False Colours

5

Mr Fancot returned to Hill Street, on foot, shortly before midnight, and just in time to witness the arrival of his parent, borne down the street in her own sedan chair, and attended by three middle-aged gallants, and one very much younger gentleman, who walked as close to the chair as possible, and bore all the appearance of one who was equally a prey to adoration and jealousy.

Mr Fancot, awaiting the cortege in the open doorway, was deeply appreciative of the scene, which was certainly impressive. My lady was carried by two stalwarts dressed in neat livery; and her chair, when it came into the lamplight, was seen to be of particularly elegant design, and to be lined throughout with pale green velvet. The gallants were plainly men of mode, and when the chair was set down one opened the door, the second tenderly helped her to alight, and the third stood waiting to offer his arm for her support up the few shallow steps to her front-door. Her young worshipper, quietly elbowed out of the way when he had tried to be the first to reach the door, was left disconsolate, gazing hungrily after the goddess. But she paused before she reached the steps and looked back, exclaiming in her soft voice: “Oh, my fan! I must have dropped it in the chair. Mr Horning, will you be so very obliging as to see if it is there?”

Mr Horning’s drooping spirits revived magically. He dived into the chair, found the fan, and presented it to her ladyship, with a low bow, and a smile which Kit thought perfectly fatuous. She thanked him prettily, gave him her hand to kiss, and said: “Now you must all go home, for here is Denville waiting for me, and we have a great deal to discuss. You know, he has been out of town lately.”

Kit had by this time recognized two of the elderly beaux, and exchanged greetings with them; and Lady Denville put him in possession of the third’s name by saying: “Here is Lord Chacely, wanting to know why you weren’t at Ascot Wicked one, you were to have joined his party!”

Kit clapped a hand to his brow. “Good God, I forgot to write to you, explaining why I was obliged to fail! I beg your pardon, sir!”

“Humbug, you young rascal!” Chacely said. “You forgot the engagement altogether!”

“No, no!” Kit protested.

“But, Chacely, did you think he wouldn’t?” asked one of the other gentlemen.

At this, the third gentleman added his mite to this badinage. It was evident that no suspicion that they were roasting Kit, and not Evelyn, crossed their minds: a circumstance which made Lady Denville say, when the door was shut upon them: “You see, Kit! I told you how it would be! I dare say that Newlyn and Sir John Streatley have been acquainted with you since you were in short coats, and if they never guessed the truth you may be easy!”

“I am not at all easy,” he retorted. “But as for you, love, I wonder how you dare address me as “wicked one”! Mama, you are incorrigible! Who the devil is that mooncalf you’ve enslaved?”

Her infectious ripple of laughter broke from her. “Isn’t he ridiculous, poor boy? But one must be kind to him: you see, he is a poet!”

“Ah, that, of course, explains everything!” said Kit cordially. “I expect you are his inspiration?”

“Well, just at present I am,” she acknowledged. “It won’t last—in fact, I think that at any moment now he will fall desperately in love with some chit—probably quite ineligible!—and forget that I ever existed. Which, I must own, will be in one way a great relief, because it is dreadfully tedious to be obliged to listen to poetry, even when it has been composed in one’s honour. But in another—oh, Kit, you won’t understand, but to be three-and-forty, and still able to attach foolish boys, is such a comfort!”

“Mama, you must never make such an admission again! No one would believe you to be a day older than three-and-thirty—if as much!”

This was true, but Lady Denville, after considering the matter, said: “No, but one must be reasonable, Kit, and everyone must know I can’t be a day younger than three-and-forty, when all the world knows that you and Evelyn are four-and-twenty! It is the most lowering reflection! But never mind that! What happened tonight, in Mount Street? I was in such a fret of anxiety all the evening I left my party early!”

“Oh, was that the reason? I must tell you that I was knocked acock when I perceived that the sumptuous chair being carried down the street before midnight was yours!”

