Lady of Quality

Chapter 15

Miss Wychwood, next morning, declared herself to be so much better as to be in a capital way. Jurby did not think that she looked to be in a capital way at all, and strenuously opposed her determination to get up. “I must get up!” said Miss Wychwood, rather crossly. “How am I ever to be myself again, if you keep me in bed, which of all things I most detest? Besides, my brother is coming to see me this morning, and I will not allow him to find me languishing in my bed, looking as if I were on the point of cocking up my toes!”

“We’ll see what the doctor says, miss!” said Jurby.

But when Dr Tidmarsh came to visit his patient, just as her almost untouched breakfast had been removed, he annoyed Jurby by saying that it would do Miss Wychwood good to leave her bed for an hour or two, and lie on the sofa. “I don’t think she should dress herself, but her pulse has been normal now since yesterday, and it won’t harm her to slip on a dressing-gown, and sit up for a little while.”

“Heaven bless you, doctor!” said Miss Wychwood.

“Ah, that sounds more like yourself, ma’am!” he said laughingly.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Jurby, “Miss Wychwood is not at all like herself! And it is my duty to inform you, sir, that she swallowed only three spoonfuls of the pork jelly she had for her dinner last night, and has had nothing for her breakfast but some tea, and a few scraps of toast!”

“Well, well, we must tempt her appetite, mustn’t we? I have no objection to her having a little chicken, say, or even a slice of boiled lamb, if she should fancy it.”

“The truth is that I don’t fancy anything,” confessed Annis. “I have quite lost my appetite! But I will try to eat some chicken, I promise!”

“That’s right!” he said. “Spoken like the sensible woman I know you to be, ma’am!”

Miss Wychwood might be a sensible woman, but the attack of influenza had left her feeling much more like one of the foolish, tearful creatures whom she profoundly despised, for ever lying on sofas, with smelling-salts clutched in their feeble hands, and always dependent on some stronger character to advise and support them. She had heard that influenza often left its victims subject to deep dejection, and she now knew that this was true. Never before had she been so blue-devilled that she felt it was a pity she had ever been born, or that it was too much trouble to try to rouse herself from her listless depression. She told herself that this contemptible state really did arise from her late illness; and that to lie in bed, with nothing better to do than to think how weak and miserable she felt, was merely to encourage her blue-devils. So she refused to yield to the temptation to remain in bed, but got up presently, found that her legs had become inexplicably wayward (“as though the bones had been taken out of them!” she told Jurby, trying to laugh), and was glad to accept the support of Jurby’s strong arm on her somewhat tottery progress to her dressing-table. A glance at her reflection in the mirror did nothing to improve her spirits. “Heavens, Jurby!” she exclaimed. “What a fright I am! I have a good mind to send you out to buy a pot of rouge for me!”

“Well, I wouldn’t buy you any such thing, Miss Annis! Nor you don’t look a fright. Just a trifle hagged, which is only to be expected after such a nasty turn as you’ve had. When I’ve given your hair a good brushing, and pinned it up under the pretty lace cap you bought only last week, you won’t know yourself!”

“I don’t know myself now,” said Miss Wychwood. “Oh, well! I suppose it doesn’t signify: Sir Geoffrey never notices whether one is looking one’s best or one’s worst—but I do wish I had asked you to paper my hair last night!”

“Well, your hair don’t signify either, miss, for I shall tuck it into your cap,” replied her unsympathetic handmaid. “And it’s such a warm day there’s no reason why you shouldn’t wear that lovely dressing-gown you had made for you, and haven’t worn above two or three times—the satin one, with the blue posies embroidered all over it, and the lace fichu. That will make you feel much more like yourself, won’t it?”

“I hope so, but I doubt it,” said Miss Wychwood.

However, when she had been arrayed in the expensive dressing-gown, and had herself tied the strings of the lace cap under her chin, she admitted that she didn’t look quite such a mean bit.

Sir Geoffrey was admitted shortly after eleven o’clock, and so far from not noticing that she was not looking her best he was so much shocked by her white face, and heavy eyes that he forgot the injunctions laid upon him and ejaculated: “Good God, Annis! Dashed if I’ve ever seen you look so knocked-up! Poor old lady, what a devil of a time you’ve been having! And when I think that it was that infernal bagpipe who gave it you I could—Well, never mind!” he added, belatedly remembering his instructions. “No use working ourselves up! Now, I’ll tell you what Amabel and I wish you to do, and that is to come to Twynham as soon as you’re well enough to travel, and pay us a long visit. How would that be?”

“Delightful! Thank you: how kind of you both! But tell me, how do you find Tom?”

He never needed much encouragement to talk about his children, and spent the rest of his brief stay thus innocuously employed. When he got up to go, he kissed her cheek, gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder, and said: “There, no one can accuse me of having stayed too long, or talked you to death, can they?”

“Certainly not! It has done me a great deal of good to have a chat with you, and I hope you’ll give me a look in later on.”

