Faro’s Daughter

Chapter 5

Mr Ravenscar was standing by the window in the Yellow Saloon, looking out. He was dressed in topboot; and leather breeches, with a spotted cravat round his throat and a drab-coloured driving-coat with several shoulder-cape reached to his calves. He turned, as Miss Grantham entered, the room, and she saw that some spare whip-lashes were thru; through one of his buttonholes, and that he was carrying a pair of driving-gloves of York tan.

“Good morning,” he said, coming a few paces to meet her, “Do you care to drive round the Park, Miss Grantham?”

“Drive round the Park?” she repeated, in a surprised tone.

“Yes, why not? I am exercising my greys, and came here to beg the honour of your company.”

She was conscious of a strong inclination to go with hint but said foolishly: “But I am not dressed to go out!”

“I imagine that might be mended.”

“True, but—” She broke off, and raised her eyes to his face, “Why do you ask me?” she asked bluntly.

“Why, from what I saw here last night, ma’am, it would appear to be impossible to be private with you under the roof.”

“Do you wish to be private with me, Mr Ravenscar?”

“Very much.”

She was aware of a most odd sensation, as though a obstruction had leapt suddenly into her throat on purpose to choke her. Her knees felt unaccountably weak, and she knew that she was blushing. “But you barely know me!” she manage to say.

“That is another circumstance that can be mended. Come Miss Grantham, give me the pleasure of your company, I beg of you!”

She said with a little difficulty: “You are very good. Indeed I should like to! But I must change my dress, and you will not care to keep your horses standing.”

“You will observe, if you glance out of this window, that my groom is walking them up and down.”

“You leave me nothing to say, sir. Grant me ten minute grace, and I will gladly drive out with you.”

He nodded, and moved to open the door for her. She glanced up at him under her lashes as she passed him and was once more baffled by his expression. He was the strangest creature! Too many men had been attracted to her for her to fail to recognize the particular warm look in a man’s eyes when they fell upon the woman of his fancy. It was not in Mr Ravenscar’s eyes; but if he had not fallen a victim to her charms what in the world possessed him to invite her to drive out with him?

It did not take her long to change her chintz gown for a walking dress. A green bonnet with an upstanding poke, and several softly curling ostrich plumes, admirably framed her face, and set off the glory of her chestnut locks. She was conscious of looking her best, and hoped that Mr Ravenscar would think that she did him credit.

Lady Bellingham, informed of the proposed expedition, wavered between elation and a doubt that her niece ought not to drive out alone with a gentleman she had met but once before in her life; but the obvious advantages of Deborah’s fixing Mr Ravenscar’s interest soon outweighed all other considerations. Lucius Kennet chose to be amused, and to quiz Miss Grantham unmercifully on having made such an important conquest, but she answered him quite crossly, telling him it was no such thing, and that she thought such jests extremely vulgar.

It was consequently with a slightly heightened colour that she presently rejoined Ravenscar in the Yellow Saloon. Glancing critically at her, he was obliged to admit that she was a magnificent creature. He accompanied her downstairs to the front door, where they were met by Kennet, who came lounging across the hall to see them off.

Ravenscar and he exchanged a few civilities, and the groom led the greys up to the door. Mr Kennet inspected them with a knowledgeable eye, while Ravenscar gave Miss Grantham his hand to assist her to mount into the curricle, and said that he should back them to beat Filey’s pair.

They were, indeed, beautiful animals, standing a little over fifteen hands, with small heads, broad chests and thighs, powerful quarters, and good, arched necks.

“Ah, I’ll wager they are sweet goers!” Mr Kennet said, passing a hand over one satin neck.

“Yes,” Ravenscar acknowledged. “They are beautiful steppers.”

He got up into the curricle, while the groom still stood to the greys’ heads, and spread a rug over Miss Grantham’s knees. Taking his whip in his hand, and lightly feeling his horses’ mouths, he nodded to the groom. “I shan’t need you,” he said briefly. “Servant, Mr Kennet.”

Both the groom and Kennet stepped back, and the greys, which were restive, plunged forward on the kidney-stones that paved the square.

