Lady of Quality

Chapter 7

Just as Miss Wychwood and Lucilla were walking next morning along Upper Camden Place on their way to Gay Street, they encountered Ninian Elmore, striding towards them. It became immediately apparent that he was labouring under a strong sense of resentment, for hardly waiting to greet them he burst out with the rather unnecessary information that he was coming to visit them, adding explosively: “What do you think has happened, ma’am?”

“I have no idea,” replied Miss Wychwood. “Tell us!”

“I was coming to do so. You wouldn’t believe it! I scarcely do myself! I mean to say, when you consider all that has taken place, and how it was their fault, and not mine—well, it makes me as mad as Bedlam, and so it would anyone!”

“But what is it?” demanded Lucilla impatiently.

“You may well ask! Not but what it will send you up into the boughs when I tell you! For of all the—”

She interrupted him, stamping her foot, and hugging her pelisse round her against the sharp wind that was blowing. “For heaven’s sake tell me, instead of talking in that hubble-bubble way, and keeping us standing in this detestable wind!” she almost screamed.

He glared at her, said with stiff dignity that he was just about to tell her when she had so rudely broken in on him, and, pointedly turning his shoulder towards her, addressed himself to Miss Wychwood, saying portentously: “I have received a letter from my father, ma’am!”

“Is that all?” interpolated Lucilla scornfully.

“No, it is not all!” he retorted. “But how anyone can utter more than a word with you interrupting—”

“Peace!” intervened Miss Wychwood, considerably amused. “You cannot quarrel in the street—at least, I daresay you can, but I beg you won’t! Has your father disinherited you, Ninian? And, if so, why?”

“Well, no, he hasn’t done that, precisely,” he replied, “but it wouldn’t astonish me if he did do so—except that I rather fancy it isn’t within his power, on account of the Settlement which was executed by my grandfather. I didn’t pay much heed to it at the time, though I know that I had to sign some document or other—but he threatens to discontinue my allowance (besides repudiating any debts I may incur in Bath) if I do not instantly return to Chartley! I—I wouldn’t have believed he could ever have behaved in such a manner! It has opened my eyes, I can tell you! He has always seemed to me to be the—the best of fathers, and—and the most understanding, and I don’t scruple to say that this business has wounded me deeply! And, what’s more, I’ll be—dashed—if I crawl back to Chartley with my tail between my legs, as though I had done something wrong, which I have not!”

“It certainly seems very odd,” acknowledged Miss Wychwood. “But perhaps there is an explanation! Will you walk with us to Gay Street, before Lucilla becomes quite frozen, and tell us why your father has issued such an ultimatum?”

He agreed to this, and, falling into step between them, disclosed that Lord Iverley (like Mrs Amber) had washed his hands of Lucilla, whose conduct had shown him that she was unworthy to be admitted into the family, being such as to convince him that she was so wholly wanting in propriety, modesty, and delicacy as to have sunk herself below reproach.

Ignoring an indignant gasp from Lucilla, he ended by saying: “And so if you please, he forbids me to have anything more to do with her, but to return instantly to Chartley—under pain of his severest displeasure! As though the blame for her running away didn’t lie at his door! Which it did! By God, Miss Wychwood, it has put me in such a rage that I have a very good mind to marry Lucilla immediately!”

Lucilla, who had listened to this speech with strong resentment, said warmly: “He would be very well served if you did! But, for my part, I think you should ignore his letter. Because neither of us wishes to be married, and even if we did I don’t think my uncle would give his consent. And I can’t marry anyone without it, unless, I suppose, I eloped to the Border, which nothing would prevail upon me to do, even with someone I wished to marry! That would sink me below reproach, wouldn’t it, ma’am?”

“It would indeed,” agreed Miss Wychwood. “Besides condemning you both to a lifetime of regret!”

“Well, I know, but I didn’t really mean it!” growled Ninian. “All the same, I’d as lief be shackled to you as submit tamely to such an unreasonable order as this, and that I do mean!”