“Ay, to be sure I will! Ah, is that you, Jurby? Come to turn me out, have you? What a dragon you are! Well, Annis, be a good girl, and see how fast you can get back into high force! I am going to take Amabel for an airing now: just a gentle walk, you know; but I’ll look in on you when we come back.”

He then went off, and Jurby removed one of the cushions which was propping her mistress up, and adjured her to close her eyes, and have a nap before her nuncheon was brought up to her.

Lady Wychwood, having reluctantly handed her daughter over to Nurse, was very well pleased to go for an ambling walk with Sir Geoffrey, and not sorry when Lucilla refused an invitation to accompany them. She set off in the direction of the London Road, leaning on her husband’s arm, and saying: “How agreeable it is to be with you again, dearest! Now we can have a comfortable cose, without poor Maria’s breaking in on us!”

“Yes, that’s what I thought, when I coaxed you to come for a walk with me,” he said. “Devilish good notion of mine, wasn’t it?”

But he would not have thought it a good notion had he known that little more than ten minutes later Mr Carleton would be seeking admittance to Miss Wychwood’s house.

Limbury, opening the door to Mr Carleton, said that Miss Wychwood was not at home to visitors. Miss Wychwood, he said, had been unwell, and had not yet left her room.

“So I have already been informed,” said Mr Carleton. “Take my card up to her, if you please!”

Limbury received the card from him, and said, with a slight bow: “I will have it conveyed to Miss’s room, sir.”

“Well, don’t keep me standing on the doorstep!” said Mr Carleton impatiently.

Limbury, an excellent butler, found himself at a loss, for he had never before encountered a morning caller of Mr Carleton’s calibre. Vulgar persons he could deal with; no other of Miss Wychwood’s friends would have demanded admittance when told that Miss Wychwood was not at home; and Sir Geoffrey, who disliked Mr Carleton, as Limbury was well aware, would certainly wish him to be excluded.

“I regret, sir, that it is not possible for you to see Miss Wychwood. Today is the first time she has been well enough to sit up for an hour or two, and her maid informs me that she had hardly enough strength to walk across the floor to the sofa. So I am persuaded you will understand that you cannot see her today.”

“No, I shan’t,” said Mr Carleton, rudely brushing past him into the hall. “Shut the door! Now take my card up to your mistress immediately, and tell her that I wish to see her!”

Limbury was affronted by Mr Carleton’s unceremonious entrance, and he by no means relished being given peremptory commands. He was about to reply with freezing dignity when a suspicion entered his head (he described it later to Mrs Wardlow as a blinding light) that he was confronting a man who was violently in love. To gentlemen in that condition much had to be forgiven, so he forgave Mr Carleton, and said in the fatherly way he spoke to Master Tom: “Now, you know I can’t do that, sir! I’ll tell Miss you called, but you can’t expect to see her when she has only just got up out of her bed!”

“I not only expect to see her, but I am going to see her!” replied Mr Carleton.

Fortunately for Limbury, he was rescued from his predicament by the appearance on the scene of Jurby, who came down the stairs, dropped the hint of a curtsy, and said: “Were you wishful to see Miss Annis, sir?”

“Not only wishful, but determined to see her! Are you her abigail?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Good! I have heard her speak of you, and I think your name is Jurby, and that you have been with Miss Wychwood for many years. Am I right?”

“I have been with her ever since she was a child, sir.”

“Good again! You must know her very well, and can tell me whether it will harm her to see me.”

“I don’t think it would harm her, sir, but I cannot take it upon myself to say whether she will be willing to receive you.”

“Ask her!”

She seemed to consider him dispassionately for a moment; and then said: “Certainly, sir. If you will be pleased to wait in the drawing-room, I will do so.”

She turned and went majestically up the stairs again; and Limbury, recovering from the shock of seeing the most formidable member of the household yield without a sign of disapproval to Mr Carleton’s outrageous demand, conducted him to the drawing-room. He was immensely interested in this unprecedented situation, and his enjoyment of it was no longer marred by fear of Sir Geoffrey’s wrath, because if Sir Geoffrey came the ugly he could now foist the blame of Mr Carleton’s intrusion on to Jurby.

Mr Carleton had not long to wait before Jurby came into the drawing-room, saying: “Miss Annis will be happy to receive you, sir. Please to come with me!” She conducted him up the second pair of stairs, and paused on the landing, and said: “I must warn you, sir, that Miss Annis is by no means fully restored to health. You will find her very pulled by the fever, and I hope you won’t agitate her.”

“I hope so too,” he replied.

She seemed to be satisfied with this reply, for she opened the door into Miss Wychwood’s bedroom, and ushered him in, saying in a voice wholly devoid of interest: “Mr Carleton, miss.”

She stayed, holding the door open, for a few moments, because when she had carried the news of Mr Carleton’s arrival to her mistress Miss Wychwood had behaved in an extremely agitated way, and had seemed not to know whether she wished to see him or not. She had started up from her recumbent position, uttering distractedly: “Mr Carleton? Oh, no, I cannot—Jurby, are you hoaxing me? Is he indeed here? Oh, why must he come back just when I am so hagged and miserably unwell? I won’t see him! He is the most detestable—Oh, whatever am I to do?”