“Yes, I don’t think I have ever left a party so early before—particularly when I was winning!” she said naively.

“No, were you? But I was very much shocked, Mama! What has become of your most handsome cavaliere servente? How comes it about that he permitted another—four others!—to squire you home tonight? Don’t tell me his passion has waned!”

She went into another ripple of laughter. “Oh, poor Bonamy! How can you be so unfeeling as even to think of his walking all the way from Albemarle Street? He must have dropped dead of an apoplexy, had he made the attempt! As for his passion, I have a melancholy suspicion that I share it with his cook: he was boring on for ever tonight about a way of serving teal with poivrade sauce! Now, stop funning, and tell me what happened at your party!”

“Oh, a very handsome dinner, and the company—er—the pink of gentility! Not quite in my style, perhaps, but certainly of the first respectability!”

“Were they excessively fusty?” she said sympathetically. “I did warn you that they would be!”

“You did, but you did not warn me, dear Mama, that two of the number are acquainted with Evelyn!”

“No! Who, Kit?”

“Mr Charles Stavely, who appears to be—”

“Oh, him!” she interrupted. “Very likely he may be, but so slightly that it is not of the least consequence!”

“Very true, but if Evelyn doesn’t return in time to save me from Lucton I shall be totally undone. Is he one of Evelyn’s bosom-bows?”

“Young Lucton? Good gracious, no! You don’t mean to say that he was invited to the party?”

“That is precisely what I do mean to say, Mama! Furthermore, I apprehend that Evelyn has entered into some sort of an undertaking with him. What it may be I haven’t the least guess, and something seems to tell me that you haven’t either.”

She shook her head. “No, indeed! How excessively awkward for you!”

“Yes, isn’t it?” he agreed. “Particularly when one considers that he is coming to visit me tomorrow—to learn what is my decision! That’s what I call having a wolf by the ears!”

“Most vexatious!” she said sunnily. “But there’s no need to be in a worry, dearest! Perhaps Evelyn will have returned—or Fimber may know what it is that stupid creature wants. And if he doesn’t know, Brigg will say that you are not at home. I see no difficulty in evading Lucton.”

“No, love, I’ve no doubt of that! But not even my abominable twin could agree to receive a man on a matter of business and then say that he was not at home!”

“But, Kit, how foolish of you!” she said reproachfully. “You should have fobbed him off!”

“So I might have, if it had not been made very plain to me that he thinks himself pretty ill-used at having been fobbed off for over ten days already. Oh, well, I dare say I shall be able to brace it through! What has me in a far worse worry is that Miss Stavely has asked me to visit her tomorrow morning, to resume an interrupted discussion she had with Evelyn, on the day that he proposed to her.”

“Now, that is tiresome!” she exclaimed, dismayed.

“Very much more than tiresome, Mama. It’s one thing to masquerade as Evelyn at a party, but quite another to receive Miss Stavely’s confidence under false pretences.”

“I see what you mean,” she agreed, wrinkling her brow. “But very likely you are making a piece of work about nothing! I should be astonished to learn that she has anything of a very confidential nature to say to Evelyn, because she is not at all well-acquainted with him, besides having a great deal of reserve. Depend upon it, it will prove to be nothing to cause you embarrassment. Indeed, the more I think about it the more positive I feel that it can only be a triviality, because Evelyn said nothing to me about having been interrupted. And, what is more, Kit, if he had thought that Cressy had something of importance to say he would not have left London without seeing her again!”

“She seemed to think it was he who had something important to say. He appears to have told her that he had a stipulation to make.”

“A stipulation? What in the world can he have been thinking of? He must have taken leave of his senses! Unless—” She broke off, her eyes widening. Then she said: “I know what he was going to say, and I am very glad he was interrupted, for I told him he was on no account to do so. He is set on us all living together, which I have no intention of doing, because such arrangements very rarely answer. It was used to be quite the thing, you know, and I always thought it such a fortunate circumstance that your papa’s parents were both dead when I married him. If Cressy brings the matter up, say that you have changed your mind, or have forgotten, or that she misunderstood you!”

