Pistols For Two and Other Stories

Full Moon

Lord Stavely prepared to descend from his chaise.

‘We will stop here,’ he announced.

It was certainly a charming inn. It stood at the end of the broad village street, with two great elms behind it and roses rambling over its old red brick frontage. It was not, of course, a posting house, which did not incline the two postilions in its favour. One of them said: ‘If we was to drive on for another mile or two, we’d likely find a decent house for your honour to bait at.’

‘My dear good fellow,’ replied his lordship, ‘you have no more notion of where we are than I have. Here we will stop. I like the place.’

The village seemed asleep in the moonlight, not a soul stirring. But the sound of carriage wheels brought the landlord out of the inn, all anxiety to oblige. Lord Stavely, alighting from the chaise, said: ‘Arcadia, I presume. Tell me, what is the time?’

The landlord, slightly taken aback, said that it lacked but ten minutes to the hour.

‘But what hour?’ asked his lordship.

‘Why, nine o’clock, sir!’

‘How shocking! Am I anywhere in the neighbourhood of Melbury Place?’

‘Melbury Place?’ repeated the landlord. ‘Yes, that you are, sir; it lies only a matter of ten miles from here, though the road’s tricky, as you might say.’

‘After the experiences of today, I should probably use a more forceful epithet. I imagine it will take me nearly an hour to reach the place. Obviously it behoves me to dine here. Or am I too late for dinner?’

The landlord was not one to turn away distinguished custom from his door. This gentleman, with his high crowned beaver hat, his driving coat of many capes, worn negligently open over a neat blue coat, a cut Venetian waistcoat, and the palest of fawn pantaloons, was plainly a member of the Quality. He assured Lord Stavely that, if he would step into the coffee-room, dinner should be served him in a very few minutes. A qualm then attacked him, and he faltered: ‘I’m sorry I can’t show your honour to a private parlour, but there’s only Mr Tom in the coffee-room, after all.’

‘Then if Mr Tom does not take exception to me, I shall do very well,’ said his lordship. ‘I wonder if I should remain here for the night? Shall I endear myself on my host by presenting myself at past eleven o’clock at night?’

‘They do keep very early hours up at the Place, by what I hear, sir,’ offered the landlord hopefully. ‘Was the Squire expecting of you, sir?’

‘He was, and I trust still is. Your manner leads me to fear that he will not be pleased by my tardy arrival?’

‘Well, sir, begging your pardon, Squire is that pernickety in his ways, and—in a manner of speaking—a testy gentlemen—not meaning any disrespect, I’m sure!’

‘In fact, I shall not endear myself to him by arriving famished on his doorstep at dead of night. Very well. I’ll put up here, then.’

The landlord, mentally resolving to have the best sheets instantly put on the bed in the larger of his two guest chambers, ushered his lordship into the coffee-room.

It had only one occupant, a young gentleman who sat in the window embrasure, with a bottle of brandy on the ledge beside him, and a glass in his hand. The landlord, casting a rather worried glance at the bottle, murmured that Mr Tom would not object to a gentleman’s dining in the coffee-room. Mr Tom blinked at Lord Stavely, and inclined his head with dignity. He then resumed his scrutiny of the moon-washed street.

His lordship returned the civility by a slight bow, and a smile hovering about his mouth, but made no attempt to lure Mr Tom into conversation. It was apparent to him that care sat upon the young gentleman’s brow. It would have been apparent to someone far less acute than Lord Stavely that Mr Tom was, very properly, drowning his troubles in brandy. He might have been any age between nineteen and twenty-five; he was certainly not older. Leanings towards dandyism were betrayed by the intricate but not entirely successful arrangement of his cravat, and by the inordinate height of his shirt collar, whose starched points reached almost to his cheekbones. But there was little of the dandy in his sturdy figure and fresh-complexioned countenance. He looked like the son of a country gentleman, which, indeed, he was, and as though he would be very much at home in the hunting-field, or with a gun over his shoulder.

In a short time the landlord laid a simple but very tolerable meal before his new guest, and himself waited upon him. Lord Stavely pronounced the fare to be excellent, commended the burgundy, and tactfully declined the only port offered him on the score that he did not wish to encourage a tendency to the gout. He did not look as though he suffered from gout, or any other ailment; in fact, he looked as healthy as any other man of thirty-five; but the landlord did not question his words. He merely swept away the covers and set a bottle of old cognac before him.