“Don’t be alarmed!” Ravenscar told Miss Grantham. “They are only a little fresh.”

“I wonder you can hold them so easily!” she confessed, repressing an instinctive desire to clutch the side of the curricle.

He smiled, but returned no answer. They swept round the corner into King Street, turned westwards, and bowled along in the direction of St James’s Street.

There was sufficient traffic abroad to keep Mr Ravenscar’s attention fixed on his task, for the greys, though perfectly well-mannered, chose to take high-bred exception to a wagon which was rumbling along at the side of the road, to shy playfully at a sedan, to regard with sudden misgiving a lady’s feathered hat, and to decide that the lines of white posts, linked with chains, that separated the footpaths from the kennels and the road, menaced them with a hitherto unsuspected danger. But the gates leading into Hyde Park were reached without mishap, and once within them the greys settled into a fine, forward action, satisfied, apparently, to find themselves in surroundings more suited to their birth and lineage.

There were several other equipages in the Park, including some phaetons, and a number of barouches. Mr Ravenscar touched his hat every now and then to acquaintances, but presently, drawing away from the other vehicles, he was able to turn his attention to his companion.

“Are you comfortable, Miss Grantham?”

“Very. Your carriage is beautifully sprung. Do you drive it in your race?”

“Oh, no! I have an especially built racing-curricle for that.

“Shall you win?” she asked, looking up at him with a slight smile.

“I hope so. Do you mean to hazard your money on my greys?”

“Oh, I must certainly do so! But I have never the least luck, I must tell you, and shall very likely bring you bad fortune.”

“I am not afraid of that. Your luck was out last night, but I hope you may come about again.”

“That is very pretty of you, Mr Ravenscar, but I fear it was my skill rather than my luck which was at fault,” she owned.

“Perhaps.” He looped his rein dexterously as the greys overtook a gig, and let it run free again as they shot past. “It is to be hoped that your ill-luck is not consistent. It would surely be disastrous to the success of your delightful establishment if this were so.”

“It would indeed,” she agreed somewhat ruefully. “The world is too apt to imagine, however, that a gaming-house must be a source of enormous wealth to its proprietors.”

“I collect that this is not so, Miss Grantham?”

“By no means.”

He turned to look down at her, saying with the abruptness which she found disconcerting: “Are you in debt, Miss Grantham?”

She was quite taken aback, and did not answer for a moment. She said then, in a stiffened voice: “What prompts you to ask me such a question, sir?”

“That is no answer,” he pointed out.

“I know of no reason why I should give you one.”

“I should have set your scruples at rest at the outset by informing you that I am not entirely ignorant of your circumstances,” he said.

She regarded him in astonishment. “I cannot conceive how you should know anything about my circumstances, sir!”

“You—or should I say your amiable aunt?—are in debt to Lord Ormskirk.”

“I suppose he told you so,” she said in a mortified tone. “On the contrary, my young cousin told me.”

“Adrian told you?” she exclaimed. “You must be mistaken. Adrian knows nothing of Lord Ormskirk’s dealings with my aunt!”

He reined in his horses to a walk. He thought her a remarkably good actress, but her artlessness irritated him, and it was with a sardonic inflexion that he said: “It is you who are mistaken, Miss Grantham. Mablethorpe seemed to me to be singularly well-informed.”

“Who told him?” she demanded.

He raised his brows. “You would have preferred him to remain in ignorance of your indebtedness to Lord Ormskirk? Well, I can appreciate that.”

“I should prefer everyone to remain in ignorance of it!” she said hotly. “Am I to understand that Ormskirk took your cousin into his confidence? I must tell you that I find it incredible!”

“No, I apprehend that your friend, Mr Kennet, was the source of my cousin’s information.”

She bit her lip, and was silent for a few moments, a good deal discomfited. When she spoke again, it was with studied lightness. “Well! And if this is so I do not immediately perceive why you should interest yourself in the matter, Mr Ravenscar.”

“I might help you out of your difficulties.”