To Miss Wychwood’s relief, Lucilla took this in perfectly good part. She said: “I must say, it is enough to drive anyone to desperation. It isn’t even as though you had been an undutiful son, for the case has been far otherwise. And what seems to be most extraordinary is that he never kicked up such a dust when you were trying to fix your interest with that female in London, and she was by far more improper than I am, wasn’t she?”

He cast her a fulminating glance. “I’ll tell you this, Lucy! It will be well for you to learn to keep your tongue between your teeth! Besides, you know nothing about it! I was not trying to fix my interest with her! A mere flirtation! Bachelor’s fare! You wouldn’t understand, but you may depend upon it my father did!”

“Well, if he understood that, why doesn’t he understand this?”Lucilla asked reasonably. “It seems to me to be quite addle-brained!”

“It seems to me,”interposed Miss Wychwood, “as though Lord Iverley wrote to you when he was in too much of a flame to consider what might be the effect of sending you such an intemperate letter, Ninian. I daresay he will be sorry for it by now; and I am very sure that it came as a shock to him when he found himself in a quarrel with you, for I fancy that had never happened before. Nor do I doubt that, however little he may acknowledge it, he knows he has been at fault in his dealings with you and Lucilla. So, having been pandered—having had his own way for a great number of years, he was naturally put into a pelter when he met with opposition—particularly from you, my dear boy! You told us yourself that you had parted from him on the worst of bad terms, and I expect he was sadly hurt—”

“Yes, I did, but I was sorry for it later, and was meaning to go back, to beg his pardon, when his letter reached me! But I shan’t now! I could forgive his cutting at me,but the things he said about Lucy I cannot forgive—unless he withdraws them! It isn’t that I approved of her running off as she did, for I didn’t, but to accuse her of wanton behaviour, which he did, though I didn’t intend to repeat that, besides having sunk herself below reproach, is unjust, and unforgiveable!”

Keeping her inevitable reflections on Lord Iverley’s unwisdom to herself, Miss Wychwood responded, with soothing tact: “You will of course do what you feel to be best, but I cannot help feeling that you ought, in common civility, to send your father an answer to his letter—and not an angry one! If you already had the intention of going back to beg his pardon—”

“I had, but I haven’t that intention now!” he declared pugnaciously.

“When you’ve come out of the mops,” she said, smiling at him in a disarming way, “I am persuaded that your good sense will make you perceive the propriety of offering him an apology for having expressed yourself more forcefully than was becoming. I don’t think you should mention Lucilla at all, for what purpose could be served by your defending her against accusations which Lord Iverley must know very well are unjust? As for his summons to you, it would be foolish to refuse to obey it, for that, you know, would make you seem like a naughty little boy, shouting ‘I won’t!’ Far more dignified, don’t you agree, to write that you will of course return presently to Chartley, but that you have several engagements in Bath in the immediate future from which it would be grossly impolite to cry off.”

Much impressed by this worldly wisdom, he exclaimed: “By Jove, yes! That’s the dandy! I will write to him, exactly as you suggest! I should think it must make him ashamed, besides showing him that I am not a schoolboy but a grown man, not to be ordered about but to be treated with respect! What’s more, I’ll send my duty to Mama, though after the things she said to me—However, whatever they choose to do, I hope I am not one to rip up grievances!”

Miss Wychwood applauded this; and as they had reached Gay Street, took leave of him, recommending him, if he had nothing better to do, to stroll down to the Pump Room, where she and Lucilla were going as soon as they had executed some business, and done a little shopping. Since her object was to prevent his writing a reply to his father’s letter until his smouldering anger had had time to die down, she was glad to see that this suggestion found favour with him. When Lucilla, adding her helpful mite, told him that he would find her dear friend, Miss Corisande Stinchcombe, there, and charged him with a message for her, his clouded brow lightened perceptibly, and he went off quite happily down the hill. “Which,” Lucilla informed Miss Wychwood confidentially, “I had a notion would give his thoughts another direction, because I could see yesterday that he took a marked fancy to her!”

“Then it was very well done of you,” approved Miss Wychwood. “Which reminding him of his London-flirt was not!”

“No,” admitted Lucilla guiltily. “I knew I had said the wrong thing as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Though why he should have taken snuff at it I haven’t the least guess, for he told me all about her himself!”

