mrs. Challoner had no time to waste on tantrums. Her chief fear at that moment was that Mary might return uncompromised, and her night’s repose was quite spoiled by her dread of hearing a knock on the front door. When morning came bringing no news of Mary, her maternal anxieties were allayed, and telling Sophia sharply to stop crying, she set about making herself smart for a visit to his grace of Avon. She chose a gown of stiff damson-hued armazine, with one of the new German collars, and a caravan bonnet with a blind of white sarsenet to be let down at will, and thus attired set forth shortly before noon for Avon House. The door was opened by a liveried porter, and she inquired haughtily for his grace of Avon.

The porter informed her that his grace was from home, and having formed his own opinion of Mrs. Challoner’s estate, prepared to shut the door.

That redoubtable lady promptly put her foot in the way. “Then be so good as to take me to the Duchess,” she said.

“Her grace is h’also h’out of town,” replied the porter.

Mrs. Challoner’s face fell. “When do you expect her back?” she demanded.

The porter looked down his nose. “H’it is not my place to h’expect her grace,” he said loftily.

Feeling much inclined to hit him, Mrs. Challoner next inquired where the Duke and Duchess might be found. The porter said that he had no idea. “And h’if,” he continued blandly, “you will have the goodness to remove your foot h’out of the way, I shall be h’able to close the door.”

But it was not until the porter had been reinforced by the appearance of a very superior personage indeed that Mrs. Challoner could be induced to leave the doorstep. The superior personage required to know Mrs. Challoner’s business, and when she replied that this concerned the Duke and Duchess only, he shrugged in a very insulting manner, and said that he was sorry for it, as neither the Duke nor the Duchess was in town.

“I want to know where I can find them!” said Mrs. Challoner belligerently.

The superior personage ran her over with a dispassionately appraising eye. He then said suavely: “Their graces’ acquaintances, madam, are cognisant of their graces’ whereabouts.”

Mrs. Challoner went off with a flounce of her wide skirts at that, and reached home again in a very bad temper. She found Eliza Matcham sitting with Sophia, and it was plain from Eliza’s demeanour that she had been the recipient of all Sophia’s angry confidences. She greeted Mrs. Challoner with an excited laugh, saving: “Oh, dear ma’am, I never was more shocked in my life! Only conceive how we have been hoodwinked, for I could have sworn ’twas Sophia he wanted, could not you?”

“It was me! It is me!” choked poor Sophia “I hope he strangles Mary! And I dare say he has strangled her by now,

for he has a horrid temper. And it win serve her right, the mean, designing thing!”

Finding Mrs. Challoner in an unresponsive mood, Miss Matcham soon took her leave of Sophia, and went away agog with her news. When she had gone Mrs. Challoner soundly rated Sophia for her indiscretion. “It will be all over town by to-night!” she said. “I would not have had you tell Eliza for the world.”

“I don’t care,” Sophia answered viciously. “People shan’t think that he preferred her to me, for it’s not true! She’s a shameless hussy, and so I shall tell everyone.”

“You’ll be a fool if you do,” her mother informed her. “Pray who would believe such a tale? People will only laugh at you the more, and say you are jealous.”

She did not tell Sophia of her fruitless mission to Avon House, but went off again directly after luncheon to visit her brother Henry.

She found only her sister-in-law at home, Henry Simpkins being in the city, but Mrs. Simpkins, perceiving her to be big with news, pressed her warmly to await his return, and dine with them. It did not take Mrs. Simpkins long to possess herself of her sister’s news, and the two dames spent a very comfortable few hours, discussing and exclaiming, and forming plans for the runaways’ marriage.

When Henry and Joshua came in, shortly before five, they were immediately apprised of the whole story. Mrs. Challoner told it with a wealth of detail and surmise, and Mrs. Simp-kins added riders here and there.

“And only fancy, Henry,” Mrs. Challoner ended triumphantly, “she is the slyest thing! For she pretended she was gone off to save Sophy’s reputation, and all the tune she must have meant to run away with the Marquis herself, for if she did not, why didn’t she return as she said she would? Oh, she is the naughtiest piece imaginable!”

A deep groan brought her attention to bear upon her nephew. “Ay, Joshua, it is a sad thing for you,” she said kindly. “But you know I never thought she would have you; for she’s a monstrous pretty girl, and I always said she would make a brilliant marriage.”

“Marriage?” Joshua said deeply. “I wish you don’t live to see her something far other than a wife. Shameless, shameless!”

Mr. Simpkins supported his son. “Time enough to brag of marriages when you have her safe tied to the Marquis,” he said. “If the Duke is indeed from home you must find him. Good God, Clara, one would think you were glad the girl’s gone off like this!”

Mrs. Challoner, knowing her brother’s Puritanical views, hastily dissembled. She told him how she had found both the Duke and the Duchess of Avon absent from town, and he said that she must lose no time in running one or the other to earth. She had no notion how to set about this task, but her sister-in-law was able to assist her. Mrs. Simpkins had not read all the Court journals for years past in vain. Not only could she recite, unerringly, all his grace of Avon’s names and titles, but she was able to inform her sister-in-law that he had a brother living in Half Moon Street, and a sister who had married a commoner, and was now a widow.

Mr. Simpkins, upon hearing the name of his grace’s brother, brushed him aside. Lord Rupert Alastair was known to him by reputation, and he could assure his sister that this nobleman was depraved, licentious, and a spendthrift, and would be the last person in the world likely to aid her to force Vidal into marriage. He advised her to visit Lady Fanny Marling in the morning, and this she in the end decided to do.

Lady Fanny’s servants were not so well trained as those at Avon House, and Mrs. Challoner, by dint of saying that Lady Fanny would regret it if she refused to see her, managed to gain an entrance.

Lady Fanny, dressed in a négligée of Irish polonaise, with a gauze apron, and a point-lace lappet-head, received her in a small morning-room at the back of the house, and having a vague notion that she must be a mantua-maker, or milliner come to demand payment of bills long overdue, she was in no very good humour. Mrs. Challoner had prepared an opening speech, but had no opportunity of delivering it, for her ladyship spoke first, and in a disconcerting fashion. “I vow and declare,” she said stringently, “things are come to a pretty pass when a lady is dunned in her own house! My good woman, you should be glad to have the dressing of me, and as for the people I’ve recommended you to, although I can’t say I’ve ever heard your name before—(I suppose you are Cerisette, or Mirabelle)—I am sure there must be dozens of them. And in any case I’ve not a penny in the world, so it is of no avail to force your way into my house. Pray do not stand there goggling at me!”

Mrs. Challoner felt very much as though she had walked by mistake into a madhouse. Instead of her fine speech, all she could think of to say was: “I do not want money, ma’am! You are quite mistaken!”

“Then if you don’t want money, what in the world do you want?” demanded her ladyship, opening her blue eyes very wide.

She had not offered her unwelcome visitor a chair, and somehow Mrs. Challoner did not care to take one without permission. She had not supposed that Lady Fanny would be so formidable, but formidable she certainly was, in spite of her lack of inches; and her imperious way of speaking, coupled with her air of the great lady, quite threw Mrs. Challoner off her balance. She said somewhat lamely: “I have come to you, ma’am, to learn where I may find the Duke of Avon.”

Lady Fanny’s jaw dropped. She stared at Mrs. Challoner with a mixture of astonishment and indignation. “The Duke of Avon?” she repeated incredulously.

“Yes, ma’am, the Duke of Avon,” reiterated Mrs. Challoner. “It is a matter concerning his honour, let me tell you, and I must see him at once.”

“Good God!” said her ladyship faintly. A flash of anger came into her eyes. “How dare you come to me?” she said. “I vow it passes all bounds! I shall certainly not direct you where you may find him, and I marvel that you should expect it of me.”

Mrs. Challoner took a firm hold on her reticule, and said with determination: “Either the Duke or her grace the Duchess I must see and will see.”

Lady Fanny’s bosom swelled. “You shall never carry your horrid tales to the Duchess, I promise you. I make no doubt at all it’s a pack of lies, but if you think to make mischief with my sister, let me tell you that I’ll not permit it”

“And let me assure you, ma’am, that if you try to prevent me seeing the Duke you will be monstrous sorry for it. Your ladyship need not suppose that I shall keep my mouth shut. If I do not obtain his grace’s direction from you I’ll make an open scandal of it, and so I warn you!”

Lady Fanny curled her lip disdainfully. “Pray do so, my good woman. Really, I find you absurd. Even were his grace ten years younger, I for one should never believe such a nonsensical story.”

Mrs. Challoner felt more than ever that she had strayed into a madhouse. “What has his grace’s age to do with it?” she said, greatly perplexed.

“Everything, I imagine,” replied Lady Fanny dryly.

“It has nothing at all to do with it!” said Mrs. Challoner, growing more and more heated. “You may think to fob me off, ma’am, but I appeal to you as a mother. Yes, your la’ship may well start. It is as a mother, a mother of a daughter that I stand here to-day.”

“Oh, I don’t believe it!” cried Fanny. “Where are my lavender-drops? Mr poor, poor Léonie! Say what you have to: I shall not credit one word of it. And if you think to foist your odious daughter on to Avon, you make a great mistake! You should have thought of it before. I suppose the girl must be at least fifteen years of age.”

Mrs. Challoner blinked at her. “Fifteen years, ma’am? She’s twenty! And as for foisting her on to the Duke, if he has a shred of proper feeling he will make the best of it—though I am far from admitting her to be unworthy of the very highest honours—and accept her as a daughter (and, indeed, she is a sweet, dutiful girl, ma’am, and reared in a most select seminary) without any demur.”

“My good woman,” said Fanny pityingly, “if you imagine that Avon will do anything of the kind you must be a great fool. He has no proper feelings, as you choose to term them, at all, and if he paid for the girl’s education (which I presume he must have done) I am amazed at it, and you may consider yourself fortunate.”

“Paid for her education?” gasped Mrs. Challoner. “He’s never set eyes on her! What in the name of Heaven is your la’ship’s meaning?”