For some minutes past Lord Stavely had been aware that the young gentleman in the window was subjecting him to an intent scrutiny. He knew well what was engaging this fixed attention, and when the landlord had withdrawn, he said gently: ‘I call it the Nonchalent. It is not very difficult, once you acquire the knack of it.’

‘Eh?’ said the young gentleman, starting.

‘My cravat,’ explained Lord Stavely, smiling.

The young gentleman coloured and stammered that he begged pardon.

‘Not at all,’ said his lordship. ‘I’ll show you how to tie it, if you like.’

‘Will you?’ exclaimed the young gentleman eagerly. ‘I tie mine in an Osbaldeston, but I don’t like it above half.’

Lord Stavely waved one hand invitingly towards a chair at the table. ‘Won’t you join me?’

‘Well—thank you!’ The young gentleman got up and crossed the floor circumspectly. He brought his glass and the bottle with him, and set both down on the table. ‘My name,’ he announced carefully, ‘is Hatherleigh.’

‘Mine is Stavely,’ returned his lordship.

They exchanged bows. Only a purist would have said that Mr Hatherleigh was drunk. He could, by taking only reasonable pains, walk and speak with dignity, and if his potations had had the effect of divorcing his brain a little from the normal, at least it was perfectly clear on all important matters. When Lord Stavely, for instance, touching lightly on the country through which he had driven, said that he should suppose it to be good hunting country, young Hatherleigh was able to expatiate on the subject with enthusiasm and really remarkable coherence. The cloud lifted from his brow, his eyes brightened, and he became quite animated. Then the cloud descended again abruptly, and he fetched a sigh, and said gloomily: ‘But that is all at an end! I dare say I may think myself lucky if ever I get a leg across a good hunter again.’

‘As bad as that?’ said his lordship sympathetically.

Mr Hatherleigh nodded, and poured himself out some more brandy. ‘I’m eloping with an heiress,’ he announced dejectedly.

If Lord Stavely was startled by this intelligence, he managed to conceal his emotions most creditably. His lip did quiver a little, but he said in the politest way: ‘Indeed?’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Hatherleigh, fortifying himself with a deep drink. ‘Gretna Green,’ he added.

‘Forgive me,’ said his lordship, ‘but do you feel this to be a wise step to take?’

‘No, of course I don’t!’ said Mr Hatherleigh. ‘But what is a fellow to do? I can’t draw back now! You must see that!’

‘I expect it would be very difficult,’ agreed Lord Stavely. ‘When one has persuaded an heiress to elope with one—’

‘No such thing!’ interrupted Mr Hatherleigh. ‘I dare say I may have said it would be rare sport to do it, if only to kick up a dust, but I never thought Annabella would think I really meant it! But that is Annabella all over. In fact, I think she’s devilish like her father! Let her but once take a notion into her head, and there’s no persuading her to listen to reason! Mind, though,’ he added, bending a sudden, minatory scowl upon his auditor, ‘you are not to be thinking that I wish to back out! I have loved Annabella for years. In fact, I swore a blood-oath to marry her when we were children. But that isn’t to say that I want to drive off to the Border with her—and just now, too!’

‘The moment is not quite convenient?’

Mr Hatherleigh shook his head. ‘My uncle has invited me to Yorkshire for the grouse shooting!’ he said bitterly. ‘Only think what a splendid time I could have had! I have never tried my hand at grouse, you know, but I am accounted a pretty fair shot.’

‘You could not, I suppose, postpone the elopement until after the shooting season?’ suggested his lordship.

‘No, because if we waited there would be no sense in eloping at all, because very likely Annabella will be tied up to the old fogy her father means her to marry. Besides, the moon’s at the full now.’

‘I see. And who is this old fogy? Is he very old?’

‘I don’t know, but I should think he must be, wouldn’t you, if he’s a friend of Sir Walter?’

His lordship paused in the act of raising his glass to his lips. ‘Sir Walter?’

‘Sir Walter Abingdon. He is Annabella’s father.’

‘Oh!’ said his lordship, sipping his brandy. ‘I collect that he does not look with favour on your suit?’