She suffered from a momentary dread that he was about to make her a dishonourable proposal, and gripped her hands together in her lap. It would not be the first time she had been the recipient of such proposals; she was aware that her position in her aunt’s house laid her open to such attacks, and had never permitted herself to receive them in the tragic manner, rather turning them off with a laugh and a jest, but she found herself desperately hoping that Mr Ravenscar was not going to prove himself to be just like other men. Then she recalled the hard light in his eyes, and felt so sure that whatever his motive might be it was not amorous that she dared to ask: “Why?”

“What would you wish me to reply?” he inquired. “I will endeavour to oblige you, but the truth is that I am no fencer.”

She was by now quite bewildered, and said in as blunt a manner as his own: “I don’t understand you! We met for the first time last night, and I did not suppose that—in short, I fancied that you were much inclined to dislike me, sir! Yet today you tell me that you might help me out of what you call my difficulties!”

“Under certain circumstances, Miss Grantham.”

“Indeed! And what circumstances are these?”

“You must be as well aware of them as I am myself,” he said. “I am perfectly willing to be more explicit, however. I am prepared to recompense you handsomely, ma’am, for whatever disappointment you may suffer from the relinquishment of all pretensions to my cousin’s hand and heart.”

She had been so much in the habit of regarding Lord Mablethorpe’s infatuation for her as an absurdity that this forthright speech fell upon her ears with stunning effect. She was quite unable to speak for several moments. A tumult of emotion swelled her bosom, and her brain seethed with a jumble of thoughts. The deepest chagrin battled with a furious desire to slap Mr Ravenscar’s face, to assure him, without mincing her words, that she would rather die a spinster than marry his cousin, and, after telling him her opinion of his manners, morals, and abysmal stupidity, to demand to be set down instantly. A strong inclination to burst into tears accompanied these more violent ambitions, and was followed almost immediately by a resolve to punish Mr Ravenscar in the most vindictive way open to her, and a perfectly irrational determination to show him that she was every bit as bad as he imagined her to be, if not worse. To relinquish her pretensions, as he had the insolence to call them, to Lord Mablethorpe’s hand and heart for the mere asking, was no way of punishing him. She perceived that she must forgo the pleasure of slapping his face. Overcoming the constriction in her throat, she said, with very tolerable command over her voice: “Pray, what do you think a handsome recompense, Mr Ravenscar?”

“Shall we say five thousand pounds, ma’am?”

She gave a tinkle of rather metallic laughter. “Really, sir, I am afraid you are trying to trifle with me!”

“You rate your claims high,” he said grimly. “Certainly: Your cousin is quite devoted to me.”

“My cousin, Miss Grantham, is a minor.”

“Oh, but not for long!” she said. “I am not impatient: I can afford to wait for two months, I assure you.”

“Very well,” he said. “I do not choose to haggle with you, ma’am. I will give you exactly double that sum for my cousin’s release.”

She leaned back in the curricle, very much at her ease, schooling her lips to smile. Mr Ravenscar observed the smile, but failed to notice the dangerous glitter in the lady’s eyes. “Paltry, Mr Ravenscar,” she said gently.

“Come, Miss Grantham, that won’t serve! You will get not a penny more out of me, so let us waste no time in haggling!”

“But only consider, sir!” said Miss Grantham, smoothing her lemon kid gloves over her wrists. “You would remove from my grasp at one stroke a fortune and a title!”

“Rest assured, ma’am, that there is not the slightest possibility of your enjoying the possession of that particular fortune or title!” said Ravenscar unpleasantly.

“My dear sir, you underrate my intelligence, believe me!” said Miss Grantham, softly chiding. “You would not have offered me money had it been possible to detach Adrian from me by any other means. You are quite in my power, you know.”

“If you refuse my terms, you will discover your mistake!” said Ravenscar, anger hardening his voice.

“Nonsense!” said Miss Grantham coolly. “Do, I beg of you, be reasonable, sir! You cannot, I am persuaded, think me so big a fool as to let such an advantageous marriage slip through my fingers for the sake of a mere ten thousand pounds!”

“How old are you?” he demanded.

“I am twenty-five, Mr Ravenscar.”