Miss Wychwood was not obliged to enter into an explanation, because they had by this time mounted the flight of stairs that led to the Registry Office, recommended by Mrs Wardlow, who had engaged a highly respectable Young Person through its agency, to act as Second Housemaid in Camden Place, and was so well satisfied with the Young Person that she had no hesitation in directing her mistress to the office. Lucilla was too much overawed by the oppressive gentility of the proprietress to do more than agree with whatever Miss Wychwood suggested to her, and confided to that lady when they left the premises that the statuesque Mrs Poppleton had frightened her to death, so that she was deeply thankful her dear Miss Wychwood had been present to support her. “And when the maids she means to send to Camden Place to be interviewed come, you will be there, won’t you?” she said anxiously.

Reassured on this head, she tripped happily beside Miss Wychwood, and recklessly bought not one but two pairs of long kid gloves, which (she said) made her feel truly grown-up at last.

Since the Bath Season had hardly begun, the musicians who entertained the company every morning in the Pump Room during the full Season were not present, but a fair sprinkling of visitors was already in evidence. A somewhat depressingly large number of the visitors were valetudinarians, either hobbling about on sticks, being afflicted by gout or rheumatism; or elderly dyspeptics, hopefully seeking a cure for liver disorders arising from the excesses of their earlier years. There were also several dowagers, suffering from nervous disorders and from a conviction that a recital of their various ills, and the many treatments they had undergone must be of as much interest to those of their acquaintances whom they could contrive to buttonhole as they were to themselves. But as most of the confirmed invalids were attended by younger members of their families the assembly, which at first glance appeared to consist of crippled persons, stricken in years, included quite a number of young persons wholly unafflicted by the numerous ailments for which the Bath waters were considered to be an infallible remedy. For the most part, these attendants were females, but there were some exceptions, notably the fascinating Mr Kilbride, who, whenever (for financial reasons) he came to Bath on a visit to his grandmother, dutifully escorted her to the Pump Room, tenderly settled her in a chair, brought her a glass of the hot pump water, took immense pains to discover amongst the company one of her cronies, and, having inexorably led this unfortunate up to her, and seen him (or her) safely ensconced beside her, occupied himself for the rest of his stay in the Pump Room in strolling about, greeting chance acquaintances, and flirting lightheartedly with all the prettiest girls present.

Besides these seasonal visitors there were the residents, and the first of these on whom Miss Wychwood’s eyes fell, as she glanced round the Pump Room, was Lord Beckenham. He was talking to a lady in a preposterous hat, trimmed with several upstanding ostrich feathers, but as soon as he perceived Miss Wychwood he excused himself and purposefully threaded his way towards her between the several groups of people which separated them. Lucilla, having located Corisande Stinchcombe, darted away in her direction, and Miss Wychwood was left to Lord Beckenham’s mercy.

He greeted her with his usual punctiliousness, but almost immediately said, with a grave look, that he was excessively sorry to learn that her young friend’s visit had led to a disagreeable consequence. “I understand that Oliver Carleton has come to Bath, and that you have been obliged to receive him,” he said heavily. “It was inevitable, of course, that he should call in Camden Place, but I trust it was to make arrangements to remove his niece from Bath?”

“Oh, no, not immediately!” replied Miss Wychwood cheerfully. “That would certainly be a disagreeable consequence! I hope to have her company for some time yet. She is a delightful child—positively a ray of sunshine in the house!”

“I own she appeared to be an amiable girl, and I was favourably impressed by her manners,” he conceded, with a patronizing air which she found intolerable. “The danger attached to her visit is that you may find yourself obliged to become more closely acquainted with her uncle than can be thought desirable. You will not object to my venturing to give you a hint, I know.”

“On the contrary, sir! I object very much to it,” she said, sparks of wrath in her eyes. “I think it is a gross impertinence—to give you the word with no bark on it!—for what right have you to give me hints on how I should conduct myself? None that I have granted you!”

