Lady of Quality

Chapter 2

When Miss Wychwood had changed her travelling dress for one of the simple cambric gowns she wore when she meant to spend the evening by her own fireside, and had endured a scold from Miss Jurby on the subjects of wilfulness, imprudence, and what her papa would have said had he been alive, she went to tap on the door of the Pink bedchamber, and, upon being bidden to come in, found her protégée charmingly attired in sprig muslin, only slightly creased from having been packed in a portmanteau, and with her dusky curls brushed free of tangles. They clustered about her head, in the artless style known as the Sappho, which, to Miss Wychwood’s appreciative eyes, was not only very becoming, but which emphasized her extreme youth. Round her neck was clasped a row of pearls. This demure necklace was the only jewellery she wore, but Miss Wychwood did not for a moment suppose that the absence of trinkets denoted poverty. The pearls were real, and just the thing for a girl newly emerged from the schoolroom. So was that sprig muslin dress, with its high waist and tiny puff sleeves, but its exquisite simplicity stamped it as the work of a high class modiste. And the shawl which Lucilla was about to drape around her shoulders was of Norwich silk, and had probably cost its purchaser every penny of fifty guineas. It was plain to be seen that Lucilla’s unknown aunt had ample means and excellent taste, and grudged the expenditure of neither on the dressing of her niece. It was equally plain that such a fashionable damsel, bearing all the appearance of one born to an independence, would never find favour with Mrs Nibley.

Lucilla said apologetically that she feared her dress was sadly crumpled. “The thing was, you see, that I haven’t been in the way of packing, ma’am.”

“I shouldn’t think you’ve ever done so before, have you?”

“Well, no! But I couldn’t ask my maid to do it for me, because she would have instantly told my aunt. That,” said Lucilla bitterly, “is the worst of servants who have known one since one was a baby!”

“Very true!” agreed Annis. “I am afflicted with several myself, and know just how you feel. Now, tell me by what name I am to present you to people!”

“I did think of calling myself Smith,” said Lucilla doubtfully. “Or—or Brown, perhaps. Some very ordinary name!”

“Oh, I shouldn’t choose anything too ordinary!” said Annis, shaking her head. “It wouldn’t suit you!”

“No, and I am persuaded I should come to hate it,” said Lucilla naively. She hesitated for a moment. “I think I’ll keep my own name, after all, on account of not being rag-mannered, which I’m afraid I was, when I wouldn’t let Ninian tell you what it is. I was in dread that you might betray me to my horrid uncle, but that was because I didn’t know you, or how kind you are. So I’ll tell you, ma’am. It’s Carleton—with an E in the middle,” she added conscientiously.

“I will take care not to reveal the E to a living soul,” promised Annis, with perfect gravity. “Anyone could be called Carlton without an E in the middle, but the E gives distinction to the name, and that, of course, is what you wish to avoid. So now that we have settled that problem let us go down to the drawing-room and await Mr Elmore’s arrival!”

“If he does arrive!” said Lucilla unhopefully. “Not that it signifies if he doesn’t, except that my conscience will suffer a severe blow, even though it wasn’t my fault that he came with me. But if he gets into a hobble I shall never cease to blame myself for having left him quite stranded!”

“But why should he be stranded?” said Annis reasonably. “We left him some eight miles short of Bath—not in the middle of a desert! Even if he can’t hire a vehicle, he might easily walk the rest of the way, don’t you think?”

“No,” said Lucilla, sighing. “He wouldn’t think it at all the thing. I don’t care a button for such antiquated flummery, but he does. I am excessively attached to him, because I’ve known him all my life, but I cannot deny that he is sadly wanting in—in dash! In fact, he is a pudding-heart, ma’am!”

“Surely you are too severe!” objected Miss Wychwood, ushering her into the drawing-room. “Of course, I am barely acquainted with him, but it did not seem to me that he was wanting in dash! To have aided and abetted you in your flight was not the action of a pudding-heart, you must own!”