‘No, and my father does not either. He says we are too young, and should not suit. So very likely I shall be cut off with a shilling, and be obliged to enter a counting-house, or some such thing, for Sir Walter will certainly cut Annabella off. But of course females never consider anything of that nature! They have not the least common sense, beside thinking that it is perfectly easy to hire a chaise for midnight without making anyone suspicious! And it is not!’ said Mr Hatherleigh, a strong sense of grievance overcoming him. ‘Let alone the expense of it—and that, let me tell you, has pretty well made my pockets to let! I have had to go twenty miles to do it, because a rare flutter I should have set up if I’d bespoke a chaise to go to Scotland at the George, or the Sun! Why, my father would have had wind of it within the hour!

‘And then I had to rack my brains to think how best to meet it, because it would never do to have it driving up to my home to pick me up, you know. Luckily old Thetford here is very much attached to our interests, so I told the post-boys in the end to come to this inn at half-past ten tonight. Annabella thinks everyone will be asleep by half-past eleven, or twelve at latest, and she is to meet me in the shrubbery. Shrubbery at midnight!’ he repeated scornfully. ‘I can tell you, it makes me feel like a great cake! Such flummery!’

He picked up the bottle again as he spoke, and poured some more brandy into his glass. Some of the liquor spilled on to the table. Mr Hatherleigh glared at it, and set the bottle down with precision.

‘Do you know,’ said Lord Stavely conversationally, ‘if I were going to elope at midnight I believe I would not drink too much brandy at ten o’clock?’

Mr Hatherleigh eyed him austerely. ‘If you think I’m foxed,’ he enunciated, ‘you’re wrong! I have a very hard head.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ said his lordship. ‘But if Miss Annabella were to detect the fumes on your breath she might not be quite pleased.’

‘Well, she shouldn’t have insisted on eloping with me!’ retorted Mr Hatherleigh.

‘She must be very much attached to you?’

‘Of course she is. Why, she’s known me all her life! All the same, she never would have taken this silly notion into her head if that peppery old fool hadn’t asked this fellow to stay, and told her she was to marry him. I must say, I was shocked when Annabella told me of it. I dare say he must be fifty at least, and a dead bore! Besides, she has never clapped eyes on him! I quite saw that as a gentleman I must rescue her, though I never thought then that my uncle would invite me to stay with him in Yorkshire.’

‘But surely even the most peppery of parents cannot in these days marry his daughter out of hand? Must you really elope?’ said Lord Stavely.

‘Annabella says so, and of course I am bound in honour to oblige her,’ replied Mr Hatherleigh grandly. ‘I dare say I shan’t dislike being married so very much, once I get used to it.’

‘I feel very strongly that you are making a mistake,’ said his lordship, gently moving the bottle out of reach. ‘Perhaps the dead bore will not wish to marry Annabella!’

‘Then why is he coming to stay with the Abingdons?’ demanded Mr Hatherleigh. ‘I expect Sir Walter has it all arranged, in his famous style! My father says he is the most meddlesome, managing old fool in the county.’ He drained his glass defiantly. ‘

‘T all events,’ he pronounced, ‘it’ll be something to overset his precious plans!’

Half an hour later, the landlord, coming in to inform Mr Tom that his chaise was at the door, found that young gentleman stertorously asleep, with his head on the table.

‘I don’t think,’ said Lord Stavely, ‘that Mr Tom is in a fit case for travel.’

‘There, now, I knew how it would be!’ exclaimed Thetford, looking down at Tom in some concern. ‘Whatever can be the matter with him? When I see him this evening, I thought to myself: You’re up to mischief, Mr Tom, or I don’t know the signs! And here’s a chaise and four come all the way from Whitworth to take him up! What’s to be done?’

‘You had better inform the postilions that Mr Tom is indisposed, and send them back to Whitworth,’ said his lordship. ‘And while you are about it, will you be so good as to inform my own postilions that I have changed my mind, and mean to go to Melbury Place tonight after all? Desire them to put the horses to at once, if you please.’

‘Your lordship won’t be staying here?’ the landlord said, his face falling. ‘And the bed made up, and a hot brick in it to air the sheets!’