“I can hardly do that, Mama,” he objected. “It is clearly not what Evelyn would say.”

“It is what I say!” she replied spiritedly. “I mean to give him a very severe scold—and if you look at me in that odiously quizzy way I shall give you one too! Tell me about old Lady Stavely! Did she frighten you?”

“She wanted to do so, but I tried the effect of giving her a civil set-off, which answered very well.”

Lady Denville was awed. “Kit, how brave ofyou!”

“Yes, wasn’t it? But, there, Mama! you know me! Pluck to the backbone!”

She laughed. “Well, I should never have dared to do such a thing!”

“You must make the attempt: she’ll bullock you if you don’t!”

“Oh, I mean to keep out of her way! She came to London to make your acquaintance, and now that she has done so I dare say she will return to Berkshire within a day or two!” returned her ladyship blithely.

“You’re out, love!” said Kit, grinning wickedly at her. “She remains in London until next month, when she means, according to what Lady Ebchester told me, to go to Worthing for the summer, taking Cressy with her. She charged me with a message for you: you are to visit her one morning!”

“No!” she ejaculated, in the liveliest horror. “Kit, you’re shamming it!”

“I am not. Those were her very words.”

“Oh, you abominable creature! Why didn’t you tell her I was sick—gone into the country—anything? She never liked me—indeed, when Stavely was dangling after me she did her utmost to dissuade him from making me an offer! Not that there was the least necessity, for your grandfather would never have countenanced the match when so many far more flattering offers were being made for me! Oh, Kit, how could you subject me to such an ordeal? She will annihilate me!”

“No such thing! You have only to bear in mind that Evelyn is a matrimonial prize of the first water, and that will give you an immeasurable feeling of superiority!”

But Lady Denville, while agreeing that Evelyn might look as high as he chose for a bride, refused to be comforted. She informed Kit that when a redoubtable old lady had known one from the cradle such considerations counted for nothing. She added tragically, gathering the shimmering folds of her cloak about her, as she prepared to mount the stairs: “I have it on the best authority that she described me once as a pretty widgeon! And when she looks at me, in that beady way of hers, I shall feel like a widgeon!”

“But a very pretty one!” her son reminded her.

“Yes, but much she will care for that!” replied her ladyship. She paused on the half-landing, to add: “And don’t put yourself to the trouble of telling me that I am of higher rank than she is, because she won’t care for that either!”

On these embittered words, she resumed her progress up the stairs. He caught up with her as she reached the second floor, and told her in shocked accents that if she meant to go to bed without kissing him good night he would be unable to sleep a wink. That made her give a choke of laughter; and when he pointed out to her that the ordeal awaiting her was as nothing when compared to the ordeal to which he had been subjected, she melted completely, saying: “No, indeed! My poor darling, you may rely on me to lend you all the support I can! There is nothing I would not do for either of my beloved sons!”

Embracing her with breath-taking heartiness, he mastered a quivering lip, thanked her gravely, and parted from her on the best of terms.

Fimber was waiting for him in his own room. As he eased him out of Evelyn’s longtailed coat, he asked, in the voice of one to whom the answer was a foregone conclusion, if anyone had recognized him. Upon being told that no one had, he said: “It was not to be expected that anyone would, sir. When you passed out of my hands this evening the thought crossed my mind that even I should not have known that you were not his lordship. You are, if I may say so, the spit of him, Mr Christopher!”

Questioned about Mr Lucton, he said austerely: “A very frippery young gentleman, sir—what one might term a mere barley-straw!”

“You may term him anything you please,” said Kit, stripping off his neckcloth, “but do you know what was the proposal he made to my brother, to which he expected an answer within a day?”

After a frowning pause, during which Fimber divested Kit of his waistcoat, he said: “No, sir, his lordship made no mention of it to me. But from what I know of Mr Lucton I would venture the guess that he may have been wishful to sell his lordship one of his hunters.”