Lucilla frowned over this, and tried, not very successfully, to explain the circumstances which had led young Mr Elmore to embark on what was probably the only adventure of his blameless career. “He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been sure that Lord Iverley would have thought it the right thing,” she said. “Though I daresay Lord Iverley will blame him for not having stopped me, which is wickedly unjust, and so I shall tell him if he gives poor Ninian one of his scolds! For how could he expect Ninian to be full of pluck when he has brought him up to be a pattern-card of—of amiable compliance? Ninian always does exactly what Lord Iverley wishes him to do—even when it comes to offering for me, which he doesn’t in the least want to do! And for my part I don’t believe Lord Iverley would have a fatal heart-attack if Ninian refused to obey him, but Lady Iverley does think so, and has reared Ninian to believe that it is his sacred duty not to do anything to put his papa out of curl. And I will say this for Ninian: he has a very kind heart, besides holding Lord Iverley in great affection, and having pretty strict notions of—of filial duty; and I daresay he would liefer do anything in the world than drive his papa into his grave.”

Surprised, Miss Wychwood said: “But is Lord Iverley—I collect he is Ninian’s father?—a very old man?”

“Oh, no, not very old!” replied Lucilla. “He is the same age as my papa would have been, if Papa hadn’t died when I was just seven years old. He was killed at Corunna, and Lord Iverley—well, he wasn’t Lord Iverley then, but Mr William Elmore, because old Lord Iverley was still alive—but, in any event, he brought my papa’s sword, and his watch, and his diary, and the very last letter he had scribbled to my mama, home to England, and gave them to my mama. They say he has never been the same man since Papa died. They were bosom-bows, you see, from the time when they were both at Harrow, and even joined the same regiment, and were never parted until Papa was killed! Which I perfectly see is a very touching story, for I am not hardhearted, whatever Aunt Clara may say! But what I do not see, and never shall see, is why Ninian and I must be married merely because our fathers, in the milkiest way, made an idiotish scheme that we should!”

“It does seem a trifle unreasonable,” admitted Miss Wychwood.

“Yes, and because, when he married my mama, Papa bought a house just beyond the gates of Chartley Place, and Ninian and I were almost brought up together, and were very good friends, nothing will persuade Lord Iverley that we were not made for one another! And, most unfortunately, Ninian has fallen in love with someone whom Lord and Lady Iverley have taken in strong dislike—though why they should have done so I can’t imagine, for they never stir out of Chartley Place, and have never set eyes on her! I daresay they think her rather too old for Ninian, and I must own it does seem strange that he should be dangling after a lady at least thirty years of age, and very likely more!”

This circumstance did not seem strange to Miss Wychwood, but what seemed very strange indeed to her was that the Iverleys should be taking so serious a view of what was, to her understanding, a case of calf-love, of violent but short duration. She said, smiling a little: “I expect it does seem strange to you, Lucilla, but it is a well-known fact that young men are very apt to fall in love with women older than themselves. I fancy the Iverleys have no need to go into high fidgets over it!”

“Oh, no, of course they haven’t!” Lucilla agreed. “Good gracious, he fell desperately in love with some girl when he was in his first year at Oxford, and even I could guess that she was most ineligible! Fortunately, he fell out of love with her before the Iverleys knew anything about it, so they didn’t fuss and fret over it. But this time some tattling busybody wrote to tell Lord Iverley that Ninian was making up to this London-lady, so Lord Iverley taxed him with it, and Lady Iverley implored him not to—to hasten his father’s end by persisting in—in his suit, and—”

“Good God!” interrupted Miss Wychwood. “What a couple of cabbage-heads! They deserve that Ninian should marry this undesirable female out of hand!” She caught herself up on this impulsive utterance, and said: “I shouldn’t say so, but I have an unruly tongue! Forget it! Am I right in thinking that Chartley Place is somewhere to the north of Salisbury? Is that where you too five?”

“No, not now. I did live there until Mama died, three years ago, but since then I’ve lived at Cheltenham, with my aunt and my uncle, and the house, which belongs to me, has been leased to strangers.”

This disclosure left Miss Wychwood at a loss. The words were melancholy, but the manner in which they were uttered was not at all melancholy. She said, tentatively: “No doubt it must have been distressing to you to see strangers in your house?”

“Oh, no, not at all!” responded Lucilla sunnily. “They are very agreeable people and pay a most handsome rent, besides keeping the grounds in excellent order. I should be happy to live in Cheltenham if my aunt would but take me to the Assemblies, and the theatre—but she won’t, because she says I am too young, and it would be improper for me to go to balls and routs and drums until I have been regularly presented! But she doesn’t think me too young to be married! That,” she said, her eyes kindling wrathfully, “is why she took me to Chartley Place!” She paused, her bosom swelling with indignation. “Miss Wychwood!” she said explosively. “C—could you have conceived it possible that anyone could be so—so cockle-brained as to suppose that Ninian, having formed a strong attachment to another lady, would feel the least inclination to make me an offer? Or that I would be so obliging as to accept his offer? But they did!—all of them!” She stopped, deeply flushed, and it was a minute or two before she could overcome her agitation. She managed to do so, however, and continued, in a tight voice, saying: “I thought that if I consented to visit the Iverleys I could depend on Ninian to—to stand buff, even though he lacked the—the spunk to tell his father he didn’t wish to marry me if I wasn’t there to support him! I should have known better!”