‘Carry Mr Tom up to it!’ recommended Lord Stavely, with a smile. ‘When he wakes—’ He glanced down at Mr Tom’s unconscious form. ‘No, perhaps I had better leave a note for him.’ He drew out his pocket-book, and after a moment’s hesitation scribbled several lines in it in pencil, tore out the leaf, twisted it into a screw, and gave it to the landlord. ‘When he wakes, give him that,’ he said.

A quarter of an hour later, Thetford having furnished the post-boys with precise instructions. Lord Stavely was bowling along narrow country lanes to Melbury Place. When the gates came into sight, the post-boys would have turned in, but his lordship checked them, and said that he would get down.

They had long since decided that he was an eccentric, but this quite staggered them. ‘It’s Melbury Place right enough, my lord!’ one assured him.

‘I am aware. I have a fancy to stroll through the gardens in this exquisite moonlight. Wait here!’

He left them goggling after him. ‘He must be as drunk as a wheelbarrow!’ said one.

‘Not him!’ returned his fellow. ‘Queer in his attic! I suspicioned it at the start.’

His lordship, meanwhile, was walking up the drive. He very soon left the gravel for the grass bordering it, so that no sound should betray his presence to anyone in the house. The air was heavy with the scent of roses, and the full moon, riding high overhead, cast ink-black shadows on the ground. It showed the house, outlined against a sky of deepest sapphire, and made it an easy matter for his lordship, traversing the flower gardens, to find the shrubbery. Here, neat walks meandered between high hedges, and several rustic seats were set at convenient spots. No one was present, and no light shone from the long, low house in the background. His lordship sat down to await events.

He had not long to wait. After perhaps twenty minutes, he heard the hush of skirts, and rose just as a cloaked figure came swiftly round a bend in the walk, carrying two bandboxes. He stepped forward, but before he could speak the newcomer exclaimed in a muted voice: ‘I thought my aunt would never blow out her candle! But she is snoring now! Did you procure a chaise, Tom?’

Lord Stavely took off his hat, and the moonlight showed the lady the face of a complete stranger. She recoiled with a smothered shriek.

‘Don’t be afraid!’ said his lordship reassuringly. ‘I am Mr Hatherleigh’s deputy. Let me take those boxes!’

‘His deputy?’ echoed Miss Abingdon, nervously relinquishing her baggage into his hands.

‘Yes,’ said Lord Stavely, setting the bandboxes down beside the seat. ‘Shall we sit here while I explain it to you?’

‘But who are you, and where is Tom?’ demanded Miss Abingdon.

‘Tom,’ said his lordship diplomatically, ‘is indisposed. He was good enough to confide his plans to me, and to—er—charge me with his deepest regrets.’

The lady’s fright succumbed to a strong feeling of ill-usage. ‘Well!’ she said, her bosom swelling. ‘If that is not the poorest spirited thing I ever heard! I suppose he was afraid?’

‘Not at all!’ said his lordship, gently propelling her towards the seat. ‘He was overcome by a sudden illness.’

Miss Abingdon sat down, perforce, but peered suspiciously at him. ‘It sounds to me like a fudge!’ she said, not mincing matters. ‘He was perfectly well yesterday!’

‘His disorder attacked him unawares,’ said Lord Stavely.

Miss Abingdon, who seemed to labour under few illusions, demanded forthrightly: ‘Was he foxed?’

Lord Stavely did not answer for a moment. He looked at the lady, trying to see her face clearly in the moonlight. The hood had slipped back from her head. The uncertain light made it hard for him to decide whether her hair was dark or fair, but he was sure that it curled riotously, and that her eyes were both large and sparkling. He said: ‘Foxed? Certainly not!’

‘I don’t believe you!’ said Miss Abingdon. ‘How could he be such a simpleton, on this of all nights?’

Lord Stavely returned no answer to this, and after pondering in silence for a few minutes, Miss Abingdon said: ‘I did wonder if he quite liked the scheme. But why could he not have told me that he wanted to draw back from it?’

‘That,’ said Lord Stavely, ‘is the last thing he meant to do. He informed me that you had plighted your troth many years ago.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Abingdon. ‘He cut my wrist with his knife, and we mixed our blood. He said I was chicken-hearted because I squeaked.’