“You would do well to accept my offer. Nothing but unhappiness could be the sequel to your marriage with a boy barely out of his tutor’s hands. Think this over carefully, Miss Grantham! Adrian’s calf-love will not endure, I assure you.”

“It is very possible,” she acknowledged. “But I do not anticipate that it will wane within the next two months. I shall be at such pains, you see, to keep it alive.”

She had the satisfaction of knowing that she had succeeded in putting him in a rage. A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth; she thought the expression in his eyes quite murderous, and wondered indeed if her body would be found in some secluded corner of the Park one day.

“Let me make it plain to you, Miss Grantham, since you will have it, that there is nothing I will not do to prevent my cousin’s marrying a woman of your order!”

She gave a gasp, but rallied enough to retort: “Very fine talking, Mr Ravenscar! In fact, there is nothing you can do.”

“You will see, ma’am!”

She yawned. “I protest, you are unreasonable, sir! Pray, what is to become of me if I whistle your cousin down the wind? I have made up my mind to it that it is time I became eligibly settled in the world.”

“As to eligibility, ma’am,” said Ravenscar, through his teeth, “I apprehend that Ormskirk has plans for your future which should answer the purpose admirably!”

The palm of Miss Grantham’s hand itched again to hit him, and it was with an immense effort of will that she forced herself to refrain. She replied with scarcely a tremor to betray her indignation, “But even you must realize, sir, that Lord Ormskirk’s obliging offer is not to be thought of beside your cousin’s proposal. I declare, I have a great fancy to become Lady Mablethorpe.”

“I don’t doubt it!” he said harshly. “By God, if I had my way, women of your stamp should be whipped at the cart’s tail!”

“Why, how fierce you are!” she marvelled. “And all because I have a desire to turn respectable! I dare say I shall make Adrian a famous wife.”

“A wife out of a gaming-house!” he ejaculated. “One of faro’s daughters! You forget, ma’am, that I have been privileged to observe you in your proper milieu! Do you imagine that I will permit the young fool to ruin himself by marriage with you? You’ll learn to know me better!”

She shrugged. “This is mere ranting, Mr Ravenscar. It would be well if you learned to know me better.”

“God forbid!” he said with a snap. “I have learnt enough this morning to assure me that no greater disaster could befall my cousin than to find himself tied to you!”

“And is ten thousand pounds all you are prepared to offer to save your cousin from this horrid fate?” she inquired.

He looked at her in a measuring way, as though he were appraising her worth. “It would be interesting to know what figure you set upon yourself, Miss Grantham.”

She appeared to give this matter her consideration. “I do not know. You regard the affair in so serious a light that I feel I should be very green to accept less than twenty thousand.”

He turned his horses, and they broke into a trot again. “Why stop at that?” he asked, with a short bark of laughter.

“Indeed, I dare say I shan’t,” said Miss Grantham cordially. “My price will rise as Adrian’s birthday approaches.”

He drove on in silence for some little way, frowning heavily at the road ahead.

“How pretty the trees are, with their leaves just on the turn!” remarked Miss Grantham, in soulful accents.

He paid no heed to this sally, but once more looked down at her. “If I engage to pay you twenty thousand pounds, will you release my cousin?” he asked abruptly.

Miss Grantham tilted her head on one side. “I own, twenty thousand pounds is a temptation,” she said. “And yet ...!” she added undecidedly. “No, I think I would prefer to marry Adrian.”

“You will regret that decision, ma’am,” he said, dropping his hands, and letting the greys shoot.

“Oh, I trust not, sir! After all, Adrian is a most amiable young man, and I shall enjoy being his wife, and having a great deal of pin-money. I hope,” she added graciously, “that you will be one of our first guests at Mablethorpe. You will see then what a fine ladyship I mean to be.”

He vouchsafed no answer to this, so after a thoughtful pause she said airily: “Of course, there will be a good many changes to be made at Mablethorpe before I shall be ready to receive visitors. I collect that everything is shockingly old fashioned there. The London house too! But I have a great turn for furnishing houses, and I do not despair of achieving something very tolerable.”

The contemptuous curl of Mr Ravenscar’s mouth was all the sign he gave of having heard this speech.