“Well, miss, if you wish me to send him away, I’ll try my best to do it, but from the looks of him it’s likely he’ll order me to get out of the way, and come charging up the stairs, and the next thing you’ll know he’ll be knocking at your door—if he don’t walk in without knocking, which wouldn’t surprise me!”

Miss Wychwood gave an uncertain laugh. “Odious man! Take this horrid shawl away! If I must see him, I will not do so lying on the sofa as though I were dying of a deep decline!”

So, when Mr Carleton entered, he found Miss Wychwood seated at one end of the sofa, the train of her dressing-gown lying in soft folds at her feet and her glorious hair hidden under a lace cap. She had managed to regain a measure of composure, and said, in a tolerably steady voice: “How do you do? You must forgive me for receiving you like this: Jurby will have told you, I daresay, that I have been unwell, and am not yet permitted to leave my room.”

As she spoke, she tried to rise, but her knees shook so much that she was obliged to clutch at the arm of the sofa to save herself from falling. But even as she tottered Mr Carleton, crossing the room in two strides, caught her in his arms, and held her close, breast to breast, and fiercely kissed her.

“Oh!” gasped Miss Wychwood, making a feeble attempt to thrust him off. “How dare you? Let me go at once!”

“You’d tumble over if I did,” he said, and kissed her again.

“No, no, you must not! Oh, what an abominable person you are! I wish I had never met you!” declared Miss Wychwood, abandoning the unequal struggle to free herself, and subsiding limply within his powerful arms, and shedding tears into his shoulder.

At this point, Jurby, smiling dourly, withdrew, apparently feeling that Mr Carleton was very well able to deal with Miss Wychwood without her assistance.

“Don’t cry, my precious wet-goose!” said Mr Carleton, planting a third kiss under Miss Wychwood’s ear, which, as her head was resting on his shoulder, was the only place available to him.

A watery chuckle showed that Miss Wychwood’s sense of humour had survived the ravages of influenza. “I am not a wet-goose!”

“You can’t expect me to believe you if you don’t stop crying at once!” he said severely. He swept her off her feet as he spoke, and set her down again on the sofa, himself sitting beside her, taking her hands in his, and pressing a kiss into each pink palm. “Poor Honey!” he said. “What a wretched time you’ve been having, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but it is very unhandsome of you to call me a poor Honey!” she said, trying for a rallying note. “You had as well tell me that I’ve become a positive antidote! My glass has told me so already, so it won’t come as a shock to me!”

“Your glass lies. I see no change in you, except that you are paler than I like, and are wearing a cap, which I’ve not known you to do before.” He surveyed it critically. “Very fetching!” he approved. “But I think I prefer to see your guinea-curls. Will you feel obliged to wear caps when we are married?”

“But—are we going to be married?” she said.

“Well, of course we are! You don’t suppose I’m offering you a carte blanche, do you?”

That made her laugh. “I shouldn’t be surprised if you were, for you are quite abominable, you know!”

“Wouldn’t you be surprised?” he demanded

Her eyes sank before the hard, questioning look in his. She said: “You needn’t glare at me! I only meant it for a joke! Of course it would surprise me!”

“Unamusing! Are you afraid I should be unfaithful to you? Is that why you said ‘are we to be married?’ as though you still had doubts?”

“No, I’m not afraid of that. After all, if you did become unfaithful I should only have myself to blame, shouldn’t I?”

The hard look vanished; he smiled. “I don’t think you would find many people to agree that you were to blame for my sins!”

“Anyone with a particle of commonsense would agree with me, because if you were to set up a mistress it would be because you had become bored with me.”

“Oh, if that’s the case we need not worry! But you do still have doubts, don’t you?”

“Not when you are with me,” she said shyly. “Only when I’m alone, and think of all the difficulties—what a very big step it would be—how much my brother would dislike it—I wonder if perhaps it wouldn’t be a mistake to marry you. And then I think that it would be a much greater mistake not to marry you, and I end by not knowing what I want to do! Mr Carleton, are you sure you want to marry me, and—and that I’m not a mere passing fancy?”

“What you are trying to ask me is whether I am sure we shall be happy, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose that is what I mean,” she sighed.

“Well, I can’t answer you. How can I be sure that we shall be happy when neither of us has had any experience of marriage? All I can tell you is that I am perfectly sure I want to marry you, and equally sure that you are not a ‘mere passing fancy’ of mine—what a damned silly question to ask me! If I had ever been such a shuttlehead as to have asked one of my passing fancies to marry me, I shouldn’t be a bachelor today!—and there are two other things I am sure of! One is that I have never cared for any of the charmers with whom I’ve had agreeable connections as I care for you; and another is that I have never in my life wanted anything more than I want to win you for my own—to love, and to cherish, and to guard—Oh, damn it, Annis, how can I make you believe that I love you with my whole heart and body, and mind?” He broke off, and said sharply: “What have I said to make you cry? Tell me!”