Fanny looked at her narrowly for a moment. Mrs. Chal-loner’s bewilderment was writ large on her face. Fanny pointed to a chair. “Be seated, if you please,” she said. Mrs. Challoner sat down thankfully. “And now perhaps you will tell me in plain words what it is you want,” her ladyship continued. “Is this girl Avon’s child, or is she not?”

Mrs. Challoner took nearly a full minute to grasp the meaning of this question. When she had realized its import she bounced out of her chair again, and cried: “No, ma’am, she is not! And I’ll thank your la’ship to remember that I’m a respectable woman even if I wasn’t thought good enough for Mr. Challoner. He married me for all he came of such high and mighty folk, and I’ll see to it that his grace of Avon’s precious son marries my poor girl!”

Lady Fanny’s rigidity left her. “Vidal!” she said with a gasp of relief. “Good God, is that all?”

Mrs. Challoner was still fuming with indignation. She glared at Fanny, and said angrily: “All, ma’am? All? Do you call it nothing that your wicked nephew has abducted my daughter?”

Fanny waved her back to her chair. “You have all my sympathies, ma’am, I assure you. But your errand to my brother is quite useless. He will certainly not be moved to urge his son to marry your daughter.”

“Will he not then?” cried Mrs. Challoner. “I fancy he will be glad to buy my silence so cheaply.”

Fanny smiled. “I must point out to you, my good woman, that it is your daughter and not my nephew that would be hurt by this story becoming known. You used the word ‘abduct’; I know a vast deal to Vidal’s discredit, but I never yet heard that he was in the habit of carrying off unwilling .females. I presume your daughter knew what she was about, and I can only advise you, for your own sake, to bear a still tongue in your head.”

This unexpected attitude on the part of her ladyship compelled Mrs. Challoner to play her trump card earlier than she had intended. “Indeed, my lady? You are very much in the wrong, let me tell you, and if you imagine my daughter is without powerful relatives, I can speedily undeceive you. Mary’s grandpapa is none other than a general in the army, and a baronet. He is Sir Giles Challoner, and he will know how to protect my poor girl’s honour.”

Fanny raised her brows superciliously, but this piece of information had startled her. “I hope Sir Giles is proud of his grandchild,” she said languidly.

Mrs. Challoner, a spot of colour on either cheek-bone, hunted with trembling fingers in her reticule. She pulled out Mary’s letter, and threw it down on the table before her ladyship. “Read that, ma’am!” she said in tragic accents.

Lady Fanny picked the letter up, and calmly perused it. She then laid it down again. “I have not a notion what it is about,” she remarked. “Pray who may ‘Sophia’ be?”

“My younger daughter, ma’am. His lordship designed to run off with her, for he dotes madly on her. He sent her word to be ready to elope with him two nights ago, and Mary opened the letter. She is none of your frippery good-fornothing misses, my lady, but an honest girl, and quite her grandpapa’s favourite. She meant, as you have seen, to save her sister from ruin. Ma’am, she has been gone two days, and I say that the Marquis has abducted her, for I know Mary, and I’ll be bound she never went with him willingly.”

Lady Fanny heard her in dismayed silence. The affair seemed certainly very serious. Sir Giles Challoner was known to her, and she felt sure that if this girl were in truth his grandchild he would not permit her abduction to pass unnoticed. A quite appalling scandal (if it did not turn out to be worse than a mere scandal) seemed to be brewing, and however waspishly Lady Fanny might have predicted that her nephew would in the end create such a scandal, she was not the woman to sit by and do nothing to prevent it. She had a soft corner for Vidal, and a very real affection for his mother. She had also her fair share of family pride, and her first thought was to apprise Avon instantly of this disastrous occurrence. Then her heart failed her. This was no tale to pour into Avon’s ears, at the very moment when his son had been obliged to leave the country for yet another offence. She had no clear idea of what the outcome of it all would be, or whether it would be possible to hush the matter up, but she determined to send word to Léonie.

She cast an appraising glance at Mrs. Challoner. She was a shrewd woman, and Mrs. Challoner would have been startled had she known how much that she had kept to herself Lady Fanny had guessed.

“I’ll do what I can for you,” Fanny said abruptly. “But you will do well to say nothing of this disagreeable matter to anyone. I shall repeat your very extraordinary story to my sister-in-law. Let me point out to you, ma’am, that if you raise a scandal you will lose the object you have in view. Once your daughter’s name is being bandied from lip to lip I can assure you my nephew won’t marry her. As to scandals, ma’am, I leave it to you to decide who will be most hurt by one.”

Mrs. Challoner hardly knew what to reply. Lady Fanny’s manner awed her; she was uncertain of her ground, for she had expected Lady Fanny to be horrified and alarmed. But Lady Fanny was so calm, so delicately scornful that she began to wonder whether she would be able to frighten the Alastairs with the threat of exposure after all. She wished she had her brother by, to advise her. She said rather pugnaciously: “And if I do keep silent? What then?”

Lady Fanny lifted her eyebrows. “I cannot take it upon myself to answer for my brother. I have informed you that I will tell my sister-in-law your story. If you will have the goodness to leave your address, no doubt the Duchess—or the Duke—will visit you.” She stretched out her hand towards a little silver bell, and rang it “I can only assure you, ma’am, that if wrong has been done his grace will certainly arrange matters honourably. Permit me to bid you good-day.” She nodded dismissal, and Mrs. Challoner found herself rising instinctively from her seat.

The footman was holding the door for her to pass through. She said: “If I do not hear within a day, I shall act as I think best, my lady.”

“There is not the smallest chance that you will hear within the day,” said her ladyship coldly. “My sister is at the moment quite remote from London. You might perhaps hear in three or four days.”

“Well ...” Mrs. Challoner stood hesitating. The interview had not been conducted as she had planned. “I shall wait on you again the day after to-morrow, ma’am. And you need not think I’m to be fobbed off.” She moved towards the door, but paused before she had reached it, and remembered to give Lady Fanny her direction. She then curtsied and withdrew, feeling a little discomfited and considerably annoyed.

Had she been able to transport herself back into the house five minutes later she would have been somewhat comforted. No sooner had the front door closed behind her than Lady Fanny flew up out of her chair, violently rang her hand-bell, and, upon the footman’s return, sent him to find Mr. John Marling at once.

Mr. Marling entered the room presently to find his mamma in a distracted mood.

“Good heavens, John, what an age you have been!” she cried. “Pray shut the door! The most dreadful thing has happened, and you must go immediately to Bedford.”

Mr. Marling replied reasonably: “I fear it will be most inconvenient for me to leave London to-day, mamma, as I am invited by Mr. Hope to accompany him to a meeting of the Royal Society. I understand there will be a discussion on the Phlogistic Theory, in which I am interested.”

Lady Fanny stamped her foot “Pray what is the use of a stupid theory when Vidal is about to shame us all with a dreadful scandal? You can’t go to any society! You must go to Bedford.”

“When you ask, mamma, what is the use of the Phlogistic Theory, and apparently compare it with Vidal’s exploits, I can only reply that the comparison is ridiculous, and renders the behaviour of my cousin completely insignficant,” said Mr. Marling with heavy sarcasm.

“I do not want to hear another word about your tiresome theory,” declared her ladyship. “When our name is dragged in the mud we shall see whether Vidal’s conduct is insignificant or no.”

“I am thankful to say, ma’am, that my name is not Alastair. What has Vidal done now?”

“The most appalling thing! I must write at once to your aunt. I always said he would go too far one of these days. Poor, poor Léonie! I vow my heart quite aches for her.”

Mr. Marling watched her seat herself at her writing-table, and once more inquired: “What has Vidal done now?”

“He has abducted an innocent girl—not that I believe a word of it, for the mother’s a harpy, and I’ve little doubt the girl went with him willingly enough. If she didn’t, I shudder to think what may happen.”

“If you could contrive to be more coherent, mamma, I might understand better.”

Lady Fanny’s quill spluttered across the paper. “You will never understand anything except your odious theories, John,” she said crossly, but she paused in her letter-writing, and gave him a vivid and animated account of her interview with Mrs. Challoner.

At the end of it, Mr. Marling said in a disgusted voice: “Vidal is shameless. He had better marry this young female and live abroad. I quite despair of him, and I feel sure that while he is allowed to run wild in England we shall none of us know a moment’s peace.”

“Marry her? And pray what do you suppose Avon would have to say to that? We can only hope and trust that something may yet be done.”

“I had better journey to Newmarket, I suppose, and inform my uncle,” said Mr. Marling gloomily.

“Oh John, don’t be so provoking!” cried his mother. “Léonie would never forgive me if I let this come to Avon’s ears. You must fetch her from the Vanes at once, and we will lay our heads together.”

“It is impossible not to feel affection for my Aunt Léonie,” announced Mr. Marling, “but have you considered, mamma, that she is capable of treating even this piece of infamy with levity?”

“It does not signify in the least. All you need do is to bear this letter to her, and bring her back to town,” said Lady Fanny imperatively.

Mr. Marling, disapproving but obedient, arrived at Lady Vane’s house near Bedford that evening. There were several people staying there, but he contrived to meet his aunt in a room apart. His countenance was so lugubrious that she asked him in quck alarm if anything were amiss?

“Aunt,” said Mr. Marling gravely, “I am the bearer of bad tidings.”

Léonie turned pale. “Monseigneur?” she faltered. “No, ma’am, so far as I am aware my uncle enjoys his customary health.”

“Ah, mon Dieu, it is Dominique! He has been shot in a duel? drowned in his yacht? dead of a fever? Speak, you!”

“My cousin is well, ma’am. Do not alarm yourself on that score. But the news is the worst imaginable.”

“If he is well it cannot be the worst,” said Léonie. “Please do not prepare me for a shock any more; I find it too alarming. What has happened to my son?”