He looked to be a little confounded by this forthright speech, but embarked on a ponderous explanation of the purity of his intention, in which his regard for her, his hope that he might one day have the right to guide her judgment, his conviction that the warning he had uttered would meet with her brother’s warm approval, and his knowledge of the world, became entangled almost beyond unravelling. He seemed to be aware of this, for he brought his speech to an end by saying: “In short, dear Miss Annis, you are ignorant—as indeed one would wish you to be!—of how very undesirable an acquaintance for a delicately nurtured female Carleton is! Particularly for a lady of quality such as yourself! I am persuaded that your good brother would echo my sentiments on this occasion, and that there is no need for me to say more.”

She bestowed a glittering smile upon him, and said: “No need at all, sir! In point of fact, there was no need for you to have said as much. But since you seem to be so much concerned with my welfare let me assure you that my acquaintance with Mr Carleton is unattended by any danger either to my reputation or to my virtue! He is quite the rudest man I have ever met, and I am not so ignorant as to be unaware that he is what I believe is termed a man of the town,but I have it on the best of authority—his own!—that he never attempts to seduce ladies of quality! So you may be easy—and I beg you will say no more on this subject!”

An amused voice spoke at her elbow. “I expect he will, though, and you can see he is far from easy,” said Mr Carleton. He nodded at Beckenham, who was visibly swelling with hostility, and greeted him with a careless tolerance which still further exacerbated his lordship’s resentment. “How do you do?” he said. “They tell me it was you who bought that dubious Brueghel at Christie’s last month, but I daresay rumour lied!”

“I did buy it, and I do not consider it dubious!” responded his lordship, growing almost purple in the face from his effort to suppress his spleen. “I heard that you had a fancy for it, Carleton!”

“No, no! not when I had had the opportunity to inspect it more closely!” replied Mr Carleton soothingly. “I wasn’t the bidder who ran you up so high—in fact, I wasn’t in the bidding at all!” Observing, with satisfaction, the effect this had on the infuriated connoisseur, he added, by way of rubbing salt into the wound: “I don’t think I was told who your unsuccessful rival was: some silly gudgeon, no doubt!”

“Do I understand you to mean that I too am a gudgeon?” demanded Lord Beckenham fiercely.

Mr Carleton put up his black brows in exaggerated surprise, and said in a bewildered voice: “Now, what in the world can I have said to put such a notion as that into your head? It cannot have escaped your notice, my dear Beckenham, that I carefully refrained from saying ‘some other silly gudgeon’!”

“I shall take leave to tell you, Carleton, that I find your—your wit offensive!”

“By all means!” replied Mr Carleton. “You have my leave to tell me anything you choose! How unjust it would be in me to refuse to grant you leave to do so when it has never occurred to me that I should ask your permission to say that I find you a dead bore, which I’ve been doing for years.”

“If it were not for our surroundings,” said Lord Beckenham, between his teeth, “I should be strongly tempted to land you a facer, sir!”

“It’s to be hoped you would have the strength of mind to resist temptation,” said Mr Carleton, with spurious sympathy. “Such a very gudgeon-ish thing to do, don’t you agree?”

Since Beckenham was well aware that Mr Carleton was almost as famous for his punishing skill in the boxing-ring as for his rudeness this reply infuriated him so much that, with only the briefest of bows to Miss Wychwood, he turned on his heel and walked off, his brow thunderous, and his lips tightly compressed.

“I have never been able to understand,” remarked Mr Carleton, “why it is that so many persons find it impossible to rid themselves of such pompous bores as that fellow!”

“Perhaps,” offered Miss Wychwood, “it is because very few persons—if any at all!—are as rude as you are!”

“Ah, no doubt that is the reason!” he nodded.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” she told him.

“No, no, how can you say so? You don’t mean to tell me you didn’t wish to be rid of him!”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “I did wish it, but that was because he vexed me to death. I was going to do the thing myself if you hadn’t interrupted us! And I shouldn’t have been grossly uncivil!”

“You can’t be very well-acquainted with him if you imagine you would have succeeded,” he said. “Nothing short of the grossest incivility has ever been known to pierce his armour of self-importance. He can empty a room quicker than any man I’ve ever known.”

She smiled, but said charitably: “Poor man! One can’t but feel sorry for him.”