“Who wants to purchase a hunter at this season?” demanded Kit sceptically. “Not my brother!”

“No, sir; as you say! But his lordship is known to be very good-natured: one who finds it difficult to say no; and Mr Lucton is frequently in Dun territory. We will discover what Challow may know about the business, when he comes for orders tomorrow morning. I should inform you, Mr Christopher, that I have taken it upon myself to apprise Challow of what has occurred here. I trust you will think that I did right.”

“Much you’d care if I didn’t!” observed Kit. “It’s to be hoped that he does know what Lucton expects of my brother! If he doesn’t I shall find myself lurched!”

But Challow, presenting himself on the following morning, did not fail his harassed young master. He was a stocky individual, with grizzled hair, and the slightly bowed legs of one bred from his earliest youth to the saddle. He had taught the twins to ride their first ponies, had rescued them from innumerable scrapes, besides putting his foot down on some of their more dangerous exploits; and while his public demeanour towards them was generally respectful, he treated them, in private, as if they were the schoolboys he still thought them. He greeted Kit with a broad grin, responded to an invitation to tip a mauley by grasping the hand held out to him, and saying: “Now, that’s enough, Master Kit! How often have I told you to mind your tongue? A nice thing it would be if her ladyship was to hear you using such vulgar language! And who’d bear the blame? Tell me that!”

“You would—at least, so you always told us, though I don’t think either my mother or my father ever did blame you for the things we said! Challow, I’m in the devil of a hank!”

“That’s all right, sir: you’ll never be bum squabbled!” replied Challow cheerfully. “Not but what things are in a rare hubble-bubble, which I don’t deny. But don’t you fall into the hips! I’ll lay my life you’ll get there with both feet. Well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, let alone you always was a sure card! If Fimber hadn’t of told me, I wouldn’t have known you wasn’t his lordship—well, not right off I wouldn’t!”

“I wish to God I knew what had become of my brother!”

“You don’t wish it no more than I do, Master Kit. There’s times when I’ve worried myself sick, fancying all kinds of things; but then I get to thinking that his lordship is like a cat: fling him anyway you choose, he’ll land on his feet! And now I’ve seen you in tolerable spirits I’ll take my affy-davy he’s safe and sound!” He cocked an intelligent eye at Kit, and gave a chuckle. “Lor’, sir, what kind of a clodpole do you take me for? Me, that knew you when you wasn’t out of leading-strings! If his lordship was in trouble, or—or worse, which has crossed my mind—you’d know it! Ain’t that so?”

Kit nodded. “Yes—I think. I haven’t said so to my mother, but I could have sworn, about a week ago, that he had met with some accident That’s what brought me home so suddenly. I’d meant to come, for I haven’t been easy—Well, never mind that! I think something did happen to him, but it wasn’t fatal. I am as certain of that as I am of anything. If he were dead, or in desperate straits, I should know it.”

“That’s just what I thought,” agreed Challow. “He ain’t dead! In mischief, more like! I never ought to have let him go off like he did, but he properly bamboozled me, Master Kit Nor I didn’t think he’d go off on one of his starts when he’s in a way to be buckled. Oh, well, we’ll just have to bear a hand until he comes back, sir, and that’s all there is to it! Now, if you wish to ride today, there’s a neatish bay hack would suit you pretty well. Or there’s the curricle, and a pair of prime ’uns: beautiful steppers, they are: just the thing for showing off in the Park! Or you could have his lordship’s new tilbury: quite the rage these tilburies have got to be!”

But Kit, pithily informing him that nothing could be farther from his intention than to show himself off in the Park, or anywhere else, declined these offers, and demanded instead to be told what, if anything, Challow knew about Mr Lucton’s mysterious business.

“Him!” Challow said scornfully. “Trying to sell his lordship a horse which we don’t want: not in our stables we don’t!”