Considerably astonished, Miss Wychwood asked: “But am I to understand that he told his father he was willing to offer for you? If that is so, isn’t it possible that—”

“It isn’t so!” said Lucilla flatly. “I don’t know what he said to Lord Iverley, but to me he said that it would be unwise to provoke a quarrel, and that the best thing would be for us to seem to be willing to become engaged, and to trust in providence to rescue us before the knot was tied between us. But I have no faith in providence, ma’am, and I felt as though—as though I was being tangled in a net! And the only thing I could think of to do was to run away. You see, there isn’t anyone I can appeal to since my uncle died—and I daresay he wouldn’t have been of much use, because he always let Aunt Clara have her own way in everything! He was a great dear, but not a man of resolution.”

Miss Wychwood blinked. “Is he dead, then? I beg your pardon, but I thought you said that your uncle would very likely come to find you, if he could be persuaded to bestir himself!”

Lucilla stared at her, and suddenly gave a crack of scornful laughter. “Not that uncle, ma’am! The other one!” she said.

“The other one? To be sure! How stupid I am to have supposed you only had one uncle! Do, pray, tell me about your horrid uncle, so that I shan’t become confused again! Was your amiable uncle his brother?”

“Oh, no! My Uncle Abel was Mama’s brother. My Uncle Oliver is a Carleton, and Papa’s elder brother—though only three years older!” said Lucilla, in further disparagement of Mr Oliver Carleton. “He and my Uncle Abel were appointed to be my guardians, but naturally they weren’t obliged to take care of me while Mama was alive, except for managing my fortune.”

“Have you a fortune?” asked Miss Wychwood, much impressed.

“Well, I think I have, because Aunt Clara is for ever telling me to beware of fortune-hunters, but it seems to me that it belongs to my Uncle Oliver, and not to me at all, because I am not allowed to spend it! He sends my allowance to Aunt Clara, and she only gives me pin-money, and when I wrote to tell him that I was old enough to buy dresses myself,he sent me a disagreeable answer, refusing to alter the arrangement! Whenever I have appealed to him he always says that my aunt knows best, and I must do as she bids me! He is the most odiously selfish person in the world, and hasn’t a particle of affection for me. Only fancy, ma’am, he has an enormous house in London, and has never asked me to visit him! Not once! And when I suggested that he might like me to keep house for him he answered in the rudest way that he wouldn’t like it at all!”

“That was certainly uncivil, but perhaps he thought you rather too young to keep house. I collect he is not married?”

“Good gracious, no!” said Lucilla. “Which just shows you, doesn’t it?”

“I must own that he does sound very disagreeable,” admitted Annis.

“Yes, and what is more his manners are most disobliging—in fact, he is detestably top-lofty, never takes the least trouble to behave with civility to anyone, and—and treats one with the sort of stupid indifference which makes one long to hit him!”

Since it was obvious that she was fast working herself into a state of considerable agitation, it was perhaps fortunate that the entrance of Miss Farlow acted as an effectual stop to any further animadversions on the character of Mr Oliver Carleton. Miss Farlow’s demeanour informed her employer that she was deeply wounded, but determined to bear the slight cast upon her with Christian resignation. Nothing could have exceeded her civility to Lucilla, which was so punctilious as almost to crush that ebullient young lady; and the manner in which she listened to whatever Annis said, and instantly agreed with it, was so servile that an impartial observer might well have supposed her to be the slave of a tyrannical mistress. But just as Annis, exasperated beyond endurance by these tactics, was on the point of losing her temper, Mr Elmore was announced, creating a welcome diversion.