“Madam, I regret to be obliged to soil your ears with the story, which I myself find excessively disagreeable. Vidal has abducted—I fear perhaps with violence—a young female of virtue and family.”

“Oh, mordieu, it is the bourgeoise!” said Iconic. “And now Monseigneur will be more displeased than ever! Tell me it all!”

Mr. Marling regarded her with an expression of pained severity. “Possibly, my dear aunt, you would prefer to read it. I have a billet for you from my mother.”

“Give it to me at once, then,” said Léonie, and fairly snatched it from his hand.

Lady Fanny’s agitated scrawl covered three pages. Léonie read them quickly, and exclaimed at the end that Fanny was an angel. She said that she would return to town at once, and upon her hostess coming into the room, greeted her with apologies, and the information that Lady Fanny was ill, and needed her. Lady Vane was all solicitude, and put a number of sympathetic questions to John which caused that conscientious young man to wriggle uncomfortably. She prevailed on Léonie to postpone her departure at least until next morning, and this Léonie consented to do out of consideration for her nephew, who had been travelling all day.

He and she set forth next day in her grace’s huge travelling coach. Léonie did not seem to be greatly disturbed by her son’s conduct. She said cheerfully that it was very odd of Dominique to abduct the wrong sister, and asked John what he supposed could have happened. John, who was feeling tired and annoyed, said that he could not venture a guess.

“Well, I think it was very stupid of him,” said the Duchess.

Mr. Marling said austerely: “Vidal’s conduct is nearly always stupid, ma’am. He has neither sense nor decency.”

“Indeed?” said the Duchess dangerously.

“I have endeavoured again and again to interest him in serious things. I am his senior by six years, and I have not unnaturally supposed that my advice and frequent warnings would not go entirely unheeded. It seems I was wrong. The late scandalous happenings at Timothy’s make it positively unpleasant for me to enter the clubs, where I am aware that I must be indicated to any stranger as the cousin of a notorious rake and—not to mince matters—murderer. Moreover—”

“I will tell you something, John,” interrupted the Duchess. “You should be very grateful to Dominique, for of a certainty no one would point you out at all if you were not his cousin.”

“Good God, aunt, do you imagine I wish to achieve notoriety in such a fashion? It is of all things the most repugnant to me. As for this latest exploit—well, I ascribe it very largely to my Uncle Rupert’s influence. Vidal has always chosen to be intimate with him to a degree I and, I may say, my mother, have considered to be unwise in the extreme. I don’t doubt he learned his utter disregard for morality from him.”

“I find you insupportable!” stated the Duchess. “My poor child, it is quite plain to me that you are jealous of Dominique.”

“Jealous?” repeated Mr. Marling, astounded.

“Of a certainty,” nodded the Duchess. “To shoot a man dead: it is terrible, you say. For you could not do it. You could not shoot an elephant dead. To elope with a woman: it is scandalous! Bien entendu, but you, you could not persuade even a blind woman to elope with you, which I find not scandalous, but tragic.”

Mr. Marling was unable to think of a suitable retort. His aunt, having disposed of him in this one withering speech, smiled affably, and patted his knee. “We will discuss now what I must do to rescue Dominique from this impasse.”

Mr. Marling could not resist the temptation of saying: “I apprehend that the unfortunate young female at present in his company is more in need of rescue.”

“Ah, bah!” cried the Duchess, “it is is not possible to talk to you, for you are without sense!”

“I am sorry, ma’am, if I disappoint you, but you appear to regard this affair very lightly.”

“I do not regard it lightly at all,” said Léonie stiffly. “Only I do not believe that it is just as this Mrs. Challoner has told Fanny. If Vidal has taken her daughter to France I think she went very willingly, and the matter solves itself. Mrs. Challoner would have me believe that the one sister went with my son to save the other. Voilà une histoire peu croyable. I ask myself, if this were true where is the girl now? In England, bien sûr, for why should Vidal take to France someone he did not want?”

“I’ve thought of that too, Aunt Léonie, and I have the answer, though I am must afraid you will not credit it. If the story is true, Vidal will have taken her for revenge.”

There was a long silence. The Duchess clasped and unclasped her hands. “That is what you think, John?”

“It is possible, ma’am, you’ll agree.”

“Yes. In a black mood Dominique might ... I must go to Rupert at once! Why do we go so slowly? Tell them to hurry!”

“Go to my uncle?” John echoed. “I cannot conceive what good he will be to you!”

“No?” Léonie said fiercely. “I will tell you, then. He will go to France with me, and find Dominique and this girl.”

“Lord, ma’am, do you tell me you’ll go off to France with him?”

“Why not?” demanded Léonie.

“But, aunt, it will be thought prodigious strange if it becomes known. People will think you have run away with my uncle. Moreover, I consider him a most unsuitable escort for any lady, accustomed as you are, my dear ma’am, to every delicate attention to her comfort.”

“I thank you, John, but I am quite in the way of running off to France with Rupert, and he will look after me very well,” said her grace. “And now, mon enfant, if I am not to murder you we will talk no more of Vidal, or of Rupert, or of anything.”

Some hours later aunt and nephew, each meticulously polite to the other, reached Lady Fanny’s house in town. It was the dinner hour, and her ladyship was about to sit down to a solitary meal when the Duchess came quickly into the dining-room.

“Oh, my dearest love!” exclaimed Fanny, embracing her. “Thank heaven you have come! It is all too, too true!”

Léonie flung off her cloak. “Tell me at once, Fanny; he has abducted her? Truly he has abducted her?”

“Yes,” Lady Fanny asseverated. “I fear so. That odious woman was here again to-day, and indeed she means mischief, and I don’t doubt she’ll make herself vastly unpleasant unless we can buy her off, which I thought of at once, only, my love, I do not know how in the world we are to do so unless you have a great deal of money by you, for I’ve not a penny. I declare I could kill Vidal! It is so unthinking of him to ravish honest girls—not that I believe she is honest for a moment, Léonie. The mother is a horrid, designing creature if ever I saw one, and oh, my dear, she brought the other sister here to-day, and ’twas that made me believe in her ridiculous story, for all I’m sure the most of it’s a pack of lies. The child is quite provokingly lovely, Léonie, and do you know, she makes me think of what I was at her age? As soon as I clapped eyes on her I saw that there was nothing could be more natural than for Vidal to be in love with her.” She broke off as the serving-man came into the room to lay two more covers, and begged Léonie to be seated. Further discussion being impossible before the servant, she began to talk of the latest town gossip, and even, for want of something to say, asked her son kindly whether he would not like to go to the Royal Society to-night. John deigned no reply, but when dinner was over he informed the two ladies that although it was unhappily out of his power to repair to the Royal Society, he proposed to occupy himself with a book in the library.

Upstairs in the privacy of her boudoir, Fanny poured out the rest of her tale. She said that Sophia Challoner had scarce opened her little sulky mouth, but she could vow the chit was furious at having Vidal stolen from her. “The veriest minx, my dear! Oh, I know the signs, trust me! If the sister is at all like her, and how can she not be? poor Vidal is most horridly taken in. There’s no doubt he took her off to Prance with him, for if he did not, where is she? What shall we do?”

“I am going to Paris,” Léonie said. “First I will see this Mrs. Challoner. Then I shall tell Rupert he must take me to France. If it is all true, and the girl is not a—what is the word, I want, please?”

“I know what you mean, my love, never fear,” Lady Fanny said hastily.

“Well, if she is not that, then I must try to make Dominique marry her, for it is not at all convenable that he should ruin her. Besides, I am sorry for her,” Léonie added seriously. “To be alone like that, and in someone’s power is very uncomfortable, I can assure you, and me, I know.”

“The mother will never rest till she has caught Vidal, but what of Justin, Léonie? I vow I’ll have no hand in this. He can be so excessively unpleasant, you know.”

“I have thought of Justin, but though I do not like to deceive him, I see that this time I must. If Dominique must marry the girl I will make up a clever lie to tell him, and he must not know that it was all due to Dominique’s folly. That would make him, very enraged, tu sais.”

“He’ll not believe you,” Lady Fanny said.

“Yes, he will believe me, perhaps, because I do not lie to him—ever,” said Léonie tragically. “I have thought of it all, and I am very miserable. I shall write to him one big lie, that cousin Harriet is indisposed, and I have gone to stay with her, and she is so old he will certainly not find that “surprising. Then, if it is necessary that Dominique marries this girl whom already I detest, I will make him do it, only it will not appear that I was ever in Paris, for I shall come home, and I shall know nothing of Dominique at all. Then Dominique will write to tell Monseigneur that he is married—and if it is true the girl is Sir Giles’ granddaughter it is not after all so very dreadful—and I shall pretend how glad I am, and perhaps Justin will not mind so much.”

Fanny caught her hands. “My dearest love, you know he will be furious, and when Justin is angry he is more dangerous than ever Dominique could be.”

Léonie’s lip trembled. “I know,” she said. “But at least it will not be so bad as the truth.”

Chapter XI

on the following morning Mrs. Challoner, chancing to look out of the window, was edified to perceive a very elegant equipage drawn up at her door. She said instantly: “The Duchess!” and hurried over to the mirror to arrange her cap. She told Sophia that if she dared to speak a word outside her part she would lock her in her bedchamber for a week: Sophia was about to retort in land when Betty opened the door and announced in a voice pregnant with awe: “The Duchess of Avon, mam!”

The Duchess came in, and Mrs. Challoner was so surprised she forgot to curtsy. She had expected a lady quite twenty years older than the youthful-looking creature who stood before her, and had prepared herself to meet something very formidable indeed. Great violet-blue eyes, a dimple, and copper curls under a chip-hat did not belong to the Duchess of her imagination, and she stood staring in a disconcerted way instead of greeting her grace with the proper mixture of pride and civility.

“You are Mrs. Challoner?” the Duchess said directly.

She spoke with a decided French accent, which further surprised her hostess. Sophia was also surprised, and exclaimed without ceremony: “Lord, are you Vidal’s mamma, then?”