“If his lordship doesn’t want the animal, why didn’t he tell Mr Lucton so?”

“You know what his lordship is, sir! Too easy by half! Not but what Mr Lucton ain’t one to take no for an answer: a proper jaw-me-dead he is! He waved to us in the Park, so his lordship pulled up, and then he started in to puff-off a flat-sided chestnut he hunted last season, trying to. slumguzzle my lord into believing it was the very thing for him. Let alone no one would want a horse Mr Lucton had hunted, that chestnut ain’t worth the half of the price he’s set on it. “A perfect fencer,” he tells my lord. “Jumps off his hocks,” he says. Yes, I thought to myself, I wish I may see it! So I give his lordship a nudge, and he tells Mr Lucton he’ll think it over, and let him know next day, meaning, as he told me, to write him a civil note. I dare say it slipped his mind, for it was the next day that we went off to Ravenhurst. There’s no call for you to trouble yourself, Master Kit.”

“Oh, isn’t there? Mr Lucton is coming here today, to get my answer! I shall have to buy the creature, I suppose. What’s the figure?”

“Master Kit! You won’t never! £160 is what he told his lordship, and dear at £80 is what I say!”

“I’ll offer him £100, and if he refuses, so much the better. I can’t say I don’t want the horse when the man’s been kept waiting for a fortnight! I’ll give him a draft on my bank—Oh, the devil! I can’t do that, can I? Well, you must go to the bank for me, Challow, and draw the money in bills. I’ll give you a cheque. I’d better make it out for £200, for I shall be needing some pitch and pay for myself. Don’t get robbed!”

“It’s you that’s going to be robbed, sir!” said Challow, deeply disapproving.

“Not I! I’m buying this horse on my brother’s behalf—and serve him right!” said Kit.

He set forth a little later to walk to Mount Street, nattily attired in the correct town-dress of a gentleman of fashion. His coat of dark blue superfine was the very latest made for Evelyn by Weston, and never yet worn by its owner; his stockinette pantaloons were knitted in the newest and most delicate dove-colour; his cambric shirt was modishly austere, with no ruffle, but three plain buttons; his waistcoat combined opulence with discretion; and his hat, set at an angle on his glowing locks, had a tall and tapering crown, smoothly brushed, and very different from the low, shaggy beaver to which Fimber had taken such instant exception. Only his Hessian boots were his own. Within ten minutes of forcing his feet into Evelyn’s shoes Kit had straitly commanded Fimber to retrieve from his baggage his own foot-wear. Fimber, obstinately prejudiced against Kit’s Viennese valet, had eyed his Hessians with contempt, but there was really no fault to be found either in their cut, or in their unsullied brilliance. Starched shirt points of moderate height, a Mathematical Tie, dogskin gloves, an elegant fob, and a malacca cane completed Mr Fancot’s attire, and caused his mama to declare that he was precise to a pin. Thus fortified, he set forth with tolerable composure to keep his appointment with Miss Stavely.

Halfway up John Street this composure was shaken by an encounter with a total stranger, who demanded indignantly what he meant by giving him the cut direct He extricated himself from this situation by pleading a brown study; but as he had no clue to the stranger’s identity, nor any knowledge of the latest on-dits to which this Pink of the Ton made oblique references, the ensuing conversation severely taxed his ingenuity. It culminated in a pressing invitation to him to join a gathering of Evelyn’s cronies at Limmer’s Hotel that evening. He declined this, on the score of having promised to escort his mother to a ton-party; and parted from his insouciant new acquaintance imbued with a resolve to seek refuge at Ravenhurst without any loss of time.

It had been forcibly borne in upon him that a prolonged sojourn in the Metropolis would not only be extremely wearing, but would infallibly lead to his undoing.