‘How very unfeeling of him!’ said his lordship gravely. ‘May I venture to ask if you love him very dearly?’

Miss Abingdon considered the matter. ‘Well, I have always been prodigiously fond of him,’ she answered at last. ‘I dare say I might not have married him, in spite of the oath, had things not been so desperate, but what else could I do when my papa is behaving so abominably, and I am in such despair? I did hope that Papa would hire a house in London for the Season, for I am nearly twenty years old, and I have never been out of Shropshire, except to go to Bath, which I detest. And instead of that he means to marry me to a horrid old man I have never seen!’

‘Yes, so Tom told me,’ said his lordship. ‘But—forgive me—it seems scarcely possible that he could do such a thing!’

‘You don’t know my papa!’ said Miss Abingdon bitterly. ‘He makes the most fantastic schemes, and forces everyone to fall in with them! And he says I must be civil to his odious friend, and if I am not he will pack me off to Bath to stay with my Aunt Charlotte! Sir, what could I do? Aunt Maria—who is Papa’s other sister, and has lived with us since my mama died—will do nothing but say that I know what Papa is—and I do, and I dare say he would have not the least compunction in sending me to a stuffy house in Queen Square, with Aunt’s pug wheezing at me, and Aunt scarcely stirring out of the house, but wishing me to play backgammon with her! Backgammon!’she reiterated, with loathing.

‘That, certainly, is not to be thought of,’ agreed his lordship. ‘Yet I cannot help wondering if you are quite wise to elope to Gretna Green.’

‘You don’t think so?’ Miss Abingdon said doubtfully.

‘These Border marriages are not quite the thing, you know,’ explained his lordship apologetically. ‘Then, too, unless you are very much in love with Tom, you might not be perfectly happy with him.’

‘No,’ agreed Miss Abingdon, ‘but how shocking it would be if I were to be an old maid!’

‘If you will not think me very saucy for saying so,’ said his lordship, a laugh in his voice, ‘I cannot think that a very likely fate for you!’

‘Yes, but it is!’ she said earnestly. ‘I have been kept cooped up here all my life, and Papa has not the least notion of taking me to London! He has made up his mind to it that his odious friend will be a very eligible match for me. He and this Lady Tenbury laid their heads together, I dare say—’

‘So that was it!’ interrupted his lordship. ‘I should have guessed it, of course.’

Miss Abingdon was surprised. ‘Are you acquainted with Lady Tenbury, sir?’ she asked.

‘My elder sister,’ explained his lordship.

‘Your—w-what?’ gasped Miss Abingdon, recoiling.

‘Don’t be alarmed!’ he begged. ‘Though I shrink from owning to it, I think I must be your papa’s odious friend. But I assure you, Miss Abingdon, his and my meddling sister’s schemes come as a complete surprise to me!’

Miss Abingdon swallowed convulsively. ‘D-do you m-mean to tell me, sir, that you are Lord Stavely?’

‘Yes,’ confessed his lordship. He added: ‘But though I may be a dead bore, I am not really so very old!’

‘You should have told me!’ said Miss Abingdon, deeply mortified.

‘I know I should, but I could not help nourishing the hope that I might not, after all, be the odious old man you and Tom have described in such daunting terms.’

She turned her face away, saying in a stifled tone: ‘I would never . . . Oh, how could you let me run on so?’

‘Don’t mind it!’ he said, taking one of her hands in a comforting clasp. ‘Only pray don’t elope to Gretna just to escape from my attentions!’

‘No, no, but—’ She lifted her head and looked at him under brows which he guessed rather than saw to be knit. ‘But how can you be a friend of my papa?’ she asked.

‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t know that I had the right to call myself so,’ he replied. ‘He and my family have been upon terms any time these twenty years, I suppose, and I know that he is a close friend of my sister and her husband.’

Miss Abingdon still appeared to be dissatisfied. ‘Then how did you come to visit me?’

‘If I must answer truthfully,’ said his lordship, ‘I found it impossible to refuse your parent’s repeated invitations with the least degree of civility!’

She seemed to find this understandable. She nodded, and said: ‘And you haven’t come to—I mean, you didn’t know—’

‘Until this evening, ma’am,’ said his lordship, ‘I did not know that you existed! My sister, you see, though quite as meddlesome as your father, has by far more tact.’