“Nothing! I d-don’t know why I began to cry. I think it must be because I’m so happy, and I’ve been feeling so dreadfully miserable!” she replied, wiping her tears away, and trying to smile.

Mr Carleton took her back into his arms. “You’re thoroughly knocked-up, sweetheart. Damn that woman for having foisted her influenza on to you! Kiss me!”

“I won’t!” said Miss Wychwood, between tears and laughter. “It would be a most improper thing for me to do, and you have no right to fling orders at me as though I were one of your bits of muslin, and I won’t submit to being ridden over rough-shod!”

“Hornet!” said Mr Carleton, and put an end to further recriminations by fastening his lips to hers.

Not the most daring of her previous suitors had ventured even to slide an arm round her waist, for although she enjoyed light-hearted flirtation, she never gave her flirts any cause to think she would welcome more intimate approaches. She had supposed that she must have a cold, celibate disposition, for she had always found the mere thought of being kissed, and (as she phrased it) mauled by any gentleman of her acquaintance shudderingly distasteful. She had once confessed this to Amabel, and had privately thought Amabel’s response to be so foolishly sentimental as to be unworthy of consideration. Amabel had said: “When you fall in love, dearest, you won’t find it at all distasteful, I promise you.” And sweet, silly little Amabel had been right! When Mr Carleton had caught Miss Wychwood into his arms, and had so ruthlessly kissed her, she had not found it at all distasteful; and when he did it again it seemed the most natural thing in the world to return his embrace. He felt the responsive quiver that ran through her, and his arms tightened round her, just as some one knocked on the door. Miss Wychwood tore herself free, uttering: “Take care! This may well be my sister, or Maria!”

It was neither. The youngest of her three housemaids came in, bearing a jug and a glass on a tray. At sight of Mr Carleton this damsel stopped on the threshold, and stood goggling at him, with her eyes starting from their sockets.

“What the devil do you want?” demanded Mr Carleton, pardonably annoyed.

“Please, sir, I don’t want anything!” said the intruder, trembling with terror. “I didn’t know Miss had a visitor! Mrs Wardlow told me to bring the fresh barley-water up to Miss, being as Betty is sick!”

“Barley-water?” ejaculated Mr Carleton, in revolted accents. “Good God! No wonder that you are in low spirits if that’s what they give you to drink!”

“It has lemon in it, sir!” offered the maid.

“So much the worse! Take it away, and tell Limbury to send up some burgundy! My orders!”

“Yes, sir, b-but what will I say to Mrs Wardlow, if you p-please, sir?”

Miss Wychwood intervened. “You need say nothing to her, Lizzy. Just set the barley-water on that table, and desire Limbury to send up a bottle of burgundy for Mr Carleton .... And when it comes you will drink it,” she informed her visitor, as soon as Lizzy had scurried away. “I don’t want it!”

“You may think you don’t, but it is exactly what you do want!” he retorted. “Next they will be bringing you a bowl of gruel!”

“Oh, no!” said Miss Wychwood demurely. “Dr Tidmarsh says that I may have a little chicken now that I am so much better. Or even a slice of boiled mutton.”

“That ought to tempt you!” he said sardonically.

She smiled. “Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t any appetite, so it doesn’t much signify what they bring me to eat!”

“Oh, how much I wish I had you under my own roof!”

“So that you could bullock me into eating my dinner, Mr Carleton? I shouldn’t like that at all!” she said, shaking her head.

“If you don’t stop calling me Mr Carleton, my girl, we shall very soon find ourselves at dagger-drawing!”

“Oh, that terrifies me into obedience—Oliver! What a shocking thing it would be if we were to fall out!”

He smiled, and raised her hand to his lips. “Shocking indeed! And so unprecedented!”

“It’s all very well for you to kiss my hand,” said Miss Wychwood austerely, “but what you ought to do is to promise that you will never quarrel with me again! But as I have known ever since I made your acquaintance that you haven’t the least notion of conducting yourself with elegance or propriety, I imagine it is ridiculous of me to expect that of you!”

“Quite ridiculous! I never promise what I know I can’t perform!”

“Odious creature!”

He grinned at her. “Should I be less odious if I humbugged you with court-promises? Of course we shall quarrel, for I have a naggy temper, and you, I thank God, are not one of those meek women who say yes and amen to everything! Which reminds me that I have hit on a solution to the problem of what to do with Lucilla to which I do expect you to say yes and amen!”

“But when we are married she will naturally live with us!”

“Oh, no, she will not!” he said, “If you imagine, my loved one, that I am prepared to stand by complacently while my bride devotes herself to my niece, rid yourself of that idiotic notion! Think for a moment! Do you really wish to include a third person—and one who must be chaperoned wherever she goes!—into our household? If you do, I do not! I want a wife,not a chaperon for my niece!” He took her hands, and held them in a compelling grasp. “A companion, Annis! Someone who may say, if I suggest to her that we should jaunt over to Paris, that she doesn’t feel inclined to go to Paris, but who won’t say: ‘But how can I leave Lucilla?’ Do you understand what I mean?”