Léonie looked at her from her head to her heels till Sophia blushed and began to fidget. Then she once more surveyed Mrs. Challoner, who remembered her manners, told her daughter to hold her tongue, and pulled forward a chair. “Pray, will not your grace be seated?”

“Thank you,” Léonie said, and sat down. “Madame, I am informed that your daughter has eloped with my son, which is a thing I find not very easy to understand. So I come to you that you may explain to me how this is at all possible.”

Mrs. Challoner dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and protested that she was nigh distracted with grief and shame. “For Mary is a good girl, your grace, and elope with his lordship she would never do. Ma’am, your son has abducted my poor innocent child by force!”

“Tiens!” said the Duchess with polite interest. “My son is then a house-breaker. He perhaps stole her from beneath your roof, madame?’

Mrs. Challoner let the handkerchief fall. “From under my roof? How could he do that? No, indeed!”

“It is what I ask myself,” said the Duchess. “He laid a trap for her, perhaps, and seized her in the street, and carried her off with a gag and a rope.”

Mrs. Challoner eyed her with hostility. The Duchess met her look limpidly, and waited. “You don’t understand, ma’am,” said Mrs. Challoner.

“Assuredly I do not understand. You say my son abducted your daughter with force. Eh bien, I demand of you how this could be done in the middle of London. I find M. le Marquis has been extremely clever if he could arrange so difficult a rape.”

Mrs. Challoner flushed scarlet. “Ma’am! I must beg of you!”

“It is not then a rape?”

“Oh, I—yes, indeed and it is, and I will have justice done, ma’am, and so I tell you!”

“I too desire to have justice done,” said the Duchess softly. “But I am not a fool, madame, and when you talk to me of rapes you talk of what I do not at all believe. If your daughter was not willing she could make a great outcry, and it seems to me that in London there is someone who will hear and come to her rescue.”

“I see, ma’am, you have not heard the whole. Let me explain to you that it was not Mary his lordship wanted, but my little Sophia here. He has been for ever upon my doorstep, and I fear, ma’am, he has quite turned the child’s head. I blush to confess it to your grace, but he attempted to seduce Sophia, of course unbeknownst to me. I do not know what lies he told her, but he had it all arranged to fly with her. I have reared her very strict, ma’am, and how should she dream he did not mean marriage? She thought he would take her to Gretna Green. Oh, I’ll not deny it was mighty foolish and wrong of her, but girls will have these romantic fancies, your grace, and heaven knows what persuasions his lordship may have used. No, Sophy, be quiet!”

Léonie looked at the indignant Sophia, and smiled. “You present to me my son in a new r61e,” she said. “I have never known him to take so much trouble. It seems he was in love with you quite en désespéré.”

“He did love me!” Sophia said chokingly. “He never looked at Mary! Never!”

“Hold your tongue, Sophy! Not but what it is true, ma’am. His lordship was mad for the child. But Mary took it’ into her head ’twas not marriage he intended, and what she did was to save her sister from ruin.”

“It is of a nobility almost incredible, madame. What did this Mary do?”

Mrs. Challoner threw out her hands dramatically. “She took Sophia’s place, ma’am. It was night, and she was masked, for Sophia has found an old loo-mask gone from her drawer. What she had in mind to do I know not, but she meant to return, your grace. And all this was five days ago, and there is no sign of my poor girl. His lordship has run off with her to France.”

“Indeed?” Léonie said. “You have good information, madame. Who told you that M. le Marquis has gone to France? It is not known to many.”

Mrs. Challoner cast a startled glance at Sophia. “I told mamma,” Sophia said sullenly.

“You interest me—oh, but very much, mademoiselle! You thought, en effet, that he would go to Scotland, and he told you that he would go to France.”

“I see that your grace has guessed it!” Mrs. Challoner said desperately. “Sophia, leave the room. I have something of a private nature to say to her grace.”

“I won’t leave the room,” Sophia answered rebelliously. “You mean to make Vidal wed Mary, and it is not fair! He loves me, me, me! Mary stole him, the mean cat, but she shan’t have him!”

“Ah, I perceive the truth!” said Léonie. “It is Miss Mary Challoner who has abducted my son. I make her my compliments.”

“It is no such thing!” broke in Mrs. Challoner. “Alas, it is true that Sophia here would have gone with my lord to France, and dreadful it is to me to have to own to it. But girls will be for ever reading romances, ma’am, as I make no doubt your grace knows. Yes, Sophia was swept off her feet by his lordship’s wiles, but Mary stepped in with some scheme of her own to send my lord packing. She has saved her poor sister at the price of her own honour, ma’am!”

Léonie said thoughtfully: “It is strange, I find, that this so noble sister did not rattier inform you, madame, of what mademoiselle here meant to do. You, who have reared your daughters with such strictness, could have arranged matters more easily, is it not so?”

“Indeed, and I do not know why Mary did not tell me, ma’am, but she is an odd secret girl, and will for ever be thinking she knows better than her mamma.”

Léonie rose. She was smiling, but her dark eyes were bright with anger. “You do not know? Then me, I will tell you. It is plain to me that mademoiselle Mary has thought that she will become Madame la Marquise, and not her sister. As to that, we shall see. You have said to my sister that you will make one big scandal. Vous pouvez vous éviter de la peine, madame; it is I who will make the scandal. I do not desire that my son should have a liaison with your daughter, for she appears to me to be a young woman not at all comme il faut. I shall go to Paris at once, and I shall bring this clever Mary back to you in good time. And if you are so stupid that you cry aloud that the Marquis my son has carried off your daughter you will look even more foolish than you do now, for it will be seen that I am with M. le Marquis, and I think if I say I was with him all the time people will perhaps believe my word before that of Madame Challoner. Que pensez-vous, madame?”

Mrs. Challoner came to her feet in a hurry, and said loudly: “Ho, ma’am, and is that how it is to be? And do you think my poor deceived girl will have nothing to say to that fine tale? She shall declare her wrongs to the world, for I’ll make her, and I’ll see she is heard!”

Léonie gave a light, scornful laugh. “Vraiment? It is a story so silly, madame, that I think people will say ‘quel tas de bêtises!’ and not at all believe you. And me I shall say only that this Mary forced herself upon my son, and I shall be believed, madame, do not doubt.” She swept a curtsy, ignored Sophia, who was gaping at her in astonishment, and walked out of the room before Mrs. Challoner could collect her scattered wits.

Sophia bounced out of her chair, crying: “There, mamma! That’s all your scheming has led to! Lord, I vow I could die of laughing at you!”

Mrs. Challoner promptly boxed her ears. Sophia began at once to cry, but her mother had gone to the window, and was watching a liveried footman hand her grace into the carriage. She said through her teeth: “I’m not finished yet, Sophy, don’t think it. We’ll see who has the laugh, your grace!” She turned quickly. “I’m going to make a journey,” she said. “You’ll be off to your Uncle Henry’s house, Sophy, till I come back, and see you behave yourself circumspectly!”

In the white house in Curzon Street Lady Fanny was eagerly awaiting Léonie’s return. When her grace came into the boudoir she fairly pounced upon her, a dozen questions tripping off her tongue. Léonie untied the strings of her becoming hat, and threw it on the table. “Bah, quelle viellle guenon!” she said. “I have frightened her a little, and I tell you this, Fanny, I will not have Dominique ally himself with the daughter of such a one. I go at once to France to arrange the matter.”

Lady Fanny regarded her shrewdly. “La, my dear, you’re in such a heat you’d best wait till you’ve cooled a little.”

“I am not in a heat at all,” Léonie said with great precision. “I am of a coolness quite remarkable, and I would like to kill that woman.”

“You’re in a rage, my love, don’t tell me! You’ve forgotten your English, which is a very sure sign, though I can’t conceive why you should become so vastly French as soon as you lose your temper.”

Léonie stalked to the mantelpiece, picked up a vase from it, and quite deliberately smashed it. Lady Fanny shrieked, and cried out: “My precious Sèvres vase!”

Léonie looked down, conscience-stricken, at the pieces of porcelain lying on the floor. “I do not behave like a lady,” she said. “I did not know it was Sèvres. It was very ugly.”

Fanny giggled. “Hideous, love! I’ve always hated it. But, ’pon rep, I thought you had learned to curb that dreadful temper of yours! I vow you’re as great a hoyden as ever you were twenty years ago. What did that odious creature say to make you so angry?”

Léonie said fiercely: “It is a trick, all of it, to make Dominique many that girl. She thought she could make me afraid, but it is I who will make her afraid! Dominique shall not marry that—that—salope!”

“Léonie!” gasped Fanny, clapping her hands over her ears. “How dare you?”

“She is!” raged her grace. “And that mother, she is nothing but an entremetteuse! Me, I know very well her type! And she will be my Dominique’s belle-mère, hein? No, and no, and no!”

Lady Fanny uncovered her ears. “Lord, my dear, don’t put yourself about! Vidal won’t want to marry the wench. But what of the scandal?”

“Je m’en fiche!” said Léonie crudely. “And pray will Justin agree with you? My dearest love, there’s been too much scandal attached to Vidal already, and you know it. Ill wager my diamond necklet that woman meant her vulgar threats. She’ll create a stir, I know she will, and ’twill be monstrous disagreeable for all of us. I declare, it’s too bad of Vidal! Why, if there’s a word of truth in what that creature says—which, to be sure, I doubt, for I never heard such a rigmarole in my life—he did not even want the girl! And if you can think of anything in the world he did it for save to plague us I beg you will tell me!”

“John says, for revenge,” Léonie answered, looking troubled. “I have a very big fear he may be right.”

Lady Fanny’s china-blue eyes widened. “Good God, my dear, surely even Vidal would not be such a fiend?”

Léonie had gone over to the window, but she turned quickly. “What do you mean—even Vidal?” she snapped. “Oh, nothing, my dear!” said her ladyship hastily. “Not but what it would be the most dastardly thing, and I must say I am thankful my son is not of Dominic’s disposition. I vow my heart positively bleeds for you, my love.”