He was admitted to Lord Stavely’s house by the butler, who came as near to bestowing a conspiratorial wink upon him as his sense of propriety permitted, and was conducted to a parlour, at the back of the house. Here Miss Stavely awaited him, becomingly attired in a morning dress of jaconet muslin, made up to the throat, its sleeves tightly buttoned at the wrists, and its hem embellished with a broad, embroidered flounce. As he bent ceremonially over her hand, the butler, surveying the scene with a fatherly and sentimental eye, heaved an audible sigh of great sensibility, and withdrew, softly closing the door behind him.

There had been constraint in Miss Stavely’s manner, but the butler’s sigh brought the ready twinkle into her eyes, and she said involuntarily: “Oh, dear! Poor Dursley is convinced that he is assisting in a romantical affair! Don’t be dismayed! The thing is that he, and all the upper servants, have, most unfortunately, taken it upon themselves to champion what they imagine to be my cause!”

“Unfortunately?” he said.

“Why, yes! I should be a monster if I were not very much touched by their loyalty, but I wish with all my heart they could be persuaded to accept Albinia as my successor! You can’t conceive how awkward they make it for both of us! Do what I will, they persist in coming to me for orders, even of referring her orders to me! I do most sincerely feel for her: her situation is insupportable!”

“What of yours?” he asked. “Is that not insupportable?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged, with a wry smile. “You know that! It was—is!—my reason for—for entertaining your proposal, my lord.”

“That’s frank, at all events!” he remarked.

Her eyes responded to the smile in his. “We were agreed, were we not, that only candour on both our parts could make our projected alliance tolerable to either of us? Your reason for wishing to be married is your very understandable desire to become independent of your uncle; mine is—is what I feel to be an urgent need to remove myself from this house—from any of my father’s houses!”

“Having made the acquaintance of your mother-in-law—having furthered my acquaintance with her,” Kit said, smoothly correcting himself, “I perfectly comprehend your feeling—and sympathize with you!”

“No, no, don’t misunderstand me!” she said quickly. “You should rather sympathize with Albinia! It must be hard indeed for her to come into a household which has been managed for years by a daughter-in-law so little removed from her in age. Then, too, I have been in some sort my father’s companion since my mother’s death, and—and it is difficult to break such a relationship. Albinia feels—inevitably—that she is obliged to share Papa with me.”

“And you?”

“Yes,” she said frankly. “I feel the same—perhaps more bitterly, which—which quite shocks me, because I had never dreamt I could be so horridly ill-natured! Between the two of us poor Papa is rendered miserably uncomfortable! I detest Albinia as much as she detests me, and—to make a clean breast of it!—I find I can’t bear playing second fiddle where I have been accustomed to being the mistress of the house!” She added, with an effort at playfulness: “You should take warning, Denville! I have lately learnt to know myself much better than ever I did before, and have come to the dismal conclusion that I am an overbearing female, determined to rule the roast!”

He smiled at her. “I’m not afraid of you. But tell me this!—if I should ask it of you, would you find it irksome to share a home with my mother?”

She stared at him, and then exclaimed, as enlightenment dawned on her: “Was that the stipulation you spoke of? Good God, how could you be so absurd? Did you think that I should require you to thrust her out of her home? What a toad you must think me! My dearest, most adorable Godmama! Let me tell you, my lord, that my hope is that she will receive me into your household with as much kindness as she has always shown me!”

“Thank you!” he said warmly. “But I must tell you that she straitly forbade me even to suggest such an arrangement to you. She says it never answers. Indeed, she informed me that she had always regarded it as a most fortunate circumstance that her own mother and father-in-law were dead before she married my father!”

Her eyes danced. She said appreciatively: “I can almost hear her saying it—perfectly seriously, I make no doubt! Do, pray, assure her that I should not so regard her death!”

“I shan’t dare to disclose that I mentioned the matter to you. She promised me a severe scold if I did so!”

“No wonder you should be in a quake!” she agreed. “One always dreads the ordeal of which one has no experience!”

He laughed. “Now, how do you know I have not that experience, Miss Stavely?”