He was looking decidedly out of temper, and, with only a glowering glance at Lucilla, devoted himself to the task of apologizing to his hostess for presenting himself in topboots and breeches: a social solecism which plainly lacerated all his finer feelings. In vain did Miss Wychwood beg him not to give the matter a thought, and draw his attention to her own morning-dress: nothing would do for him but to explain the circumstances which had compelled him to appear before her looking, as he termed it, like a dashed shabrag. “Owing to the haste in which I was obliged to set out on the journey I had no time to pack up my gear, ma’am,” he said. “I can only beg your forgiveness for being so improperly dressed! And also for being, I fear, so late in coming here! I was detained by the necessity of providing myself with additional funds, what little blunt I had in my pockets having been exhausted by the time I reached Bath!”

“I knew it was wrong of me to have deserted you!” cried Lucilla remorsefully. “I am so very sorry, Ninian, but why didn’t you tell me you were brought to a standstill? I have plenty of money, and if only you had asked me for it I would have given you my purse!”

Revolted, Mr Elmore was understood to say that he was not, he thanked God, reduced to such straits as that. He had laid his watch on the shelf, which was bad enough, but better than breaking the shins of his childhood’s friend. These mysterious words left his listeners at a loss, so he was obliged to explain that he had pawned his watch, which he considered to be preferable to borrowing money from Lucilla. Miss Farlow said that such sentiments did him honour; but his childhood’s friend said roundly that it was just the sort of nonsensical notion he would take into his head; and Miss Wychwood was obliged to intervene hastily to prevent a lively quarrel between them. Miss Farlow, who, whatever her opinion might be of girls who ran away from their homes and insinuated themselves into the good graces of complete strangers, had (like many elderly spinsters) a soft spot for a personable young man, encouraged him to unburden himself of his several grievances, and lavished so much sympathy on him that by the time the dinner-bell was heard he was in a fair way to forgetting the humiliating experiences he had undergone, and was able to make a hearty meal, washed down with the excellent claret with which Sir Geoffrey kept his sister provided. At which point Miss Wychwood ventured to ask him whether he meant to remain in Bath, or to return to his anxious parents.

“I must return, of course,” he replied, a worried expression in his eyes. “For they won’t know where I am, and I fear my father will be fretting himself into a fever. I should never forgive myself if he were to suffer one of his heart-attacks.”

“No, indeed!” said Miss Farlow. “Poor gentleman! Your mama, too! One hardly knows which of them to pity most, though I suppose her case is the worse, because of having double the anxiety!” She saw that he was looking guilty, and said consolingly: “But never mind! How happy they will be when they see you safe and sound! Are you their only offspring, sir?”

“Well, no: not precisely the only one,” he answered. “I’m their only son, but I have three sisters, ma’am.”

“Four!” interpolated Lucilla.

“Yes, but I don’t count Sapphira,” he explained. “She’s been married for years, and lives in another part of the country.”

“I collect your father doesn’t enjoy good health,” said Miss Wychwood, “which makes it of the first importance that you shouldn’t leave him in suspense for a moment longer than is necessary.”

“That’s just it, ma’am!” he said, turning eagerly towards her. “His constitution was ruined in the Peninsula, for besides being twice wounded, and having a ball lodged in his shoulder, which the surgeons failed to extract, after subjecting him to hours of torture, he had several bouts of a particularly deadly fever, which one gets on the Portuguese border, and which he never perfectly recovered from. And although he doesn’t complain, we—my mother and I—are pretty sure that his shoulder pains him a good deal.” He hesitated, and then said shyly: “You see, when he is well he is the most amiable man imaginable, and—and the most indulgent father anyone could wish for, but the indifferent state of his health makes him very—very irritable, and inclined to become agitated, which is very bad for him. So—so you will understand that it is of the first importance not to do anything to put him into the hips.”

“Indeed I understand!” said Miss Wychwood, regarding him with a kindly eye. “You must certainly go home tomorrow, and by the quickest way possible. I’ll furnish you with the means to pay your shot, redeem your watch, and hire a post-chaise, and you may repay me by a draft on your bank—so don’t set up your bristles!”

She smiled as she spoke, and Ninian, who had stiffened, found himself smiling back at her, and stammering that he was very much obliged to her.

Lucilla, however, was frowning. “Yes, but—Well, I see, of course, that it’s your duty to go home, but what will you say when you are asked what has become of me?

Nonplussed, he stared at her, saying after a pause during which he tried in vain to think of a way out of this difficulty: “I don’t know. I mean, I shall say that I can’t answer that question, because I gave you my word I wouldn’t betray you.”

Lucilla’s opinion of this was plainly to be read in her face. “You had as well tell them immediately where I am, because your father will make it a matter of obedience, and you’ll knuckle down, just as you always do! Oh, why, why didn’t you do as I begged you? I knew something like this would be bound to happen!”