“I mean to set up a faro-bank of my own,” pursued Miss Grantham. “It will be very select, of course: admission only by card. To make a success of that sort of thing, one must have a certain position in the world, and that Adrian can give me. I will wager that my card-parties become the rage within a twelvemonth!”

“If you think, ma’am, to force up the price by these disclosures, you are wasting your time!” said Ravenscar. “Your plans for the future come as no surprise to me.” He reined in his horses to a more sober pace, as the gates of the Park came into sight. “You have had the chance to enrich yourself, and you have seen fit to refuse it. My offer is no longer open to your acceptance.”

She was surprised, but took care not to let it appear. “Why, now you talk like a sensible man, sir!” she said. “You accept the inevitable, in fact.”

They passed through the gates, and turned eastwards, bowling along with a disregard for the convenience of all other traffic which drew curses from two porters, a hackney-coachman, and a portly old gentleman who was unwise enough to try to cross the street ahead of the curricle. “No,” said Ravenscar. “Once more you are out in your reckoning, Miss Grantham. You have chosen to cross swords with me, and you shall see how you like it. Let me tell you that it was with the greatest reluctance that I made my offer! It goes much against the grain with me to enrich harpies!” He glanced down at her as he spoke, and encountered such a blaze of anger in her eyes that he was momentarily taken aback. But even as his brows snapped together in quick suspicion, the long-lashed lids had veiled her eyes, and she was laughing.

The rest of the drive back to St James’s Square was accomplished in silence. When the curricle drew up outside her door, Miss Grantham put back the rug that covered her knees, and said with deceptive affability: “A most enjoyable drive, Mr Ravenscar. I must thank you for having given me the opportunity to make your better acquaintance. I fancy we have both of us learnt something this morning.”

“Can you get down without my assistance?” he asked brusquely. “I am unable to leave the horses.”

“Certainly,” she replied, nimbly descending from the high carriage. “Goodbye, sir—or should I say au revoir?”

He slightly raised his hat. “Au revoir, ma’am!” he said, and drove on.

The door of the house was opened to Miss Grantham by Silas Wantage, who took one look at her flushed countenance, and said indulgently: “Now, what’s happened to put you into one of your tantrums, Miss Deb?”

“I am not in a tantrum!” replied Deborah furiously. “And if Lord Mablethorpe should call, I will see him!”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” said Wantage. “For he’s been here once already, and means to come again. I never saw anything like it, not in all my puff!”

“I wish you will not talk in that odiously vulgar way!” said Deborah.

“Not in a tantrum: oh, no!” said Mr Wantage, shaking his head. “And me that’s known you from your cradle! Your aunt says as how Master Kit’s a coming home on leave. What do you say to that?”

Miss Grantham, however, had nothing to say to it. She was an extremely fond sister, but for the moment the iniquities of Mr Ravenscar possessed her mind to the exclusion of all other interests. She ran upstairs to the little back-parlour on the half-landing, which was used as a morning-room. Lady Bellingham was writing letters there, at a spindle-legged table in the window. She looked up as her niece entered the room, and cried: “Well, my love, so you are back already! Tell me at once, did—” She broke off, as her eyes met Miss Grantham’s stormy ones. “Oh dear!” she said, in a dismayed voice. “What has happened?”

Miss Grantham untied her bonnet-strings with a savage jerk, and cast the bonnet on to a chair. “He is the vilest, rudest, stupidest, horridest man alive! Oh, but I will serve him out for this! I will make him sorry he ever dared—I’ll have no mercy on him! He shall grovel to me! Oh, I am in such a rage.”

“Yes, my love, I can see you are,” said her aunt faintly. “Did he—did he make love to you?”

“Love!” exclaimed Miss Grantham. “No, indeed! My thoughts did not lie in that direction! I am a harpy, if you please, Aunt Lizzie! Women like me should be whipped at the cart’s tail!”

“Good heavens, Deb, is the man out of his senses?” demanded Lady Bellingham.

“By no means! He is merely stupid, and rude, and altogether abominable! I hate him! I wish I might never set eyes on him again!”

“But what did he do?” asked Lady Bellingham bewildered.