‘It is the most infamous thing!’ declared Miss Abingdon. ‘He made me think it had all been arranged, and I had nothing to do but encourage your advances! So naturally I made up my mind to marry Tom rather!’ She gave a little spurt of involuntary laughter. ‘Was ever anything so nonsensical? I thought you had been fifty at least, and very likely fat!’

‘I am thirty-five, and I do not think I am fat,’ said his lordship meekly.

She was still more amused. ‘No, I can see you are not! I am afraid I must seem the veriest goose to you! But Papa once thought for a whole month that he would like me to marry Sir Jasper Selkirk, and he is a widower, and has the gout besides! So there is never any telling what absurdity he may have taken into his head, you see.’ A thought occurred to her; she turned more fully towards his lordship, and said: ‘But how comes it that you are acquainted with Tom, and why are you so late? We were expecting you would arrive to dine, and Papa was in such a fume! And Aunt made them keep dinner back until the chickens were quite spoilt!’

‘I cannot sufficiently apologize,’ said Lord Stavely. ‘A series of unfortunate accidents delayed me shockingly, and when I did at last reach Shropshire I found that your Papa’s directions were not quite as helpful as I had supposed they would be. In fact, I lost my way.’

‘It is a difficult country,’ agreed Miss Abingdon. ‘And of course Papa can never direct anyone properly. But how came you to meet Tom?’

‘He was awaiting a chaise at the Green Dragon, where, being then so late, I stopped to dine. We fell into conversation, as one does, you know, and he was good enough to confide his intentions to me.’

‘He must have been drunk!’ interpolated Miss Abingdon.

‘Let us say, rather, that he was a trifle worried over the propriety of eloping with you. I did what I could to persuade him against taking so ill-advised a step; he—er—succumbed to the disorder from which he was suffering, and I came here in his stead.’

‘It was excessively kind of you, but I don’t at all know why you should have taken so much trouble for me!’

He smiled. ‘But I could not let you kick your heels in this shrubbery, could I? Besides, I had the liveliest curiosity to meet you, Miss Abingdon!’

She tried to see his face. ‘Are you quizzing me?’ she demanded.

‘Not at all. You will allow that one’s curiosity must be aroused when one learns that a lady is prepared to elope to escape from advances one had had not the least intention of making!’

‘It is quite dreadful!’ she said, blushing. ‘I wonder it did not give you the most shocking disgust of me! But indeed I did not think it would be improper to elope with Tom, because he is almost like a brother, you know—and it would have been such an adventure!’

She ended on a distinctly wistful note. Lord Stavely responded promptly: ‘If your heart is set on the adventure, my chaise is waiting in the lane: you have only to command me!’

Another of her gurgling laughs escaped her. ‘How can you be so absurd? As though I would elope with a stranger!’

‘Well, I do feel it might be better if you gave up the notion,’ he said. ‘I fear I can hardly draw back now from Sir Walter’s invitation, but if I give you my word not to press an unwanted suit upon you perhaps you may not find my visit insupportably distasteful.’

‘No, no!’ she assured him. ‘But I very much fear that Papa may—may cause you a great deal of embarrassment, sir!’

‘Quite impossible!’ he said, smiling. ‘Have no fear on that head!’

‘You are the most truly amiable man I ever met!’ she exclaimed warmly. ‘Indeed, I am very much obliged to you, and quite ashamed to think I should have misjudged you so! You—you won’t tell Papa?’

‘Miss Abingdon, thatis the unkindest thing you have yet said to me!’

‘No. I know you would not!’ she said quickly. She rose and held out her hand. ‘I must go back to the house. But you?’

‘In about twenty minutes’ time,’ said Lord Stavely, ‘I shall drive up to the front door, with profuse apologies and excuses!’

‘Oh, shall you indeed do that?’ giggled Miss Abingdon. ‘It must be close on midnight! Papa will be so cross!’

‘Well, I must brave his wrath,’ he said, raising her hand to his lips.

Her hand clung to his; Miss Abingdon jerked up her head and stood listening. In another instant Lord Stavely had also heard what had startled her: footsteps which tried to be stealthy, and a voice whose owner seemed to imagine himself to be speaking under his breath: ‘Do you go that way, Mullins, and I’ll go this, and mind, no noise!’