He reddened, and replied hotly: “If it comes to that, why didn’t you do as I begged? I warned you that no good would come of running away! And if you mean to blame me for escorting you when I found you wouldn’t listen to a word of reason it—it is beyond everything! A pretty fellow I should be if I let a silly chit of an ignorant schoolgirl wander about the country alone!”

“I am not an ignorant schoolgirl!” cried Lucilla, as flushed as he was.

“Yes, you are! Why, you didn’t even know that you have to be on the waybill to get a seat on a stage-coach! Or that the Bath coaches don’t go to Amesbury! A nice fix you’d have been in if I hadn’t overtaken you!”

Miss Wychwood got up from the table, saying firmly that any further discussion must be continued in the drawing-room. Miss Farlow instantly said: “Oh, yes! So much wiser, for there is no saying when Limbury, or James, will come into this room, and one would not wish the servants to hear what you are talking about—not but what I daresay even Limbury, though a very respectable man, has been on the listen, for servants always seem to know everything about one, and how they should, if they don’t listen at keyholes, I’m sure I don’t know! Amesbury! I was never there in my life, but I am acquainted with several persons who have frequently visited it, and I fancy I know all about it! Stonehenge!”

On this triumphant note, she beamed upon the company, and followed Miss Wychwood out of the room. Neither of Miss Wychwood’s youthful guests, both reared from birth in the strictest canons of propriety, returned any answer to this speech, but they exchanged speaking glances, and young Mr Elmore demanded of Miss Carleton, in an undervoice, what the deuce Stonehenge had to say to anything?

Having comfortably installed her guests in the drawing-room, Miss Wychwood said chattily that she had been considering their problem, and had come to the conclusion that the wisest course for Ninian to pursue would be to tell his father, his mother, and Mrs Amber the whole story of his escapade. She could not help laughing when she was confronted by two horrified faces, but said, with a good deal of authority: “You know, my dears, there is really nothing else to be done! If the case had been different—if Lucilla had suffered ill-treatment at Mrs Amber’s hands—I might have consented to keep her presence here a secret, but, as far as I can discover, she has never been ill-treated in her life!”

“Oh, no, no!” Lucilla said quickly. “I never said that! But there is another kind of tyranny, ma’am! I can’t explain what I mean, and perhaps you have never experienced it, but—but—”

“I haven’t experienced it, but I do know what you mean,” Annis said. “It is the tyranny of the weak, isn’t it? The weapons being tears, reproaches, vapours, and other such unscrupulous means which are employed by gentle, helpless women like your aunt!”

“Oh, you do understand!” Lucilla exclaimed, her face lighting up.

“Of course I do! Try, in your turn to understand what must be my feelings on this occasion! I couldn’t reconcile it with my conscience, Lucilla, to hide you from your aunt.” She silenced, by a raised finger, the outcry which rose to Lucilla’s lips. “No, let me finish what I have to say! I am going to write to Mrs Amber asking her if she will permit you to stay with me for a few weeks. Ninian shall take my letter with him tomorrow, and I must trust that he will assure her that I am a very respectable creature, well-able to take care of you.”

“You may be sure I will, ma’am!” said Ninian enthusiastically. Doubt shook him, and his brow clouded. “But what must I do if she won’t consent? She is a very anxious female, you see, and almost never lets Lucy go anywhere without her, because she lives in dread of some accident befalling her, like being kidnapped, which did happen to some girl or other only last year, but not, of course, in Cheltenham, of all unlikely places!”

“Yes, and ever since Uncle Abel died she bolts all the doors and windows every evening,” corroborated Lucilla, “and makes our butler take the silver up to bed with him, and hides her jewellery under her mattress!”

“Poor thing!” said Miss Wychwood charitably. “If she is so nervous a good watch-dog is the thing for her!”

“She is afraid of dogs,” said Lucilla gloomily. “And of horses! When I was young I had a pony, and was used to ride every day of my life—oh, Ninian, do you remember what splendid times we had, looking for adventures, and following the Hunt, which we were not permitted to do, but the Master was a particular friend of ours, and never did more than tell us we were a couple of rapscallions, and would end up in Newgate!”

“Yes, by Jupiter!” said Ninian, kindling. “He was a great gun! Lord, do you remember the time that pony of yours refused, and you went right over the hedge into a ploughed field? I thought we should never get the mud off your habit!”