“And mine for you,” said Léonie with awful politeness.

“Pray why?” demanded her ladyship, preparing for battle.

Léonie shrugged. “For a whole day I have been shut up in a coach with the so estimable John. It is enough, mordieu!”

Lady Fanny arose in her wrath. “I vow and declare I never met with such ingratitude!” she said. “I wish I had sent John to Avon, as I promise you I’d half a mind to.”

Léonie softened instantly. “Well, I am sorry, Fanny, but you said worse of my son than I said of yours, and you said it first.”

For a moment it seemed as though her ladyship would stalk from the room, but in the end she relented, and said pacifically that she would not add to the disasters befalling the family by quarrelling with Léonie. She then demanded to be told how Léonie proposed to avert the gathering scandal. Léonie said: “I do not know, but if it is necessary I will get that girl a husband.”

“Get her a husband?” repeated Fanny, bewildered. “Who is he to be?”

“Oh, anyone!” Léonie said impatiently. “I shall think of something, because I must think of something. Perhaps Rupert will be able to help.”

“Rupert!” almost snorted her ladyship. “As well ask help of my parrot! There’s nothing for it, my dear; you will have to tell Avon the whole.”

Léonie shook her head. “No. Monseigneur is to know nothing. I cannot bear it if there is to be more trouble between him and Dominique.”

Fanny sat down limply. “I could shake you, Léonie; I vow I could! Avon will be in town again by the end of the week, and when he finds you and Rupert gone off together he’ll come to me, and what, pray, am I to tell him?”

“Why, that I have indeed gone to Cousin Harriet.”

“And Rupert? A likely tale!”

“I do not think that he will know whether Rupert is in London or not—or care.”

“Take my word for it, child, he will know. And I’m to embroil myself in this affair, if you please! I won’t do it!”

“Fanny, you will!—Dear Fanny?”

“I’m too old for these wild coils. If I do, I shall tell Avon I know nothing about you or Rupert or anyone. And you may inform Vidal from me that the next time he abducts a young female he need not come to me for aid.” She got up, and began to look for the hartshorn. “If you dare to bring Rupert here I shall have an attack of the vapours.” She went out, but a moment later put her head in at the door to say:

“I’ve a mind to come with you. What do you think, my love?”

“No,” said Léonie positively. “If Monseigneur finds us all gone he would think it very odd.”

“Oh well!” said Fanny. “At least I should not have to face him with a mouthful of lies, which of course he will see through. However, If you are set on going with Rupert I’d as soon stay at home.” She disappeared again, and Léonie picked up her hat, and once more tied it over her curls.

She took a chair to Half Moon Street, and was fortunate enough to find his lordship at home. Lord Rupert greeted her jovially. “I thought you were in Bedford, m’dear. Couldn’t stand it, eh? I told you so. Devilish dull is old Vane.”

“Rupert, the most dreadful thing has happened, and I want you to help me,” Léonie interrupted. “It’s Dominique.”

Lord Rupert said testily: “Oh, plague take that boy! I thought we’d got him safe out of the country.”

“We have,” Léonie assured him. “But he has taken a girl with him!”

“What sort of a girl?” demanded his lordship.

“A—a hussy! A—I do not know any word bad enough!”

“Oh, that sort, eh? Well, what of it? You ain’t turning pious, are you, Léonie?”

“Rupert, it is most serious. He meant to elope with the bourgeoise, and oh, Rupert, he has taken the wrong sister!”

Rupert stared at her blankly. “Taken the wrong sister? Well, I’ll be damned!” He shook his head. “Y’know, Léonie, that boy drinks too much. If this don’t beat all!”

“He wasn’t drunk, imbécile! At least,” added Léonie conscientiously, “I do not think he was.”

“Must have been,” said his lordship.

“I shall have to explain it all to you.” Léonie sighed.

At the end of her explanation his lordship gave it as his opinion that his nephew had gone stark, staring mad. “Does Avon know?” he asked.

“No, no, not a word! He must not, you understand, and that is why we are going to France at once.”

His lordship regarded her with profound suspicion. “Who’s going to France?”

“But you and I, of course!” Léonie replied.

“No, I’m not,” stated Rupert flatly. “Not to meddle in Vidal’s affairs. I’ll see him damned first, saving your presence.”

“You must,” Léonie said, shocked. “Monseigneur would not at all like me to go alone.”

“I won’t,” said Rupert. “Now, don’t start to argue, Léonie, for God’s sake! The last time I went to France with you I got a bullet in my shoulder.”

“I find you ridiculous,” Léonie said severely. “Who is to shoot bullets at you now?”

“If it comes to that, I wouldn’t put it above Vidal, if I go meddling in his concerns. I tell you I won’t have a hand in it.”

“Very well,” Léonie said, and walked to the door.

Rupert watched her uneasily. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I am going to France,” said Léonie.

His lordship requested her to have sense; she looked wood-enly at him. He pointed out to her the extreme folly of her behaviour; she yawned, and opened the door. His lordship swore roundly and capitulated. He was rewarded by a beaming smile.

“You are very kind to me, Rupert,” her grace said enthusiastically. “We will go at once, do you not think? For I am late already, five days.”

“If you’re five days behind that young devil you’re too late altogether, m’dear,” said his lordship sensibly. “Lord, Avon will murder me for this!”

“Of course he will not murder you!” said Léonie. “He will not know anything about it. When shall we start?”

“When I’ve seen my bankers. Ill do that in the morning, and I only hope the fellows don’t take it into their heads I’m flying the country. We can catch the night packet from Dover, but don’t bring a mountain of baggage, Léonie, if you want to travel fast.”

The Duchess took him at his word, and when his coach arrived in Curzon Street next morning she had only one band-box to be put into it. “You can’t travel like that!” he protested. “And ain’t you taking your abigail along too?”

She rejected the suggestion with scorn, and pointed an accusing finger at the baggage already piled on the roof of the coach. After a lively dispute, in which Lady Fanny and her son joined, two of Lord Rupert’s trunks were left behind in his sister’s charge. An errand-boy, two loiterers, and a cook-girl were interested spectators of the start, and Mr. Marling delivered a lecture, which no one paid any attention to, on the amount of baggage he himself considered necessary for a gentleman to take to Paris.

When the coach at last moved forward Lady Fanny announced that she had the migraine, and went off upstairs, leaving Mr. Marling to order the disposal of the two trunks left on the pavement.

She expected to see his grace of Avon within three days. She saw him within two, greatly to her dismay. When his name was announced she was reclining on a couch in her withdrawing-room, her hands encased in chicken-skin gloves (for an east wind had slightly chapped their soft whiteness), yawning over the pages of The Inflexible Captive. She gave a perceptible start, but recovered herself in an instant, and greeted his grace with apparent delight.

“La, Justin, is it you indeed? I’m vastly glad to see you. Only look at this book that John has given me! It is writ by by that Bluestocking, Mrs. More. I find it amazingly dull, do not you?”

His grace came over to the fire, and stood looking enigmatically down at her. “Amazingly, my dear Fanny. Do I see you in your customary good health?”

Lady Fanny promptly launched into a recital of the many ailments that afflicted her. It was a fruitful topic, and his grace evinced enough polite interest to encourage her to enlarge on it. She enlarged for twenty minutes and discoursed on Dr. Cocchi’s book, The Pythagorean Diet, or Vegetables only conducive to the Preservation of Health and the Cure of Diseases. His grace was urbanity itself. Lady Fanny quaked inwardly, and began to falter in her account of her indisposition. A short pause ensued. His grace took snuff, and as he shut his elegant gold box said languidly: “I understand, my dear Fanny, that there is to be a marriage in our family.”

Lady Fanny started upright on the couch. “A—a marriage?” she stammered. “Why—why—what do you mean, Justin?”

His grace’s brows rose a little; she thought there was a gleam of malice in his eyes. “Doubtless I have been misinformed. I was under the impression that my niece is about to espouse a gentleman of the name of Comyn.”

“Oh!” gasped her ladyship, quite faint with relief. She sank back upon her cushions. “Of course she’ll do no such thing, Justin. Why, have you forgot that I’ve sent her to Paris to be out of the unfortunate young man’s way?”

“On the contrary, I understood that you sent her there to prevent a mésalliance.”

“Well, but—but so it is!” said Fanny, taken aback.

His grace flicked a speck of snuff from his sleeve. “I should inform you, my dear sister, that the marriage has my support.”

Lady Fanny felt for her vinaigrette. “But I won’t have it! He’s a nobody, Justin! I intend her to make a far better match. I made sure you would dislike it excessively. Pray, what in the world has come over you? You’ve never set eyes on young Comyn.”

“I hesitate to contradict you, Fanny,” said his grace politely, “but you will perhaps allow me to be not yet in my dotage. I have met and approved Mr. Comyn. He seemed to be a young gentleman of considerable presence of mind. I am only surprised that he should wish to ally himself with my niece.”

Lady Fanny took a sniff at her salts, and regained strength enough to say: “I suppose you have gone mad, Justin. Let me tell you that I have every hope that Juliana will wed Bertrand de Saint-Vire.”

His grace smiled. “I fear, my dear Fanny, that you are doomed to disappointment.”

“I don’t know what you mean, and I’m sure I don’t desire to!” said her ladyship pettishly. “I might have guessed you would be monstrous disagreeable! And if you are come home early from Newmarket only to encourage Juliana in her waywardness I think it quite abominable of you,”

“Pray calm yourself, Fanny; I am about to relieve you of my presence. You will no doubt be glad to learn that I am leaving London to-night.”

Lady Fanny eyed him in considerable trepidation. “Oh indeed, Justin? May I ask where you propose going?”

“Certainly,” replied his grace blandly. “But surely you have guessed?”

Lady Fanny stammered: “No—yes—pray, how should I guess? Where are you going?”