“I don’t think my understanding superior,” she replied, “but I have cut my eye-teeth!” She looked curiously at him. “May I know why I have sunk to be Miss Stavely again? You called me Cressy when you proposed to me—but perhaps you have forgotten?”

“By no means!” he said promptly. “Merely, your habit of addressing me as my lord led me to fear that I had gone beyond the line.”

“What a whisker!” she remarked. “I recall that Grandmama told me last night that you had a ready tongue.”

“I wish I could think that she meant it as a compliment!”

“With Grandmama one can never be quite certain, but she did say that she had been agreeably surprised in you!”

“Come, that’s encouraging! May I hope that she will consent to our marriage?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked her, you see, and all she has said so far is that she wants to know you better.”

“I wish you will tell me, Cressy, whether you mean to be ruled by her decision?”

She shook her head. “No. I make my own decisions.” She thought for a moment, and then said, with a gleam of mischief: “I might make her decision my excuse!”

“Oh, no, I don’t think you would! You’re no shuffler,” he responded coolly.

“How can you know that?” she asked, meeting his eyes with a surprised question in her own.

He smiled. “It isn’t difficult to know it: no extraordinary intelligence is necessary to enable one to perceive that your mind is direct. You don’t talk flowery commonplace, and you’re not afraid to come to the point.” He paused. “That being so, tell me what it is you wish to say to me! I fancy you didn’t invite me to visit you only to discover what my stipulation was.”

“No,” she acknowledged. Her colour was a little heightened; she said, with a touch of shyness: “I hardly know why I did ask you to come. You will think me very far from direct! You see, when you proposed to me, I was in a horrid quarrel with Albinia—a vulgar pulling of caps, as women do! I wished of all things to go away from here, not only because I was hurt and angry, but because I saw that it wouldn’t do for me to remain. Albinia is anxious to be rid of me, and I can’t blame her, for I find I am becoming one of those detestable people who are for ever picking out grievances, or coming to cuffs over trifles. And when I made the really shocking discovery that I was hoping that Albinia’s child, which she is so certain will be a son, will be a daughter—just to take the wind out of her eye!—I knew that I must go away.” She pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks. “So ignoble!” she uttered, in a stifled voice.

“But very natural,” Kit said. “A son to put your nose out of joint, eh?”

She nodded. “Yes, that was it. But to allow oneself to be put into a flame by such a cut—spoken in a mere fit of crossness, too—!”

“I consider it stands greatly to your credit that you didn’t divulge your ignoble wish.”

She forced a smile. “I’m not quite as direct as that.”

“You may put it so, if you choose: I should have said that you are not so wanting in conduct!”

“Thank you: that was kind in you!”

“No, only truthful. Were you in a passion when I proposed to you? I didn’t guess it.”

“Oh, no, not then! Merely determined to put an end to a miserably uncomfortable situation, and unable to think how it could be done.” She hesitated, and continued, with a little difficulty: “I had never meant to have remained here when my father was married again. I thought—hoped—that Grandmama would have invited me to live with her. She didn’t, however. I dare say you’ll understand that I didn’t care to ask her.”

“Readily! Also, that, Grandmama having failed to come to the scratch, my arrival on the scene was providential!”

“Yes, that’s the truth,” she said frankly. “I don’t mean that I would have accepted any offer. But although I was so little acquainted with you I liked you very well, and I knew, from what Lady Denville told me, that you were kind, and good-natured, and—”

“Stop!” he interrupted. “My poor girl, how could you allow yourself to be so taken-in? If you mean to accept me at my mother’s valuation a shocking disappointment awaits you! She is the most dotingly fond parent imaginable, and can detect no fault in either of her sons.”