Lucilla laughed heartily at this recollection, but her laughter soon died, and she sighed, saying in a melancholy voice that those days were long past. “I know Mama would have bought a hunter for me, when I grew to be too big for dear old Punch, but Aunt Clara utterly refused to do so! She said she wouldn’t enjoy a moment’s peace of mind if she knew me to be careering all over the countryside, and if I was set on riding there was a very good livery-stable in Cheltenham, which provides reliable grooms to accompany young ladies when they wish to go for rides—on quiet old hacks! Exactly so!” she added, as Ninian uttered a derisive laugh. “And when I appealed to my—my insufferable Uncle Carleton, all he did was to reply in the vilest of scrawls that my Aunt Clara was the best judge of what it was proper for me to do.”

“I must say, one would take him for a regular slow-top,” agreed Ninian. “He isn’t, though. It might be that he doesn’t approve of females hunting.”

“A great many gentlemen don’t,” said Miss Farlow. “My own dear father would never have permitted me to hunt. Not that I wished to, even if I had been taught to ride, which I wasn’t.”

There did not seem to be anything to say in answer to this, and a depressed silence fell on the company. Lucilla broke it. “Depend upon it,” she said, “my aunt will write to Uncle Carleton and he will order me to do as I’m bid. I don’t believe there is any hope for me.”

“Oh, don’t despair!” said Annis cheerfully. “It wouldn’t surprise me if your aunt were to be too thankful to learn that you are in safe hands to raise the least objection to your prolonging your visit to me. She might even be glad of a respite! And if she thinks the matter over she will surely perceive that to fetch you back immediately would give rise to just the sort of scandal-broth she must be most anxious to avoid. Ninian escorted you here because I invited you: what could be more natural? I wonder where I made your acquaintance?”

Lucilla smiled faintly at this, but it was a woebegone effort, and it took a little time to convince her that there was no other way out of her difficulties. Annis felt extremely sorry for her, since it was obvious that Mrs Amber was so morbidly conscious of the responsibility laid on her that she chafed the poor child almost to desperation by the excessive care she took of her.

Before the tea-tray was brought in, Annis took Ninian to her book-room while she there wrote the letter he was to carry to Mrs Amber, and supplied him with enough money to defray the various expenses he had incurred. She told Lucilla that she needed his help in the composition of the letter, but her real object was to discover rather more about Lucilla’s flight than had so far been disclosed. She had mentally discounted much of what Lucilla had told her as the exaggeration natural to youth, but by the time Ninian had favoured her with his version of the affair she had realized that Lucilla had not exaggerated the pressure brought to bear on her, and could easily picture the effect on a sensitive girl such pressure would have. No one had ill-treated her; she had been suffocated with loving kindness, not only by her aunt, but by Lord and Lady Iverley, and by Ninian’s three sisters; even Eliza, a ten-year old, conceiving a schoolgirl passion for her, and doting on her in a very embarrassing way. Cordelia and Lavinia, both of whom Miss Wychwood judged to be two meekly insipid young women, had, apparently, told Lucilla that they looked forward to the day when they could call her sister. This, Ninian said, in a judicial way, had been a mistaken thing to have done; but it did not seem to have occurred to him that his own conduct left much to be desired. It was obvious to Miss Wychwood that his devotion to his parents was excessive; but when she asked him if he had indeed been prepared to marry Lucilla, he replied: “No, no! That is to say—well, what I mean is—oh, I don’t know, but I thought something would be bound to happen to prevent it!”

“But I collect, my dear boy,” said Miss Wychwood, “that your parents love you very dearly, and have never denied you anything?”

“That is just it!” said Ninian eagerly. “My—my every wish has been granted me, so—so how could I be so ungrateful as to refuse to do the only thing they have ever asked me to do? Particularly when my mother begged me, with tears in her eyes, not to shatter the one hope my father had left to him!”

This moving picture failed to impress Miss Wychwood. She said, somewhat dryly, that she was at a loss to understand why his loving parents should have set their hearts on his marriage to a girl he had no wish to marry.

“She is the daughter of Papa’s dearest friend,” explained Ninian, in a reverential tone. “When Captain Carleton bought Old Manor, it was in the hope that the two estates would be joined, in the end, by this marriage.”

“Captain Carleton, I assume, was a gentleman of substance?”

“Oh, yes! All the Carletons are full of juice!” said Ninian. “But that has nothing to do with the case!”