His grace moved towards the door. His eyes mocked her. “But to Cousin Harriet, my dear. Where else should I go?” He bowed, while she stared at him in mingled horror and suspicion, and before she had time to collect her wits, the door had closed behind him.

Chapter XII

Miss Marling heard that her dearest Mary was intending to become a governess she had the wit to keep her dismay to herself. It did not take the lively damsel long to discover the whole state of Mary’s mind, and having discovered it she became instantly resolved on Miss Challoner’s marriage to the Marquis. She lent a kind but disbelieving ear to Mary’s steadfast disavowal of the tender passion, and when asked to aid her friend in the search for a genteel family, said frankly that she knew of none. Mary, with only a few borrowed guineas in her pocket, found that she was as much in Vidal’s power as she had ever been, and since she feared that to take Tante Elisabeth into her confidence would lead only to her instant expulsion from the house, she threw herself on Juliana’s mercy, and begged her to save her from Vidal. To be cast to the street in a foreign city was a fate from which even the redoubtable Miss Challoner shrank. She had a feeling that she was fighting in the last ditch, and when her appeal to Juliana was unavailing, there seemed to be no hope left of holding his lordship at arm’s length.

Juliana, with a worldly wisdom learned no doubt from her mamma, pointed out the advantages of the match. She had no doubt, she said, that Vidal would make an odious husband, but Mary would be amazingly stupid not to take him, for more than half the dowagers in London wanted him for their own daughters.

Mary said unhappily: “I’ve begged you—I’ve prayed you to help me escape from this net Do you care for me so littler

“I love you so much I’m quite delighted to think yon are to be my cousin,” responded Miss Marling. She embraced Mary warmly. “Truly, my dear, I daren’t smuggle you out of the way. I’ve promised Vidal I won’t, and even if I did he would find you in a trice. What shall you wear at the ball to-night?”

“I dont go,” Mary said in a flat voice.

“Good gracious, Mary, why not?”

“I am in your cousin’s house under false pretences,” Mary said bitterly, “she would not take me to these parlies if she knew the truth.”

“Well, she don’t know it,” replied Juliana. “Do come, my dear: Vidal will be there.”

“I have no desire to meet his lordship,” said Mary, and would say no more.

Mme. de Charbonne, the most easy-going of dames, made no more objection to Mary’s remaining at home than she had made to her sudden arrival two days before. Mary had told her, in desperation, that she was under the necessity of earning a living for herself, and it was plain that madame—who upon hearing this news had regarded her young guest as a kind of rara avis—considered that balls must certainly be out of place for indigent young females. Upon being asked if she could recommend Miss Challoner to a suitable family she had said vaguely that she would bear it in mind, which did not sound particularly hopeful.

Having seen Juliana arrayed for her party in a rose-pink taffeta gown trimmed with chenille silver and spread over immense elbow-hoops; her hair dressed in her favourite Gorgonne style by no less a personage than M. le Gros himself; her person scented with cassia, Miss Challoner bade her farewell and prepared to spend a quiet evening in one of the smaller salons. She intended to apply herself seriously to the problem of escape, but in this she was frustrated by the appearance, not half an hour after Madame de Char-bonne’s and Juliana’s departure, of Mr. Frederick Comyn.

She had already met Mr. Comyn once since their unfortunate encounter at Dieppe, and she supposed that he was apprised of her situation. His manner was extremely respectful, and she thought that she could detect a certain grave sympathy in his gaze.

When the lackey ushered him into the salon she rose, and curtsied to him, and perceived as she did so that his firm mouth was rather tightly compressed. He bowed to her, and said, more as a statement than a question: “You are alone> ma’am.”

“Why yes,” she answered. “Were you not informed at the door, sir, that Miss—that Madame is gone out to-night?”

Mr. Comyn said with a touch of gloom: “Your first premise was correct, ma’am. It is not Madame de Charbonne that I came hoping to see, but Miss Marling. I was indeed informed that she was gone out, but I ventured to inquire for yourself, ma’am, believing that you would be able to oblige me by divulging Miss Mailing’s present whereabouts.”

Miss Challoner begged him to be seated. She had a shrewd notion that all was not entirely well between Miss Marling and her swain. Certain veiled remarks and flighty head-toss-ings on the part of Juliana had induced her to suppose that Mr. Comyn had somehow affronted his lady. She now perceived that Mr. Comyn wore the air of a man goaded beyond the limits of forbearance. She would have liked to give him some good advice on the proper way of treating Miss Marling, but feeling that their intimacy was not far enough advanced to permit of this, she merely replied: “Certainly, sir. Miss Marling is gone to a ball at the house of—I think—Madame de Saint-Vire.”

She instantly realized from his expression that her frankness was ill-timed. A crease appeared between his brows; there was a distinct grimness in his face, which Miss Challoner privately thought became him rather well. “Indeed, ma’am?” he said levelly. “It is as I suspected, then. I’m obliged to you.”

He seemed to be on the point of departure, but Miss Challoner ventured to stay him. “Your pardon, Mr. Comyn, but I think you are put out?”

He gave a short laugh. “Not at all, ma’am. I apprehend that I am merely unaccustomed to the manners obtaining in the Polite World.”

“Will you not take me a little way into your confidence, sir?” Mary said gently. “Juliana is my friend, and I believe I may say I do in part understand her. If I could be of assistance to you—but I do not wish to appear vulgarly intrusive.”

Mr. Comyn hesitated, but the kindness in Miss Challoner’s face induced him to come back into the room, and sit down on a chair beside her. “You are very good, ma’am. I believe it is not unknown to you that there exists between Miss Marling and myself a contract to wed, which, though unhappily a secret from the world, I at least have regarded as binding.”

“Yes, sir, I know, and I wish you very happy,” said Mary.

“Thank you, ma’am. Before I set foot in this town—a circumstance I am fast coming to regret—I should have received your extremely obliging good wishes with a gratitude unalloyed by misgiving. Now—” He stopped, and Miss Challoner watched the meticulous gentleman merge into an angry and scowling young man. “I can only suppose, ma’am, that Miss Marling has, upon reflection, perceived the force of her parent’s arguments, and decided to bestow her hand elsewhere.”

“No, sir, that I am sure she has not,” Mary said.

He looked at her in a hurt way that touched her. “When I tell you, ma’am, that from the moment of my arrival in Paris Miss Marling has persistently encouraged the advances of a certain French gentleman not unconnected with her family, and has upon every occasion preferred his company to mine, you will hardly assure me that her affections are unchanged.”

“But I do, sir,” Mary said earnestly. “I do not know how she may have behaved to you, but you must bear in mind that she is as wilful as she is pretty, and delights, perhaps unwisely, in provoking people with her teasing ways. The gentleman you refer to is, I take it, the Vicomte de Valmé. I believe you have no need to feel alarm, Mr. Comyn. The Vicomte is no doubt entertaining, and his address is insinuating. But he is nothing but a rattle, when all is said, and I do not think for an instant that Juliana cares a fig for him.”

“You know the Vicomte, ma’am?” said Mr. Comyn quickly.

“I have met him, sir.”

Mr. Comyn said in a repressed voice: “You have been an inmate of this house for two days, ma’am, and I understand from Juliana that you do not go out. I infer therefore that you have met the Vicomte here—within the past forty-eight hours.”

Miss Challoner said cautiously: “And if I have, sir, what is there in that to annoy you?”

“Only,” replied Mr. Comyn sharply, “that Juliana denied that de Valmé had visited her here.”

Miss Challoner, feeling very guilty, could think of nothing to say. Mr. Comyn, rather pale about the mouth, said bitingly: “It is all of a piece. I begged Juliana, if she cared for me, not to be present to-night at a ball given by the Vicomte’s parents. It was a test of her affection which I, foolishly, believed would not be too severe. I was wrong, ma’am. Juliana has been playing with me—I had almost said flirting with me.”

Miss Challoner, feeling that it was tune someone took the young couple in hand, proceeded to give Mr. Comyn her good advice on the management of a spoiled beauty. She tried to make him understand—but with indifferent success, since she did not understand it herself—that Juliana was so high-spirited that a breath of opposition induced her to behave outrageously. She told Mr. Comyn that to reproach Juliana, or to remonstrate with her was to drive her into her naughtiest mood. “She is romantic, Mr. Comyn, and if you desire to win her you should let her see that you are a man who will not brook her trifling. Juliana would love you to run off with her by force, but when you are gentle, sir, and respectful, she becomes impatient.”

“You suggest, in fact, ma’am, that I should abduct Miss Marling? I fear I am quite unlearned in such ways. Her cousin, the Marquis of Vidal, would no doubt oblige her.”

Miss Challoner coloured, and looked away. Mr. Comyn, realizing what he had said, coloured too, and begged her pardon. “I did not desire to elope with her, even were she willing,” he continued hurriedly. “But she deemed it our best course, and when I was urged to it by a member of her family, I allowed my scruples to be overruled, and came to Paris with the express intention of arranging a secret marriage.”

“Well, arrange it, sir,” Miss Challoner advised him.

“I had almost done so, ma’am. I may say that I bear in my pocket at this moment the direction of an English divine at present travelling through France on his way to Italy. I came here to-night expecting to see Juliana, and to tell her that we have nothing more to wait for. And I find that she has gone, in defiance of my expressed wish, to a ball where the chief—the sole attraction is the Vicomte de Valmé. Madam, I can only designate such conduct as heartless in the extreme.”

Miss Challoner paid very little heed to the last part of this speech, but said rather breathlessly: “You know of an English divine? Oh pray, sir, have you told my Lord Vidal?”

“No, ma’am, for—”

“Then do not!” Mary said, laying her hand on his. “Will you promise me that you will not tell him?”

“Madam, I regret infinitely, but you are under a misapprehension. It was Lord Vidal who told me.”

Mary’s hand fell again to her side. “When did he tell you?”

“This afternoon, ma’am. He was good enough, at the same time, to present me with a card for this ball at the Hotel Saint-Vire. Apparently he knows his cousin better than I do. I never dreamed that she would go.”