“Oh, my dear, of course I do! I don’t wish to include a third person in our household, and I must own that fond though I am of Lucilla I do find that the task of looking after her is heavier than I had supposed it would be. But how unkind it would be to send her to live with someone else, for no fault of hers, but merely because we didn’t wish to be bothered with her! If she knew, and liked, any of her paternal aunts, or cousins, the case would be different, but she doesn’t, and thanks to that miserable aunt the only friends the poor child has are those she has made here, in Bath!”

“Yes, exactly so! What do you say to giving her into Mrs Stinchcombe’s charge until it is time for her to make her come-out?”

Miss Wychwood sat up with a jerk. “Oliver! Of course it would be the very thing for her, and what she would like best, I am very sure. But would Mrs Stinchcombe be willing to take her?”

“Perfectly willing. In fact, it was settled between us this morning! I came here straight from Laura Place. It was Mrs Stinchcombe who told me that you had been ill, and—Oh, lord, now what?”

But the timid tap on the door merely heralded the reappearance of Lizzy, who came in carrying a silver salver, on which stood a decanter, two of Miss Wychwood’s best Waterford wineglasses, and a wooden biscuit-tub with a silver lid. Mr Carleton, perceiving that the decanter was in imminent danger of sliding off the salver, got up quickly, and went to take the tray into his own hands, saying: “That’s a good girl! Run along now!”

“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!” said Lizzy, and slid out of the room in a manner strongly suggestive of one escaping from a tiger’s cage.

Miss Wychwood, observing with some surprise her cherished Waterford glasses, said: “What in the world possessed Limbury to send up the best glasses? I only use them for parties! I collect you frightened him out of his wits, just as you frightened poor Lizzy!”

“No such thing!” said Mr Carleton, pouring burgundy into one of the best glasses. “Limbury is doing justice to this occasion. Good butlers are always awake upon every suit! Here you are, love: see if my prescription doesn’t pluck you up!”

Miss Wychwood took the glass, but refused to drink the burgundy unless Mr Carleton joined her. So he poured out a glass for himself, and was just raising it to toast her when Miss Farlow burst into the room, powerfully agitated, stopped dead on the threshold, and exclaimed: “Well!”

Miss Wychwood was startled into spilling some of the burgundy. She set her glass down, and tried to rub away the stains from the skirt of her gown with her handkerchief, saying crossly: “Really, Maria, it is too bad of you! Look what you have made me do! What do you want?”

“I am here, Annis, to preserve you from the consequences of your own folly!” said Miss Farlow. “How could you receive a member of the Male Sex in your bedchamber, and in your dressing-gown? Sir, I must request you to leave immediately!”

“You don’t mean to tell me that’s a dressing-gown?” interrupted Mr Carleton, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Well, it’s by far the most elegant one I’ve ever been privileged to see, and I suppose I must have seen scores of ’em in my time—paid for them too!”

“For goodness’ sake, Oliver—!” Miss Wychwood said, in an imploring whisper.

Trembling with outraged propriety, Miss Farlow uttered a terrible indictment of Mr Carleton’s manners, morals, and shameless disregard of the rules of conduct governing any man venturing to call himself a gentleman. A shattering retort rose to his lips, but he bit it back, because he saw that Miss Wychwood was by no means enjoying this encounter, and merely said: “Well, now that you have convinced me, ma’am, that I am so far sunk in moral turpitude as to be past praying for, may I suggest that you withdraw from this scene of vice?”

“Nothing,” declared Miss Farlow, “will prevail upon me to leave this room while you remain in it, sir! I do not know by what means you forced yourself into it—”

“Oh, do, pray, Maria, stop talking such fustian nonsense, and go away!” begged Miss Wychwood. “Mr Carleton did not force his way into my room! He came at my invitation, and if I have to listen to any more ranting from you I shall go into strong hysterics!”

“Sir Geoffrey entrusted you to my care, Annis, and never shall it be said of me that I betrayed the confidence he reposed in me! Since Jurby has been so unmindful of her duty—not that that surprises me, for I have always considered that you permitted her far too much license, so that she has grown to be so big in her own esteem that—”

“Oh, cut line, woman!” said Mr Carleton, striding to the door, and opening it. “Miss Wychwood has asked you to go away, and I have every intention of seeing to it that you do go away! Don’t keep me waiting!”

“And leave my sacred charge unprotected? Never!” declared Miss Farlow heroically.

“Oh, for God’s sake—!” snapped Mr Carleton, at the end of his patience. “What the devil do you suppose I’m going to do to her? Rape her? I will give you thirty seconds to leave this room, and if you are not on the other side of the door by that time I shall eject you forcibly!”

“Brute!” ejaculated Miss Farlow, bursting into tears. “Offering violence to a defenceless female! Only wait until Sir Geoffrey knows of this!”