“A waste of sympathy, believe me! He would be incredulous, I daresay, if it were disclosed to him that he was an object for pity. In his own eyes, his consequence is so great that when people smother yawns in the middle of one of his pretentious lectures he is sorry for them,because it is plain to him that they are persons of vastly inferior intellect, quite unworthy to receive instruction from him.”

Recalling very vividly the numerous occasions when she had been provoked almost to screaming point by his lordship’s disquisitions, accompanied as they invariably were, by kindly but intolerable attempts to enlighten her ignorance, or to correct what his superior taste assured him were her false artistic judgments, she could not suppress a little chuckle, but she atoned for this by saying that even if his lordship were a trifle prosy he had many excellent qualities.

“I should hope he had. Everyone has some excellent qualities. Why, even I have! Not many, of course, but some!”

She thought it wisest to ignore this bait, and continued, as though she had not heard the interpolation, to defend Lord Beckenham’s character. “He is a man of the first respectability,” she said, in a reproving tone. “Always well-conducted, with propriety of taste, and—and delicacy of principle. He is an affectionate brother, too, and—and altogether a very worthy man!”

“I don’t think you should encourage him to make such a dead-set at you,” he said, shaking his head. “You will have the poor fellow making you an offer, and if you don’t accept it very likely he will be so broken-hearted that if he doesn’t put a period to his life he will fall into a deep melancholy.”

The picture this conjured up was too much for Miss Wychwood’s gravity. She choked, and broke into laughter, informing him, however, as soon as she was able to control her voice, that it ill-became him to poke fun at his betters.

“If it comes to that it doesn’t become you to laugh at him!” he retorted.

“I know it doesn’t,” she acknowledged. “But I was not laughing at him, precisely, but at you for saying anything so absurd about him. Now, if you wish to talk to Lucilla—”

“I don’t. Who is the young sprig at her elbow?”

She glanced across the room, to where Lucilla was the centre of an animated group. “Ninian Elmore—if you mean the fair boy?”

He put up his glass. “Oh, so that’s Iverley’s heir, is it? Not a bad-looking halfling, but too chitty-faced. Legs like cat-sticks too.” His glass swept round the group, and his face hardened. “I see she has Kilbride dangling after her,” he said abruptly. “Let me make it plain to you, ma’am, that that’s a connection I don’t wish you to encourage!”

She was nettled by his suddenly autocratic tone, but replied with characteristic honesty: “I shall certainly not do so, Mr Carleton, rest assured! To be frank with you, I was vexed that he should have come up to me last night, so that I was obliged to introduce him to Lucilla, for although I find him an agreeable companion, I am well aware that his engaging manners, coupled as they are with considerable address and a propensity for flirting desperately with almost any pretty female, make him an undesirable friend for a green girl.”

He let his glass fall, and transferred his gaze to her face. “You have a tendre for him, have you? I might have guessed it! Your affairs are no concern of mine, Miss Wychwood, but Lucilla’s are very much my concern, and I give you fair warning that I don’t mean to let her fall into the clutches of Kilbride or any other loose screw of his kidney!”

She replied, in a cold voice at startling variance with the flame of anger in her eyes: “Pray enlighten my ignorance, sir! In what way does Mr Kilbride’s character differ from your own?”

Any hope she might have cherished of putting him out of countenance died stillborn: he merely looked astonished, and ejaculated: “Good God, do you imagine I would permit her to marry any one like myself? What a bird-witted question to have asked me! And I had begun to think you a woman of superior sense!”

She found herself without a word to say, but no answer was required of her. With the briefest of bows he turned away, leaving her to regret that she had allowed her vexation to betray her into what she realized, too late, had been an impropriety. Ladies of the first consideration did not accuse even the most hardened rake-shame of being a loose screw. She told herself that the fault lay at his door: she had caught the infection of far too plain speaking from him. But it would not do; her conscience smote her; she foresaw that she would be obliged to offer him an apology; and discovered, with some surprise, that it was more mortifying to be thought by him to be bird-witted than brassily forward.