“This afternoon .... Oh, I hoped he would not be able to find a Protestant to marry us!” Mary exclaimed unguardedly. “What shall I do? What in the world shall I do?”

Mr. Comyn regarded her curiously. “Do I understand, ma’am, that a marriage with Lord Vidal is not your desire?”

She shook her head. “It is not, sir. I am aware that you must think my conduct—my compromising situation—”

She got up, averting her face.

Mr. Comyn also got up. He possessed himself of both her hands, and held them in a comforting clasp. “Believe me, Miss Challoner, I understand your feelings exactly. I have nothing but the deepest sympathy for you, and if I can serve you in any way I shall count it an honour.”

Miss Challoner’s fingers returned the pressure of his. She tried to smile. “You are very kind, sir. I—I thank you.”

The click of the door made her snatch her hands away. She turned, startled, and met the smouldering gaze of my Lord Vidal.

His lordship was standing on the threshold, and it was plain that he had seen Mary break loose from Mr. Comyn’s hold. His hand was resting suggestively on the hilt of his light dress-sword, and his eyes held a distinct menace. He was in full ball dress, all purple and gold lacing, with a quantity of fine lace at his wrists and throat.

To her chagrin Miss Challoner felt a blush steal up into her cheeks. She said with less than her usual composure: “I thought you had gone to the Hotel Saint-Vire, sir.”

“So I infer, ma’am,” said his lordship with something of a snap. “I trust I don’t intrude?”

He was looking at Mr. Comyn in a way that invited challenge. Mary pulled herself together and said quietly: “Not in the least, sir. Mr. Comyn is on the point of departure.” She held out her hand to this young man as she spoke, and added: “You should use your card for the ball, sir. Pray do!”

He bowed, and kissed her fingers. “Thank you, ma’am. But I should be very glad to remain if you feel yourself to be at all in need of company.”

The meaning of this was quite plain. My lord strolled suggestively into the middle of the room, but before he could speak Miss Challoner said quickly: “You are very kind, sir, but I am shortly going to retire. Let me wish you good night—and good fortune.”

Mr. Comyn bowed again, favoured his lordship with a slight inclination of the head, and went out.

The Marquis watched him frowningly till he was out of the room. Then he turned to Miss Challoner. “You’re on terms of intimacy with Comyn, are you?”

“No,” replied Mary. “Hardly that, my lord.”

He came up to her, and gripped her by the shoulders. “If you don’t want to see a hole shot through that damned soft-spoken fellow you’d best keep your hands out of his. Do you understand, my girl?”

“Perfectly,” said Miss Challoner. “You’ll allow me to say that I find you absurd, my lord. Only jealousy could inspire you with this ill-placed wrath, and where there is no love there cannot be jealousy.”

He let her go. “I know how to guard my own.”

“I am not yours, sir.”

“You will very soon be. Sit down. Why are you not at the ball?”

“I had no inclination for it, sir. I might ask, why are not you?”

“Not finding you there, I came here,” he replied.

“I am indeed flattered,” said Miss Challoner.

He laughed. “It’s all I went for, my dear, I assure you. Why was that fellow holding your hands?”

“For comfort,” said Miss Challoner desolately.

He held out his own. “Give them to me.”

Miss Challoner shook her head. There was a curious lump in her throat that made speech impossible.

“Oh, very well, ma’am, if you prefer the attentions of Frederick Comyn!” said the Marquis in a hard voice. “Be good enough to listen to what I have to say. I have discovered, through Carruthers, of the Ambassador’s suite, that there is a divine, lately passed through Paris, bear-leading some sprig of the nobility. They are bound for Italy by easy stages, and at this present are to be found in Dijon, where it appears they are making a stay of two weeks. He’s the man to do our business for us. I am about to abduct you for the second and last time, Miss Challoner.” She made no reply. His eyes reached her face. “Well, have you nothing to say?”

“I have said it all so many times, my lord.”

He turned away impatiently. “Make the best of me, ma’am; you dislike me cordially, no doubt. I’ll admit you have reason. But you may know, if it interests you, that I am offering what I have never offered to any woman before.”

“You offer it because you feel you must,” said Mary in a low voice. “And I thank you—but I refuse your offer.”

“Nevertheless, ma’am, you’ll start with me for Dijon tomorrow.”

She raised her eyes to his face. “You cannot wrest me by force from this house, my lord.”

“Can’t I?” he said. His Up curled. “We shall see. Dont try to escape me. I should run you to earth within a day, and if you put me to that trouble you might find my temper unpleasant.” He walked to the door. “I have the honour to bid you good night,” he said curtly, and went out.

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 HStel 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? Ton 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 mesalliance 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 Hotel 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 tune conies 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 tune, 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 tune.”

“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 yery 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

Chapter XIV

miss marling partook of chocolate very late on the morning after the ball at the Hotel Saint-Vire. It was after eleven when she awoke, and she did not look as though the long sleep had at all refreshed her. Her abigail noticed how woebegone was the little face under the night-cap of point-lace, and drew her own conclusions. Miss Marling was pettish over the choice of a morning wrapper, and complained that her chocolate was too sweet. She demanded to know whether any note had been left for her, or if anyone had called to see her, and on being told that she had neither a note nor a visitor, she pushed her chocolate away, and said she could not drink the stuff, it was so vile.

She was still in bed trying to make up her mind whether or no to write to Mr. Comyn, when a message was brought to her that the Marquis of Vidal was below, and wanted to see her immediately.

She was so disappointed that the visitor was not Mr. Comyn, as she had at first been sure it must be, that tears rose to her eyes, and she said in a tight, hard voice: “I can’t see him. I’m in bed, and I have the headache.”

The lackey’s footsteps retreated down the stairs, and in two minutes a far quicker step sounded, and a peremptory rap fell on the door. “Let me in, Ju; I must see you,” said Vidal’s voice.

“Oh, very well!” answered Juliana crossly.

The Marquis came in, much to the abigail’s disapproval, and signed to that damsel to leave the room. She went, sniffing loudly, and Vidal strode over to the big bed, and stood looking grimly down at Juliana. “The servants tell me Mary Challoner left the house early this morning, and is not yet returned,” he said, without preamble. “Where is she?”

“Good gracious, how should I know?” said Juliana indignantly. She hitched one of her lace-edged pillows up higher. “I dare say she has run away sooner than marry you, and I vow I don’t blame her, if you are in the habit of bursting in on ladies abed in this horrid way.”

“Oh, don’t be missish, Ju!” said his lordship, with an impatient frown. “I left her in your care.”

“Well, and what if you did? I can’t be for ever with her. She wouldn’t have me, I’ll be bound.”

Vidal looked at her rather sharply. “Oh? Have you quarrelled?”

“Pray do not imagine everyone to be like yourself and for ever being in a quarrel!” besought Miss Marling. “If people are only kind to me I’m sure I am the last person to quarrel with anyone.”

His lordship sat down on the edge of the bed. “Now come along, my girl: out with it!” he said. “What has happened between you?”

“Nothing at all!” snapped Juliana. “Though I’ve little doubt Mary thinks me as odious as she thinks you—not that I care a fig for what she or anyone else thinks.”

“I’ll shake you in a minute,” threatened the Marquis. “What’s between you two?”

Miss Marling raised herself on her elbow. “I won’t be bullied by you, Vidal, so pray don’t think it! I think men are the most hateful, cruel wretches imaginable, and I wish you would go away and find your provoking Mary yourself.”

There was a distinct break in her voice, and Vidal, who had a soft corner for her, put his arms round her, and said with unwonted cajolery: “Don’t cry, child. What’s to do?”

Miss Marling’s rigidity left her. She buried her face in Vidal’s blue coat, and said in muffled accents: “I want to go home! Everything is horrid in Paris, and I hope to heaven I never come here again!”

Vidal carefully removed his lace ruffle from her clutching fingers. “Quarrelled with Comyn, have you? You’re a fool, Ju. Stop crying! Has he gone off? Shall I bring him back to you?”

Miss Marling declined this offer with every evidence of loathing, and releasing his lordship, hunted under her pillow for a handkerchief, and fiercely blew her small nose.

“I wonder ...” Vidal stopped, and sat staring at the bedpost somewhat ominously.

Observing the darkling look in his eyes, Juliana said quickly: “What do you wonder? Please do not put on that murderous face, Dominic! It frightens me.”

He glanced down at her. “I wonder whether Mr. Frederick Comyn has anything to do with Mary’s disappearance?” he said.

“What a stupid notion!” commented Juliana. “Why in the world should he help Mary to escape?”

“From damned officiousness, belike,” said Vidal, scowling. “I found the fellow here last night—mighty friendly with Mary.”

“What!” Miss Marling stiffened. “Here? With Mary? What was he doing?”

“Holding her hands, curse his impudence.”

“Oh!” Miss Marling turned quite pale with indignation. “The wicked, deceitful creature! She never breathed a word of it to me! And then to dare to scold me for quarrelling with Frederick! Oh, I could kill them both! Holding her hands at that hour of night! And then to turn jealous because I like to dance with Bertrand! Oh, it beats anything I have ever heard! I’ll never forgive either of them.”

Vidal got up. “I’m going round to Comyn’s lodging,” he said, and walked to the door.

“Don’t kill him, Dominic, I implore you!” shrieked his cousin.

“For God’s sake, dont be such a damned little fool, Juliana!” said the Marquis irritably, and departed.

The owner of Mr. Comyn’s lodgings, a retired valet, opened the door to the Marquis, and admitted him into a narrow hall. On being asked for the English gentleman he said that M. Comyn had paid his shot, and left by coach a bare hour since.

“Left, has he? Alone?” demanded the Marquis.

The valet cast down his eyes. “The Englishwoman who came to see him—oh, but at a very strange hour, m’sieur!—was with him.”

He stole a sly look upwards at the Marquis, and was startled by the expression on that dark face. “She was, eh?” said Vidal through his teeth. He smiled, and the valet retreated a pace, quite involuntarily. “Where have they gone? Do you know?”