‘Papa!’ breathed Miss Abingdon, in a panic. ‘He must have heard me: I tripped on the gravel! Depend upon it, he thinks we are thieves: Sir Jasper was robbed last month! What am I to do?’

‘Can you reach the house without being observed if I draw them off?’ asked his lordship softly.

‘Yes, yes, but you? Papa will very likely have his fowling-piece!’

‘Be sure I shall declare myself before he fires at me!’ He picked up the bandboxes and gave them to her.

She clutched them and fled. Lord Stavely, having watched her disappear round a corner of the shrubbery, set his hat on his head and sauntered in the opposite direction, taking care to advertise his presence.

He emerged from the shrubbery into the rose garden, and was almost immediately challenged by an elderly gentleman who did indeed level a fowling-piece at him.

‘Stand! I have you covered, rogue!’ shouted Sir Walter. ‘Mullins, you fool, here!’

Lord Stavely stood still, waiting for his host to approach him. This Sir Walter did not do until he had been reinforced by his butler, similarly armed, and sketchily attired in a nightshirt, a pair of breeches, and a greatcoat thrown over all. He then came forward, keeping his lordship covered, and said with gleeful satisfaction: ‘Caught you, my lad!’

‘How do you do, sir?’ said Lord Stavely, holding out his hand. ‘I must beg your pardon for presenting myself at this unconscionable hour, but I have been dogged by ill fortune all day. A broken lynch-pin and a lame horse must stand as my excuses.’

Sir Walter nearly dropped his piece. ‘Stavely?’’ he ejaculated, peering at his lordship in amazement.

Lord Stavely bowed.

‘But what the devil are you doing in my garden?’ Sir Walter demanded.

Lord Stavely waved an airy hand. ‘Communing with Nature, sir, communing with Nature!’

‘Communing with Nature?’ echoed Sir Walter, his eyes fairly starring from his head.

‘Roses bathed in moonlight!’ said his lordship lyrically. ‘Ah—must Mullins continue to point his piece at me?’

‘Put it down, you fool!’ commanded Sir Walter testily. ‘Stavely, my dear fellow, are you feeling quite the thing?’

‘Never better!’ replied his lordship. ‘Oh, you are thinking that I should have driven straight up to the house? Very true, sir, but I was lured out of my chaise by this exquisite scene. I am passionately fond of moonlight, and really, you know, your gardens present so charming a picture that I could not but yield to temptation, and explore them. I am sorry to have disturbed you!’

Sir Walter was staring at him with his jaw dropping almost as prodigiously as the butler’s. ‘Explore my gardens at midnight!’ he uttered, in stupefied accents.

‘Is it so late?’ said his lordship. ‘Yet I dare say one might see to read a book in this clear light!’

Sir Walter swallowed twice before venturing on a response. ‘But where’s your carriage?’ he demanded.

‘I told the post-boys to wait in the lane,’ replied his lordship vaguely. ‘I believe—yes, I believe I can detect the scent of jasmine!’

‘Stavely,’ said Sir Walter, laying an almost timid hand on his arm, ‘do but come up to the house, and to bed! Everything is prepared, and this night air is most unwholesome!’

‘On the contrary, I find that it awakens poetry in my soul,’ said Lord Stavely. ‘I am inspired to write a sonnet on roses drenched with moonshine.’

‘Mullins, go and find his lordship’s chaise, and direct the postilions to drive up to the house!’ ordered Sir Walter, in an urgent under-voice. ‘Sonnets, eh, Stavely? Yes, yes, I have been a rhymester in my time, too, but just come with me, my dear fellow, and you will soon feel better, I dare say! You have had a long and a tedious journey, that’s what it is!’

He took his guest by the arm and firmly drew him towards the house. His lordship went with him unresisting, but maintained a slow pace, and frequently paused to admire some effect of trees against the night sky, or the sheen of moonlight on the lily-pond. Sir Walter, curbing his impatience, replied soothingly to these flights, and succeeded at last in coaxing him into the house, and upstairs to the chamber prepared for him. A suspicion that his noble guest had been imbibing too freely gave place to a far worse fear. Not until he was assured by the sound of my lord’s deep breathing that he was sleeping soundly did Sir Walter retire from his post outside his guest’s door and seek his own couch.