Giving herself a mental shake, she made her way to Mrs Stinchcombe’s party, and greeted that lady with her usual smiling calm. But before she had time to exchange greetings with the rest of the company she suffered a set-back. Lucilla cried impulsively: “Oh, Miss Wychwood, do pray tell Mr Kilbride that we shall be happy to see him at the party! I ventured to invite him, for you told me I might invite anyone I chose, and I know he is a friend of yours! Only he says he dare not come without an invitation from you!”

It was at this point that Miss Wychwood realized that taking charge of Lucilla was not likely to be the sinecure she had blithely expected it to be. It was impossible to repudiate the invitation so innocently given, but she did her best. She said: “Certainly, if he cares to come, I shall be happy to include him.”

“I do care to come!” he said promptly, moving forward to bow over her hand. He raised his head, smiling wickedly at her, and added softly: “Why don’t you wish me to, most adored lady? Surely you must know that I am an excellent man to have at a party!”

“Oh, yes!” she said lightly. “Amusing rattles always are! But I don’t think mine is going to be the sort of party you enjoy. In fact, I fancy you would find it a very insipid one—almost a children’s party!”

“Oh, in that case you can’t possibly exclude me! I am at my best at children’s parties, and will engage myself to organize any number of parlour games to keep your youthful guests entertained. Charades, for instance, or Blind Man’s Buff!”

“Don’t be so absurd!” she said, laughingly. “If you come, I shall expect you to entertain the dowagers!”

“Oh, there will be no difficulty about that! I have even succeeded in entertaining my grandmother, and that, you know, calls for great skill in the art!”

“You know, you are a sad scamp!” she told him, as she moved away from him.

She found that Mr Beckenham had joined the group, and it occurred to her, as she shook hands with him, that Mr Kilbride’s presence at her rout would be less marked if she invited Mr Beckenham too. He was considerably younger than Kilbride, but his easy address, and decided air of fashion made him appear to be older than his years. He was accompanied by a very dashing Tulip, whom he presented as Jonathan Hawkesbury: a friend of his who had toddled down from London to spend a few days at Beckenham Court, so Miss Wychwood promptly included him in her invitation. She did not form any very high opinion of his mental powers, but his manners were extremely polite, and his raiment so exquisite that he was bound, she thought, to lend lustre to her party. Both gentlemen accepted her invitation, Mr Hawkesbury expressing himself as being very much obliged to her, and Harry saying, with his careless grace: “By Jove, yes! We shall be delighted to come to your party, dear Miss Annis! Will there be dancing?”

Miss Wychwood rapidly revised her plans. She had engaged a small orchestra to discourse soft music to her guests, but she now began to think that the musicians might well strike up a country dance or two, and perhaps—daring thought!—a waltz. That might shock some of the starchier dowagers, for although the waltz was becoming increasingly fashionable in London it was never danced at any of the Bath Assemblies. But it would undoubtedly raise her party from the doldrums of the dull and ordinary to the ranks of the unexpectedly modish. She said: “Well, that will depend on circumstances! It is to be a rout-party, not a ball, but I daresay it will end as—not a ball, but an impromptu hop.”

Mr Beckenham applauded this suggestion, and added the information that his somewhat inarticulate friend sported a very pretty toe. Mr Hawkesbury disclaimed, but expressed with great gallantry the hope that he might be granted the honour of leading his hostess on to the floor. Miss Wychwood then detached herself from the group, with the intention of enlarging her party by the inclusion of Major Beverley, who had just entered the Pump Room, in attendance on his mama. He was not a dancing-man, but he was of much the same age as Denis Kilbride, and, from the circumstance of his having had the misfortune to lose an arm at the sanguinary engagement at Waterloo, was an object of awed interest to the damsels who would be present at the party. Having successfully enrolled him, she strolled round the room in search of further prey. She found two; and it suddenly occurred to her that her object was not so much to provide Lucilla with a counter-attraction, as to hide Mr Kilbride from Mr Carleton’s penetrating eyes. This was so ridiculous that it made her laugh inwardly; but it was also vexing: what concern was it of his whom she chose to invite to her house? She didn’t give a straw for his opinion, and wouldn’t waste another thought on it.