“But no, m’sieur, how should I tell? The lady had no baggage, but M. Comyn took all of his. He said to me that he will not return, and he gave to me a letter to deliver in the Rue St. Honore.”

Light flashed in the Marquis’s sombre eyes. “Where in the Rue St. HonorS, my man?”

“It was a letter to an English Marquis, m’sieur, at the Hotel Avon.”

“Was it, by God!” said Vidal, and promptly went off home.

The letter, addressed in Mr. Comyn’s neat handwriting, was lying on the table in the wide hall. Vidal broke the seal, and ran his eye down the single sheet.

“My lord,” wrote Mr. Comyn, “I have to inform your lordship that my betrothal to Miss Juliana Marling being at an end, I have made bold to offer my hand in marriage to the lady lately travelling under your lordship’s protection. I think it only proper to apprise your lordship of this step, since your lordship was good enough to take me into your confidence. Miss Challoner having been so obliging as to accept of my offer, we are leaving Paris immediately. Miss Challoner, while sensible of the honour your lordship does her in proposing for her hand, is highly averse from a marriage which she deems unsuitable, and from the outset doomed to un-happiness. Since I apprehend that this aversion is known to your lordship, it will be unnecessary (I am assured) to request your lordship to relinquish the pretensions which have become a menace to Miss Challoner’s peace of mind.

“I beg to remain, my lord, in all else,

“Your lordship’s obedient servant to command,

“Frederick Comyn.”

His lordship swore softly and long, to the admiration of a lackey, who stood reverently listening to his fluency. Then he proceeded to set his household by the ears, and the word flew round inside of ten minutes that the Devil’s Cub was in a rare taking, and there would be bloodshed before nightfall. From the orders that followed one another like lightning off his lordship’s tongue, it was apparent that he was going on a sudden swift journey, and when Fletcher was bidden send to the gates of Paris to find whether an Englishman accompanied by a lady had passed out of any one of them that morning, none of the household had any doubt at all of the nature of his lordship’s journey.

“Damn my blood if I’ve ever seen the Cub so wild!” remarked his lordship’s particular groom. “Ay, and I’ve known him a year or two.”

“I’ve seen him wilder nor this,” mused a footman, “but not for a female. And meself I’d say the Mantoni had more to her than this one, or that piece we had with us a couple of years back—what was her name, Horace? The beauty that threw a coffee-pot at the Cub in one of her tantrums.”

“I’m not Horace to you, my lad,” said Mr. Timms loftily. “And me knowing what I do, which is natural in his lordship’s own gentleman, I’d advise you not to draw odious comparisons between Miss Challoner and those other trollops.”

He went off to pack Vidal’s cloak-bag, and was much scandalized to discover that he was not to accompany his master. When he ventured on an expostulation he was asked roundly whether he imagined my lord was unable to dress himself. Being a polite person he disclaimed, but this was precisely what he did think. He had a vision, horrible to a gentleman’s gentleman, of my lord’s cravat ill-tied, his hair uncurled, his dress carelessly arranged; and when Vidal flung the pounce-box, the haresfoot, and the rouge-pot out of the cloak-bag, he was moved to beg his lordship to consider his feelings.

Vidal gave a short bark of laughter. “What the devil have your feelings to do with it?” he demanded. “Put up a change of clothing, and my razors, and my night-gear.”

Mr. Timms was ordinarily a timid creature, but where his profession was concerned he became possessed of great daring. He said firmly: “My lord, it’s well known that it’s me who has the dressing of your lordship. I have my pride, my lord, and to have you travelling amongst all these Frenchies, a disgrace to me, as you will, my lord, begging your pardon—oh, it’s enough to make a man cut his throat, sir!”

Vidal, in his shirt sleeves, was pulling on his top-boots. He glanced up, not unamused, and said bluntly: “If you want a master you can dress like a painted puppet, you’d best leave my service, Timms. I’ll never be a credit to you.”

“My lord,” said Mr. Timms, “if I may take leave to say so, there’s not a gentleman in London, no, nor in Paris either, that can be a greater credit to his valet than what your lordship can be.”

“You flatter me,” said Vidal, picking up his waistcoat.

“No, my lord. I was three years with Sir Jasper Trelawney, who was thought to be a fine beau in his day. The clothes we had! Ah, that was a gentleman as was an artist. But the shoulders to his coats had to be padded so that it fair broke one’s heart, and when it came to him wearing three patches on his face I had to leave him, because I’d my reputation to think of, like any other man.”

“Good God!” said Vidal. “I trust my shoulders don’t offend your sensibilities, Timms?”

“If I may take the liberty of saying so, my lord, I have seldom seen a finer pair. Whatever else may sometimes be amiss, our coats set so that it is a pleasure to see them done justice to.” He assisted his lordship to struggle into one as he spoke, and smoothed the cloth with a loving hand. “When I was with Lord Devenish, sir,” he said reminiscently, “we had to assist his lordship’s legs a little with sawdust in the stocking. But even so they were never what one likes to see in a gentleman of fashion. Everything else about his lordship was as it should be; I believe I never saw a neater waist, and at that time, my lord, coats were worn very tight at the waist with whaleboned skirts. But below the knee his lordship fell off sadly. It took away from one’s pride in dressing him, and sawdust, though helpful, is not like good muscle.”

“I can imagine nothing more unlike,” said Vidal, who was eyeing him in open astonishment. “You seem to have been hard put to it with your previous masters.”

“That, my lord, was the trouble,” replied Timms. “If your lordship will permit me, I will adjust this buckle. When I left Lord Devenish I was with young Mr. Harry Cheston for a space. Shoulders, legs, waist—all very passable. He wore his clothes very well, my lord; never a crease, nor a pin out of place, though he favoured vellum-hole waistcoats more than I could like. It was Mr. Cheston’s hands that were his undoing. Do what one would, my lord, they were such as to render the perfection of his attire quite negligible. He slept every night in chicken-skin gloves, but it was of no use, they remained a vulgar red.”

Vidal cast himself down in the chair by the dressing-table, and leaned back in it, surveying his valet with a half-smile curling his lips. “You alarm me, Timms, positively you alarm me.”

Mr. Timms smiled indulgently. “Your lordship has no need to feel alarm. I could wish that we wore a ring—not a profusion, sir, but one ring, possibly an emerald, which is a stone designed to set off the whiteness of a gentleman’s hand—but since your lordship has a strong aversion from jewels we must forgo the adornment. The hands themselves, if your lordship will not think it impertinent, are all that I could wish.”

His lordship, quite unnerved by this encomium, thust them both into his breeches pockets. “Come, let me have it, Timms!” he said. “Where do I fall short of your devilish high standards? Let me know the worst.”

Mr. Timms bent to dust one of his lordship’s shining boots. “Your lordship can hardly fail to be aware of the elegance of your lordship’s whole figure. In the twenty-five years during which I have been a gentleman’s valet I have always had to fight against odds, as it were. Your lordship would be surprised to know how one inferior feature can ruin the most modish toilet. There was the Honourable Peter Hailing, sir, whose coats were so exactly cut to his figure that it needed myself and two lackeys to coax him into them. He had a leg such as is seldom seen, and his countenance was by no means contemptible. But it all went for nothing, my lord, Mr. Hailing’s neck was so short that no neckcloth could be made to disguise it. I could tell your lordship of a dozen such cases. Sometimes it’s the shoulders, at others the legs; once I served a gentleman with a fatal tendency to corpulence. We did what we could with tight-lacing, but it was not successful. Yet he was as handsome as your lordship, if I may say so.”

“Spare my blushes, Timms,” said the Marquis sardonically. “I don’t aspire to be an Adonis. Out with it! What’s my fault?”

Mr. Timms said simply: “Your lordship has none.”

The Marquis was startled. “Eh?”

“None whatsoever, my lord. One could wish for greater care in the arrangement of the cravat, and a more frequent use of the curling-irons and pounce-box; but we have nothing to conceal. Your lordship will understand that a constant struggle against nature disheartens one. When your lordship found yourself in need of a valet, I applied for the post, being confident—with all respect, my lord—that though your lordship might affect a carelessness that one is bound to deplore, the figure, face, hands—your lordship’s whole person, in short—were so exactly proportioned as to render the apparelling of your lordship a work of pleasure unmarred by any feeling of dissatisfaction.”

“Good God!” said the Marquis.

Mr. Timms said insinuatingly: “If your lordship would permit me to place one patch—one only—”

The Marquis got up. “Content yourself with my perfect proportions, Timms,” he said. “Where’s that fellow Fletcher?” He strode out, calling to his major-domo, who came sedately up the stairs to meet him. “Well, man, are those damned lackeys to be all day about their business?” he demanded.

“John, my lord, is come in. At the Porte Saint-Denis, no one. At the Porte Saint-Martin, no one. I await the return of Robert and Mitchell, my lord, and will apprise your lordship instantly.”

“No luck at the northern gates,” the Marquis said, musing. “So he’s not taking her back to England. Now what the devil’s his game?”

Ten minutes later Fletcher came to find him again, and said impassively: “Robert reports, my lord, that shortly before noon a travelling chaise passed out of Paris by the Port Royal. It contained an Englishman who spoke French very indifferently, and one lady.”

The Marquis’s hand clutched on his riding-whip. “Dijon!” he said, with, something of a snarl. “Damn his infernal impudence! Have the bay saddled, Fletcher, and send me a man to take a note to Miss Marling.” He sat down at the writing-desk, and jabbed a quill in the standish. He scrawled one line only to his cousin. “They’re off to Dijon. I leave Paris in half an hour.” Having given this to a lackey, he picked up his hat and went off to Foley, his grace of Avon’s banker.

When he returned, twenty minutes later, his light chaise was already awaiting him in the courtyard, and his groom was walking the bay up and down. A lackey was in the act of placing two band boxes in the chaise, but was checked by a thunderous demand to know what the devil he was about.