Miss Grantham ground her white teeth. “He came to rescue his precious cousin from my toils! That was why he invited me to drive out with him. To insult me!”

“Oh dear, you thought it might be that!” said her aunt sadly.

Miss Grantham paid no heed to this interruption. “A Grantham is not a fit bride for Lord Mablethorpe! To marry me would be to ruin himself! Oh, I could scream with vexation!”

Lady Bellingham regarded her doubtfully. “But you said much yourself, my dear. I remember distinctly—”

“It doesn’t signify in the least,” said Miss Grantham. “He hi no right to say it”

Lady Bellingham agreed to this wholeheartedly, after watching her niece pace round the room for several minutes, ventured to inquire what had happened during the course of the drive. Miss Grantham stopped dead her tracks, and replied in a shaking voice: “He tried to bribe me!”

“Tried to bribe you not to marry Adrian, Deb?” asked her aunt. “But how very odd of him, when you had never the lea intention of doing so! What can have put such a notion in his head?”

“I am sure I don’t know, and certainly I don’t care a fig replied Deborah untruthfully. “He had the insolence to offer me five thousand pounds if I would relinquish my pretensions—my pretensions!—to Adrian’s hand and heart!”

Lady Bellingham, over whose plump countenance a hopeful expression had begun to creep, looked disappointed, she said: “Five thousand! I must say, Deb, I think that is shabby!”

“I said that I feared he was trying to trifle with me,” recounted Miss Grantham with relish.

“Well, and I am sure you could not have said anything better, my love! I declare, I did not think so meanly of him!”

“Then,” continued Miss Grantham, “he said he would double that figure.”

Lady Bellingham dropped her reticule. “Ten thousand!” she exclaimed faintly. “No, never mind my reticule, Deb, it don’t signify! What did you say to that?”

“I said, Paltry!” answered Miss Grantham.

Her aunt blinked at her. “Paltry ... Would you—would you call it paltry, my love?”

“I did call it paltry. I said I would not let Adrian slip through my fingers for a mere ten thousand. I enjoyed saying that, Aunt Lizzie!”

“Yes, my dear, but—but was it wise, do you think?”

“Pooh, what can he do, pray?” said Miss Grantham scornfully. “To be sure, he flew into as black a temper as my own, and took no pains to conceal it from me. I was excessively glad to see him so angry! He said—about Ormskirk—Oh, if I were a man, to be able to call him out, and run him through, and through, and through!”

Lady Bellingham, who appeared quite shattered, said feebly that you could not run a man through three times. “At least, I don’t think so,” she added. “Of course, I never was present at a duel, but there are always seconds, you know, and they would be bound to stop you.”

“Nobody would stop me!” declared Miss Grantham bloodthirstily. “I would like to carve him into mincemeat!”

“Oh dear, I can’t think where you get such unladylike notions!” sighed her aunt. “I do trust that you did not say it?”

“No, I said that I thought I should make Adrian a famous wife. That made him angrier than ever. I thought he might very likely strangle me. However, he did not. He asked me what figure I set upon myself.”

Lady Bellingham showed a flicker of hope. “And what answer did you make to that, Deb?”

“I said I should be very green to accept less than twenty thousand!”

“Less than—My love, where are my smelling-salts? I do not feel at all the thing! Twenty thousand! It is a fortune! He must have thought you had taken leave of your senses!”

“Very likely, but he said he would pay me twenty thousand if I would release Adrian.”

Lady Bellingham sank back in her chair, holding the vinaigrette to her nose.

“So then,” concluded Miss Grantham, with reminiscent pleasure, “I said that after all I preferred to marry Adrian.”

A moan from her aunt brought her eyes round to that afflicted lady. “Mablethorpe instead of twenty thousand pounds?” demanded her ladyship, in quavering accents. “But you told me positively you would not have him!”

“Of course I shall not!” said Miss Grantham impatiently. “At least, not unless I marry him in a fit of temper,” she added, with an irrepressible twinkle.

“Deb, either you are mad, or I am!” announced Lady Bellingham, lowering the vinaigrette. “Oh, it does not beat thinking of! We might have been free of all our difficulties! Ring the bell; I must have the hartshorn!”