Miss Wychwood thought that it probably had a great deal to do with the case, but kept this reflection to herself. After a moment, Ninian said, flushing slightly: “My father, I daresay, has never had a mercenary thought in his head, ma’am! His only desire is to ensure my—my happiness, and he believes that because, when we were children, Lucy and I were used to play together, and—did indeed like each other very much, we should deal famously together as husband and wife. But we shouldn’t!”declared Ninian, with unnecessary violence.

“No, I don’t think you would!” agreed Miss Wychwood, amusement in her voice. “Indeed, it has me in a puzzle to guess what made your parents think you would!”

“They believe that Lucy’s wildness comes of her being young, and kept too close by Mrs Amber, and that I should be able to handle her,” said Ninian. “But I shouldn’t, ma’am! I never could keep her out of mischief, even when we were children, and—and I don’t wish to be married to a headstrong girl, who thinks she knows better than I do always,and says I have no spirit when I try to stop her doing something outrageous! I did try to stop her running away from Chartley, but, short of taking her back by force, there was no way of doing it. And,” he added candidly, “by the time I caught up with her she had reached a village, and she said if I so much as laid a finger on her she would scream for help, besides biting and scratching and kicking, and if it was pudding-hearted of me to have hung up my axe, very well, I’m a pudding-heart! Only think what a scandal it would have created, ma’am! She would have roused the whole place—and several of the farmworkers were already going to start work in the fields! I was obliged to knuckle down! Then she said that since they would none of them believe her when she said nothing would prevail upon her to marry me, the best way of proving it to them was by running away. And I’m bound to own that I did feel it might be a good thing to do. But when she tried to persuade me to go home, and pretend I knew nothing about her having left the house before dawn, I did not knuckle down! Well, what a miserable fellow I should be to let such a stupid chit jaunter about quite unprotected!”

“Is that what she did?” asked Miss Wychwood, unable to repress a note of appreciation in her voice.

“Yes, and if only I hadn’t been woken up by the moonlight on my face I shouldn’t have known a thing about it!” said Ninian bitterly. “Of course I got up to pull the blinds closely together, and that’s why I saw Lucy. She was making off down the avenue, and carrying a portmanteau. I wish I hadn’t seen her, I don’t mind owning, but since I did see her, what could I do but follow her?”

“I can’t imagine!” confessed Miss Wychwood.

“No, well, you see how it was! I had to dress, of course, and then creep out of the house, to the stables, and by the time I’d harnessed a horse to my gig, and fobbed off Sowerby—he’s one of our grooms, and what must he do but come out in his nightshirt to see who was stealing a horse and carriage!—Lucy was half-way to Amesbury. I guessed she must be going that way, for I naturally supposed her to be trying to go back to Cheltenham, and I am pretty sure there’s a coach which goes to Marlborough from Amesbury, and Marlborough’s on the post-road to Cheltenham. I thought that was as bird-witted as it could be, but it wasn’t as bird-witted as her precious Bath-scheme! I said all I could to persuade her to abandon such a hare-brained notion, but it was to no purpose, so when it came to her saying that by hedge or by style she would get to Bath, it seemed to me that the only thing to be done was to drive her there.”

He ended on a defensive note, and looked so sheepish that Miss Wychwood had no difficulty in realising that Lucy, by far the stronger character, had, in fact, talked him into reluctant compliance. She said, however, that he had certainly done the right thing; and advised him to tell his father, without reserve, what were his sentiments on the subject of the marriage proposed to him. “Depend upon it,” she said, “he will hardly feel surprise now that Lucilla has made it abundantly clear what her sentiments are! I shouldn’t wonder at it if he felt relief at being spared such a daughter-in-law!” She affixed a wafer to the letter she had inscribed, and rose from her desk, saying, as she handed the letter to him: “There! That will, I trust, reassure Mrs Amber and may even convince her—though she sounds to me to be a remarkably foolish woman!—that her wisest course will be to give Lucilla permission to remain in my charge until she has had time to recover from all this agitation. Come, let us go back to the drawing-room! Limbury will be bringing in the tea-tray immediately.”

She led the way out of the room, and had reached the door into the drawing-room when a knock was heard on the front-door. Since she had no expectation of receiving any visitors, she supposed it to betoken nothing more important than a message, and went into the drawing-room. But a very few minutes later Limbury appeared on the threshold, and announced: “My Lord Beckenham, ma’am, and Mr Harry Beckenham!”