He paid no heed, but kept his eyes on his watch. Miss Farlow hesitated between heroism and fright. He shut his watch with a snap, restored it to his pocket, and advanced purposefully towards her. Miss Farlow’s courage failed. She uttered a shriek, and ran out of the room.

Mr Carleton shut the door, and applied himself to the more agreeable task of soothing Miss Wychwood’s lacerated nerves, in which he succeeded so well that in a very short space of time her racing pulses had steadied to a normal rate, and she not only allowed herself to be coaxed to swallow the rest of the burgundy in her glass, but even to nibble a biscuit.

Miss Farlow’s state was less happy. The intelligence, conveyed to her by Jurby, who was hovering on the landing, that Miss Wychwood had a visitor with her, and did not wish to be disturbed, had aroused all her smouldering jealousy. She had told Jurby that she had had no business to introduce a visitor into Miss Wychwood’s room, and was unwise enough to say: “You should have asked leave to do so from me, or from her ladyship! Who is this visitor?”

“One that will do her more good than you ever will, miss!” had said Jurby, goaded into retort. “It is Mr Carleton!”

Miss Farlow had been at first incredulous, and then sincerely shocked. In her chaste mind, every man—except, of course, doctors, fathers, and brothers—figured as a potential menace to a maiden’s virtue. Even had it been Lord Beckenham who was closeted with Miss Wychwood she would have felt it to be her duty to have pointed out to him the impropriety of his visiting a lady in her bedchamber, who was wearing nothing but a dressing-gown over her nightdress. But Lord Beckenham—such a perfect gentleman!—would never have dreamt of compromising a lady in such a scandalous fashion. As for Annis, not only tolerating, but actually encouraging Mr Carleton in his nefarious conduct, she could only suppose that her poor dear cousin had taken leave of her senses. Since she (a defenceless female) had been unable to prevail upon this Brute to withdraw from Miss Wychwood’s room, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to pour the whole story into Sir Geoffrey’s ears the instant he returned from his walk with Lady Wychwood. With this intention, she hurried downstairs, mentally rehearsing her role in the forthcoming drama, and working herself up into a hysterical state. She encountered Sir Geoffrey just as he was about to enter the drawing-room.

He and Lady Wychwood had returned to the house some minutes earlier. Fortunately for Lady Wychwood, she had gone up immediately to the nursery, to assure herself that Tom had taken no harm from his first expedition, since his illness, into the garden, so she was spared the horrid news Miss Farlow was only too anxious to recount to her.

Sir Geoffrey was not so fortunate. Having regaled himself with a glass of sherry, he mounted the stairs to the first floor, and was instantly assailed by Miss Farlow, who came stumbling down the stairs, uttering in a hysterical voice: “Cousin Geoffrey! Oh, Cousin Geoffrey! Thank God you are come!”

Sir Geoffrey eyed her with disfavour. He was unaccustomed to females who flew into distempered freaks, and he had already taken Miss Farlow in dislike. He said: “What the deuce is the matter with you, Maria?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing—except that I have never been so shocked in my life! It is Annis! You must go up to her room immediately!”

“Eh?” said Sir Geoffrey, startled. “Annis? Why, what’s amiss with her?”

“I do not know how to tell you! If it were not my duty to do so, I could not bring myself to disclose to you what will curl your liver!” said Miss Farlow, extracting the last ounce of drama from the situation.

Sir Geoffrey was incensed. “For God’s sake, Maria, stop talking as if you were taking part in a Cheltenham tragedy, and tell me what has put you into this taking! Curl my liver indeed! Without any more ado, answer me this!—Is there anything wrong with my sister?”

“Everything!” declared Miss Farlow, clinging to the most important role of her life.

“Balderdash!” said Sir Geoffrey. “It’s my belief you’re getting to be queer in your attic, Maria! Never mind my liver! What has happened to my sister?”

“That Man,” disclosed Miss Farlow, “has been closeted with her since you and dear Lady Wychwood left the house! And he is still with her! Had I known that he had forced his way into the house, and that Jurby was so lost to all sense of her duty as to admit him into Annis’s bedchamber—but no doubt he bribed her to do it!—I should have summoned James to cast him out of the house! But I was with Tom, in the garden, and I knew nothing until I came in, and was just about to pop into Annis’s room, when Jurby stopped me, saying that Annis was engaged. ‘Engaged?’ I said. ‘She has a visitor with her, and she don’t wish to be disturbed,’ she said. You may depend upon it that I insisted on her telling me who had come to visit Annis without so much as a by your leave! And then Jurby told me that it was That Man!”

“What man?” demanded Sir Geoffrey.

“Mr Carleton!” said Miss Farlow, shuddering.

“Carleton? What the devil is he doing in my sister’s room?”

“Carousing!” said Miss Farlow, reaching her grand climax.

It fell sadly flat. Sir Geoffrey said testily: “I wish to God you wouldn’t talk such nonsense, Maria! Next I suppose you’ll tell me my sister was carousing too!”

“Alas, yes!”