Deborah looked at her in incredulous astonishment. “Aunt Eliza! You did not suppose—you could not suppose that I would allow that odious man to buy me off?” she gasped.

“Kit might have bought his exchange! Not to mention the mortgage!” mourned her ladyship.

“Kit buy his exchange out of—out of blood-money? He would prefer to sell out!”

“Well, but, my love, there is no need to call it by such an ugly name, I am sure! You do not want young Mablethorpe, after all I...”

“Aunt, you would not have had me accept a bribe!”

“Not an ordinary bribe, dear Deb! Certainly not! But twenty thousand—Oh, I can’t say it!”

“It was the horridest insult I have ever received!” said Deborah hotly.

“You can’t call a sum like that an insult!” protested her ladyship. “If only you would not be so impulsive! Think of poor dear Kit! He is coming home on leave too, and he says he has fallen in love. Was ever anything so unfortunate? It is all very well to talk of insults, but one must be practical, Deb! Seventy pounds for green peas, and here you are throwing twenty thousand to the winds! And the end of it will be that you will fall into Ormskirk’s hands! I can see it all! The only comfort I have is that I shall very likely die before it happens, because I can feel my spasms coming on already.”

She closed her eyes as she spoke, apparently resigning herself to her approaching end. Miss Grantham said defiantly: “I am not in the least sorry. I will make him sorry he ever dared to think I was the kind of creature who would entrap a silly boy into marrying me!”

This announcement roused Lady Bellingham to open her eyes again, and to say in a bewildered way: “But you told me you said you would marry him!”

“I said so to Ravenscar. That is nothing!”

“But I don’t see how he can help thinking it if you told him So!”

“Yes, and I told him also, that I meant to set up my own faro-bank when I am Lady Mablethorpe,” nodded Miss Grantham, dwelling fondly on these recollections. “And I said I should change everything at Mablethorpe. He looked as though he would have liked to hit me!”

Lady Bellingham regarded her with a fascinated stare. “Deb, you were not—you were not vulgar?”

“Yes, I was. I was as vulgar as I could be, and I shall be more vulgar presently!”

“But why?” almost shrieked her ladyship.

Miss Grantham swallowed, blushed, and said in a small-girl voice: “To teach him a lesson!”

Lady Bellingham sank back again. “But what is the use of teaching people lessons? Besides, I cannot conceive what he is to learn from such behaviour! I do hope, my dearest love, that you have not got a touch of the sun! I do not know how you can be so odd!”

“Well, it is to punish him,” said Miss Grantham, goaded. “He will not like it at all when he hears that Adrian is going to marry me. I dare say he will try to do something quite desperate.”

“Offer you more money?” asked Lady Bellingham, once more reviving.

“If he offered me a hundred thousand pounds I would fling it in his face!” declared Miss Grantham.

“Deb,” said her aunt earnestly, “it is sacrilege to talk like that! What—what, you unnatural girl, is to become of me? Only remember that odious bill from Priddy’s, and the wheatstraw, and the new barouche!”

“I know, Aunt Lizzie,” said Deborah, conscience-stricken. “But indeed I could not!”

“You will have to marry Mablethorpe,” said Lady Bellingham despairingly.

“No, I won’t’

“My head goes round and round!” complained her aunt, pressing a hand to her brow. “First you say that Ravenscar will be sorry when he hears you are to marry Mablethorpe, and now you say you won’t marry him!”

“I shall pretend that I am about to marry him,” explained Miss Grantham. “Of course I shall not do so in the end!”

“Well!” exclaimed Lady Bellingham. “That is shabby treatment indeed! I declare it would be quite shocking to serve the poor boy such a trick”

Miss Grantham looked guilty, and twisted her ribbons. “Yes, but I don’t think that he will mind, Aunt Lizzie. In fact, I dare say he will be glad to be rid of me presently, because ten to one he will fall in love with someone else, and I assure you I don’t mean to be kind to him! And in any event,” she added, with a flash of spirit, “it serves him right for having such an abominable cousin”