Nothing was seen of him for the following two days, but towards evening on the third day he called in Camden Place to inform Lucilla that he had procured a well-mannered mare for her to ride. “My groom is bringing her down, and will look after her,” he said. “I’ll tell him to come here for orders every day.”

“Oh!”squeaked Lucilla joyfully. “Thank you, sir! I am excessively obliged to you! Where does she come from? When shall I be able to ride her? What sort of a mare is she? Shall I like her?”

“I trust so. She’s a gray, carries a good head, and jumps off her hocks. She comes from Lord Warrington’s stables, and is accustomed to carrying a lady, but I bought her at Tattersall’s, Warrington having no further use for her since his wife’s death. You may ride her the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh, famous! capital!” she cried, clapping her hands. “Was that why I thought you must have left Bath? Did you go all the way to London to buy me a horse of my very own? I am—I am truly grateful to you! Miss Wychwood has lent me her own favourite mare, and she is the sweetest-goer imaginable, but I don’t like to be borrowing her mare, even though she says she doesn’t wish to ride herself.”

“No, nor do I like it,” he said. He put up his glass, surveying through it Mr Elmore, who had risen at his entrance, but was standing bashfully in the background. “You, I fancy, must be young Elmore,” he said. “In which case, I have to thank you for having taken care of my niece, I believe.”

“Yes, but—but it was nothing, sir!” stammered Ninian. “I mean, the only thing I could do was to accompany her, for I—I was unable to persuade her to return to Chartley, say what I would, which, of course, was what she should have done!”

“Heavy on hand, was she? You have my sympathy!”

Ninian grinned shyly at him. “I should rather think she was!” he said. “Well, she was in one of her hey-go-mad humours, you know!”

“I am thankful to say that I don’t,” replied Mr Carleton caustically.

“I was not!” declared Lucilla, taking instant umbrage. “And as for taking care of me, I was very well able to take care of myself!”

“No, you weren’t!” retorted Ninian. “You didn’t even know how to get to Bath, and if I hadn’t caught you—”

“If you hadn’t meddled I should have hired a chaise in Amesbury,” she said grandly. “And it wouldn’t have lost a wheel, like your odious gig!”

“Oh, would you indeed? And have found yourself without a feather to fly with when you reached Bath! Don’t be such a widgeon!”

Miss Wychwood, entering the room at that moment, put a stop to further hostilities, by saying in her calm way: “How many more times am I to tell you both that I will not have you pulling caps in my drawing-room? How do you do, Mr Carleton?”

“Oh, Miss Wychwood, whatever do you think?” cried Lucilla eagerly. “He has bought me a mare—a gray one, too, which is exactly what I should have chosen, because I love gray horses, don’t you? And he says his own groom is to look after her, so that now you will be able to ride with us!”

“Redeeming yourself in your ward’s eyes?” Miss Wychwood said quizzically, shaking hands with him.

“No: in yours, I hope!”

Startled, her eyes flew to his face, but swiftly sank again. Considerably shaken, she turned away, for there could be no mistaking the glow in his hard eyes: Mr Carleton, that noted profligate, had conceived a strange, unaccountable fancy for a maiden lady, of advanced years, who was no straw damsel, but a lady of the first consideration, and of unquestioned virtue. Her first thought, that he meant to fascinate her into accepting a carte blanche from him, occurred only to be dismissed: Mr Carleton might be a libertine, but he was not a fool. Perhaps he meant to get up a flirtation with her, by way of alleviating the boredom of Bath society. Hard on the heels of this thought came the realization that a flirtation with him would alleviate her own constantly growing boredom. He was so very different from any of her other flirts: in fact, she had never met anyone in the least like him.

Lucilla and Ninian were arguing about the several rides to be enjoyed outside Bath. They went into the back-drawing-room to consult the guide-book which Lucilla was almost positive she had left there. “And if they find it,” remarked Miss Wychwood, “they will instantly disagree on whether to go to see a Druidical monument, or a battlefield. I cannot conceive how anyone but a confirmed chucklehead could suppose that they were in the least degree suited to each other!”

“Iverley and Clara Amber are both chuckleheads,” replied Mr Carleton, dismissing them from further consideration. “I hope you mean to join the riding-party?”