“It seems to me that it’s you who have been carousing!” said Sir Geoffrey severely. “You had best go and sleep it off!”

With this he went on up the stairs to the second floor, paying no heed whatsoever to the protests, the assurances that she never touched strong liquor; or the impassioned entreaties to listen to her, which Miss Farlow addressed to him.

He entered Miss Wychwood’s room without ceremony, and was confronted by the spectacle of his sister seated beside Mr Carleton on the sofa, supported by his arm, and with her head on his shoulder.

“Upon my word!” he ejaculated thunderously. “What the devil does this mean?”

“Oh, pray don’t shout!” said Miss Wychwood, straightening herself.

Mr Carleton rose. “How do you do, Wychwood? I’ve been waiting for you! I imagine you must know what the devil it means, but before we go into that, I want to know what the devil you mean by planting that atrocious woman on your sister! Never in the whole of my existence have I encountered any one who talked more infernal twaddle, or who had less notion of how to look after sick persons! She burst in on us, just as I had succeeded in getting Annis to drink a glass of Burgundy—which, if I may say so, will do her far more good than barley-water! See to it that she has a glass with her dinner, will you?—and had the damned impudence to say that nothing would prevail upon her to leave the room while I remained in it! I can only assume that she thought Annis was in danger of being raped! If I hadn’t threatened to throw her out, she’d be here still, upsetting Annis with all her ravings and rantings, and I will not permit her, or anyone else, to upset Annis!”

Sir Geoffrey disliked Mr Carleton, but he found himself so much in sympathy with him that instead of requesting him, with cold dignity, to leave the house, which he had meant to do, he said: “I didn’t plant her on Annis! All I did was to suggest to Annis that she would be a suitable person to act as her companion!”

“Suitable?” interpolated Mr Carleton scathingly.

Sir Geoffrey glared at him, but being a just man he felt himself obliged to say: “No, of course she’s not suitable, but I didn’t know then that she was such an infernal gabster, and I didn’t know until today that she’s touched in her upper works! I shall certainly take care she don’t come near Annis again—though what right you have to interfere I’m quite at a loss to understand! What’s more, I’ll thank you to leave me to look after my sister!”

“That,” said Mr Carleton, “brings us back to the start of our conversation. Your sister, Wychwood, has done me the honour to accept my hand in marriage. That’s what the devil this means, and it also explains the right I have to concern myself with her welfare!”

“Well, I won’t have it!” said Sir Geoffrey. “I refuse to give my consent to a marriage of which I utterly disapprove!”

“Oh, Geoffrey, don’t! Pray don’t get into a quarrel!” begged Miss Wychwood, pressing her hands against her throbbing temples. “You are making my head ache again, both of you! I am very sorry to displease you, Geoffrey, but I am not a silly schoolgirl, and I haven’t decided to marry Oliver on an impulse! And as for giving your consent, your consent isn’t necessary! I’m not under age, I’m not your ward, and never was your ward, and there is nothing you can do to stop me marrying Oliver!”

“We’ll see that!” he said ominously. “Let me make it plain to you—”

“No, don’t try to do that!” intervened Mr Carleton. “She’s far too exhausted to talk any more! Make it plain to me instead! I suggest we go down to the book-room, and discuss the matter in private. We shall do much better without female interference, you know!”

This made Miss Wychwood lift her head from between her hands, and say indignantly: “This has nothing to do with Geoffrey! And if you think I am going to sit meekly here while you and he—”

“Come, come!” said Mr Carleton. “Where is your sense of decorum? Your brother, very properly, wishes to discover what my circumstances are, what settlement I mean to make on you—”

“No, I do not!” interrupted Sir Geoffrey angrily. “Everyone knows you’re swimming in lard, and settlements don’t come into it, because if I have anything to say to it there will be no marriage!”

“You have nothing to say to it, Geoffrey, and no right to meddle in my affairs!”

“Oh, that’s going too far!” said Mr Carleton. “He may not have the right to meddle, but he has every right to try to dissuade you from making what he believes would be a disastrous marriage. A poor sort of brother he would be if he didn’t!”

Taken aback, Sir Geoffrey blinked at him. “Well—well, I’m glad that you at least realize that!” he said lamely.

“Well, I do not realize it!” struck in Miss Wychwood.

“Of course you don’t!” said Mr Carleton soothingly. “In another moment you’ll be saying that the marriage has nothing to do with me either, my lovely wet-goose! So we will postpone this discussion until tomorrow. Oh, no! don’t look daggers at me! I never come to cuffs with females who are too knocked-up to be a match for me!”

She gave a choke of laughter. “Oh, how detestable you are!” she sighed.

“That sounds more like you,” he approved. He bent over her, and kissed her. “You are worn out, and must go back to bed, my sweet. Promise me you won’t get up again today!”

“I doubt if I could,” she said ruefully. “But if you and Geoffrey mean to quarrel over me—”

“It takes two to make a quarrel. I can’t answer for Wychwood, but I have no intention of quarrelling, so you may be easy on that head!”