She laughed. “Oh, I know that! But you are dotingly fond of her, and so charmingly attentive to her that I don’t know how she should detect your faults. I liked that in you too. And although I shouldn’t have thought of marriage if Grandmama had invited me to live with her I knew that it wouldn’t be easy to do that, because I had discovered by then that when one has held the reins for four years, as I did here, and at Stavely, it is the most difficult thing in the world to become a mere young lady, obedient to the decrees of her elders. You see, I never was that! So when you offered for me, Denville, it did seem to me that I should be a ninnyhammer to refuse you, only because I was not in love with you, or you with me. You were not disagreeable to me: I dearly love your mama; and you offered me not only your hand but the—the position to which I am accustomed.” She paused, and after thinking for a moment, said: “And to be honest with you, having endured several taunts on my age, and being at my last prayers, I was strongly attracted by the notion of catching one of the biggest prizes on the Marriage Mart!”

He shook his head. “Very ignoble!”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” she agreed, answering the laughter in his eyes with one of her merriest twinkles. “But understandable—don’t you think?”

“Well, never having regarded myself in that flattering light—”

“Oh, what flummery!” she interjected. “You must be well aware of it! But it’s all nonsense, of course: when you had left me that day, and I had leisure to reflect, I knew it.” She scanned his face, her brow puckered. “I don’t know how it is, but when you came here last night I—I had almost decided to tell you it would not do. Thinking about it, not seeing you again after that interrupted talk—which was attended by a good deal of awkwardness, was it not?—and having had leisure to reflect more calmly—I had misgivings—began to think that we should not suit—that I had accepted your offer in a distempered freak! Then, last night, I met you again, and—” She stopped, her frown deepening. He waited, speechless, and she said, with one of her open looks: “I liked you much better than ever before!”

He still said nothing, for there was nothing he could think of to say. Various thoughts chased one another through his head: that Evelyn was more fortunate than he knew; that the part he himself was playing was even more odious than he had foreseen; that he must remove himself from her vicinity immediately; that when she saw Evelyn again she must surely be conscious of his superior qualities.

“And now I don’t know!” she confessed. “I was never in such a—such a bumble-broth in my life, and how I come to be so stupid as not to know my own mind I can’t imagine! Such a thing has never happened to me before, for, in general, I should warn you, I do know it!”

“I can believe that,” he said. “You have a great look of decision! I conjecture that once your mind is made up there can be no turning you from it!”

“Yes, I fear that’s true,” she replied seriously. “I hope I may not be arrogant: one of those overmighty women, who grow to be like poor Grandmama!”

“I don’t think there can be any fear of that!” he said, amused.

“I trust you may be right! I have certainly given you no cause to think me anything but a woolly-crown! But I must hold you accountable for that,” she said, in a rallying tone. “I fancy you must have odd humours, perhaps! You make me feel one day that I have a pretty just notion of your character, and the next that I know nothing about you, which is very disconcerting, let me tell you!”

“I beg your pardon! And so?”

“And so I feel that Grandmama is right, when she says I ought to know you better before I make up this skimble-skamble mind of mine.” Her eyes were hidden from him; she was engaged in the occupation of twisting a ring round and round upon her finger; but she raised them suddenly, squarely meeting his. “Will you grant me a little more time for consideration? To become better acquainted—each of us with the other? I dare say you mean to go to Brighton now that London is getting to be so thin of company: that’s your custom, isn’t it?”

“Why, “yes! I have been very much in the habit of escorting my mother there! This year, I find myself obliged to go to Ravenhurst—I don’t know for how long, or whether Mama means to accompany me,” he replied.

“Oh! Well, Ravenhurst is not so far from Worthing, is it? The thing is, Denville, that I am going to Worthing with Grandmama next week, to spend the summer there, and I thought that perhaps you would drive over to visit us now and then.”

“So that we may learn to know one another? You may be sure I shall do so. I must hope that you will find it such a dead bore at Worthing, amongst all the dowagers, that it will weigh the scales down in my favour.”

“It might well do so,” she acknowledged, with a grimace. “But I must warn you that I am inured to that particular boredom: I go there every year!”

“I can safely promise that if you marry me you will never set foot in the place again!” he said, laughter springing to his eyes as he tried to picture his twin in that respectable resort.