“Yes, very likely I shall. Not that I think it at all necessary to provide Lucilla with a chaperon when she goes out with Ninian!”

“No, but it is very necessary, I promise you, to provide me with a companion who won’t bore me past endurance. I can think of few worse fates than to be obliged to ride bodkin between that pair of bickerers.”

Surprised, she said: “Oh, are you going with them?”

“Not unless you go too.”

“For fear that you may have to listen to bickering?” she said, smiling a little. “You won’t! They don’t quarrel when they go riding together, I’m told. Corisande Stinchcombe complained that they talked of nothing but horses, hounds, and hunting!”

“Even worse!” he said.

“You are not a hunting man, Mr Carleton?”

“On the contrary! But I do not indulge myself or bore my companions by describing the great runs I’ve had, the tosses I’ve taken, the clumsiness of one of my hunters—only saved from coming to grief over a regular rasper, be it understood, by my superior horsemanship!—or the sure-footedness of another. Such anecdotes are of no interest to anyone but the teller.”

“I am afraid that’s true,” she acknowledged. “But the impulse to boast of great runs and of clever horses is almost irresistible—even though one knows one is being listened to because the other person is only waiting for the chance to do some boasting on his own account! To which, of course, one is bound to listen, for the sake of common honesty! Don’t you agree?”

“Yes: it is why I learned years ago to overcome that impulse. You yourself hunt, I believe?”

“I was used to, when I lived in the country, but I was obliged to give it up when I came to Bath,” she said, with a faint sigh.

“Why did you come to Bath?” he asked.

“Oh, for several good reasons!” she responded lightly.

“If you mean that for a set-down, Miss Wychwood, I should inform you that I am not so easily set down! What good reasons?”

She looked at him rather helplessly, but, after a moment, replied with a touch of asperity: “They concern no one but myself, sir! And if you are aware that I did give you what I hoped would be a civil set-down for asking me an—an impertinent question, you will permit me to tell you that I consider you positively rag-mannered to pursue the subject!”

“Very likely, but that’s no answer!”

“It’s the only one I mean to give you!”

“Which leaves me to suppose that some murky secret lies in your past,” he said provocatively. “I find that hard to believe. With another, and very different, female, I might assume that some scandal had driven you from your home—an unfortunate affaire with one of the local squires, for instance!”

She curled her lip at him, and said disdainfully: “Curb your imagination, Mr Carleton! No murky secret lies behind me, and I have had no affaires,fortunate or otherwise!”

“I didn’t think you had,” he murmured.

“This is a most improper conversation!” she said crossly.

“Yes, isn’t it?” he agreed. “Why did you come to live in Bath?”

“Oh, how persistent you are!” she exclaimed. “I came to Bath because I wished to five a life of my own—not to dwindle into a mere aunt!”

“That I can well understand. But what the devil made you choose Bath, of all places?”

“I chose it because I have many friends here, and because it is within easy reach of Twynham Park.”

“Do you never regret it? Don’t you find it cursed flat?”

She shrugged. “Why, yes, sometimes I do, but so I should, I daresay, in any place where I resided all the year round.”

“Good God, is that what you do?”

“Oh, no! That was an exaggeration! I frequently visit my brother and his wife, and sometimes I go to stay with an aunt, who lives at Lyme Regis.”

“Gay to dissipation, in fact!”

She laughed. “No, but I am past the age of wishing for dissipation.”

“Don’t talk that balderdash to me!” he said sharply. “You have left your girlhood behind—though there are moments when I doubt that!—and have not reached your prime, so let me have no more fiddle-faddle about your advanced years, my girl!”

She gave an outraged gasp, but was prevented from flinging a retort at him by Lucilla, who came back into the front half of the room, demanding support in her contention that somewhere on Lansdown there were the remains of a Saxon fort which King Arthur had besieged. “Ninian says there isn’t. He says there was no such person as King Arthur! He says he was just a legend! But he wasn’t, was he? It is all here, in the guide-book, and I should like to know what makes Ninian think he knows more than the guide-book!”

“Oh, my God!” ejaculated Mr Carleton, and abruptly took his leave.