“Easy? When you spend your life quarrelling, and being disagreeable to people for no reason at all? I am not in the least easy!”

“Hornet!” he said, and went out of the room, thrusting Sir Geoffrey before him. “I don’t think much of your strategy, Wychwood,” he said, as they began to descend the stairs. “Abusing me won’t answer your purpose: it will merely set up her bristles.”

Sir Geoffrey said stiffly: “I must make it plain to you, Carleton, that the thought of my sister’s marriage to a man of your reputation is—is wholly repugnant to me!”

“You’ve done so already.”

“Well, I have no wish to offend you, but I don’t consider you a fit and proper person to be my sister’s husband!”

“Oh, that doesn’t offend me! I have every sympathy with you, and should feel just as you do, if I were in your place.”

“Well, upon my word!” gasped Sir Geoffrey. “You are the most extraordinary fellow I’ve ever met in all my life!”

“No, am I?” said Mr Carleton, grinning at him. “Because I agree with you?”

“If you agree with me I wonder that you should have proposed to Annis!”

“Ah, that’s a different matter!”

“Well, I think it only right to warn you that I think it is my duty—distasteful though it is to speak of such things to delicately nurtured females—to tell Annis frankly why I consider you to be unfit to be her husband!”

Mr Carleton gave a crack of laughter. “Lord, Wychwood, don’t be such a gudgeon!” he said. “She knows all about my reputation! Tell her anything you like, but don’t do so today, will you? I don’t want her to be upset again, and she would be. Goodbye! My regards to Lady Wychwood!”

A nod, and he was gone, leaving Sir Geoffrey at a loss to know what to make of him. He went gloomily up to the drawing-room, and when Lady Wychwood joined him a little later, disclosed to her that she had been right in her forecast, adding, with a heavy sigh, that he didn’t know what was to be done to prevent the match.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done, dearest. I know it isn’t what you like. It isn’t what I like for her either, but when I saw the difference in her! I have just come from her room, and though she is tired, she looks much better, and so happy that I knew it would be useless, and even wrong to try to make her cry off! So we must make the best of it, and pray that he won’t continue in his—his present way of life!”

Sir Geoffrey shook his head. “A man don’t change his habits,” he said. “I don’t believe in reformed rakes, Amabel.”

“I don’t mean to set up my opinion against your judgment, for naturally you must know best, but has it occurred to you, dearest, that although we have heard a great deal about his mistresses, and the shameless way he flaunts them abroad, and the money he squanders on them, we have never heard of his attaching himself particularly to any girl of quality? Indeed, I believe Annis is the only woman to whom he has offered marriage, though lures past counting have been thrown out to him, because even the highest sticklers think that his wealth is enough to make him acceptable. So don’t you think, Geoffrey, that perhaps he never truly loved anyone until he met Annis? Which makes me feel that they were destined for each other, for it has been the same with her. I don’t mean, of course, exactly the same, but only think of the offers she has received, and refused! Such brilliant ones, too! Never, until she met Mr Carleton, has she been in love! Not even with Lord Sedgeley, though one would have said he was the very man for her! You will think me fanciful, I daresay, but it seems to me as if—as if each of them has been waiting for the other for years, and when they at last met they—they fell in love, as though it had been ordained that they should!”

Sir Geoffrey, listening to this speech in frowning silence, was secretly impressed by it, but all he said was: “Well, you may be right, my love, but I do think that you’re being fanciful! All I can say is that if you are right, I wish to God they never had met!”

“It is very natural that you should,” responded the perfect wife. “But don’t let us talk about it any more until you have had time to weigh the matter in your mind! Mrs Wardlow asked me this morning if she should instruct the chef to send up baked eggs for our nuncheon, and, knowing how partial you are to baked eggs, I said it was the very thing. So let us go down to the breakfast-parlour now, before the eggs grow cold!”

Sir Geoffrey got up, but before he had reached the door stopped in his tracks like a jibbing horse, and said: “Is Maria there? Because if she is nothing would prevail upon me—”

“No, no, dearest!” Lady Wychwood hastened to assure him. “Mrs Wardlow and I have put her to bed, and I have compelled her to drink a glass of laudanum and water, as a sedative, you understand. She fell into a fit of the vapours when you went up to see Annis, and what it was that you said to her to overset her so completely, I haven’t a notion, for you cannot possibly have accused her of being inebriated, which is what she said you did! But I am sorry to say that when Maria becomes hysterical, one cannot place the least dependence on the ridiculous things she says. She even said that Mr Carleton offered her violence!”

“No, did he?” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey, brightening perceptibly. “Well, damme if I don’t think he’s not by half as black as he’s been painted! But mind this, Amabel! I may not have the power to stop him marrying my sister, but if he thinks he’s going to foist Maria on to us, he will very soon learn that he is mistaken! And so I shall tell him!”

“Yes, dearest,” said Lady Wychwood, gently propelling him towards the door. “You will of course do what you think is right, but do, pray, come and eat your baked egg before it is quite spoilt!”