Lord Stavely and Miss Abingdon met officially at a late breakfast table. Sir Walter performed the introduction, eyeing his guest narrowly as he did so.

Lord Stavely, bowing first to Miss Maria Abingdon, apologized gracefully for having knocked the household up at such a late hour, and then turned to confront the heiress. For her part, she had been covertly studying him while he exchanged civilities with her aunt. She was very favourably impressed by what she saw. Lord Stavely was generally held to be a personable man. Miss Abingdon found no reason to quarrel with popular opinion. He had a pair of smiling grey eyes, a humorous mouth and an excellent figure. Both air and address were polished, and his raiment, without being dandified, was extremely elegant. He wore pantaloons and Hessians, which set off his legs to advantage; and Miss Abingdon noticed that his snow-white cravat was arranged in precise and intricate folds.

Miss Abingdon had surprised her aunt by choosing to wear quite her most becoming sprigged muslin gown. Miss Maria, who had despaired of detecting any such signs of docility in her niece, was further startled to observe that nothing could have been more demure than Annabella’s behaviour. She seemed quite to have recovered from her sulks, curtsied shyly to the guest, and gave him her hand with the most enchanting and mischievous of smiles. Really, thought Miss Maria, watching her fondly, the child looked quite lovely!

Lord Stavely talked easily at the breakfast-table, ably assisted by both ladies. Sir Walter seemed a trifle preoccupied, and when they rose from the table, and his lordship begged leave to wander out into the sunlit garden, he acquiesced readily, and scarcely waited for his guest to step out through the long window before hurrying out of the room in his daughter’s wake. He overtook her at the foot of the stairs, and peremptorily summoned her to his library. Shutting the door behind her, he said without preamble: ‘Annabella, you need not be in a pet, for I have changed my plans for you! Yes, yes, I no longer think of Stavely for you, so let us have no more tantrums!’

Miss Abingdon’s large blue eyes flew to his. ‘Changed your plans for me, Papa?’ she exclaimed.

He looked round cautiously, as though to be sure that his guest was not lurking in the room, and then said in an earnest tone: ‘My dear, it is the most distressing circumstance! The poor fellow is deranged! You would never credit it, I dare say, but I found him wandering about the garden at midnight, talking of sonnets, and moonlight, and such stuff!’

Miss Abingdon lowered her gaze swiftly and faltered: ‘Did you, Papa? How—how very strange, to be sure!’

‘I was never more shocked in my life!’ declared Sir Walter. ‘I had not the least notion of such a thing, and I must say that I think Louisa Tenbury has not behaved as she should in concealing it from me!’

‘It is very dreadful!’ agreed Miss Abingdon. ‘Yet he seems quite sane, Papa!’

‘He seems sane now,’said her parent darkly, ‘but we don’t know what he may do when the moon is up! I believe some lunatics are only deranged at the full of the moon. And now I come to think of it, they used to say that his grandfather had some queer turns! Not that I believed it, but I see now that it may well have been so. I wish I had not pressed him to visit us! You had better take care, my child, not to be in his company unless I am at hand to protect you!’

Miss Abingdon, who, out of the tail of her eye, had seen Lord Stavely strolling in the direction of the rose garden, returned a dutiful answer, and proceeded without loss of time to follow his lordship.

She found him looking down at the sundial in the middle of a rose plot. He glanced up at her approach and smiled, moving to meet her. Her face was glowing with mischief, her eyes dancing. She said: ‘Oh, my lord, Papa says you are mad, and he does not in the least wish me to marry you!’

He took her hands and held them. ‘I know it. Now, what am I to do to convince him that I am in the fullest possession of my senses?’

‘Why, what should it signify?’ she asked. ‘I am sure you do not care what he may think! I don’t know how I kept my countenance! He says I must take care not to be in your company, unless he is at hand to protect me!’

‘I see nothing to laugh at in that!’ he protested.

She looked up innocently. ‘I am so very sorry! But indeed I did not think that you would care!’

‘On the contrary, it is of the first importance that your papa should think well of me.’

‘Good gracious, why?’

‘My dear Miss Abingdon, how can I persuade him to permit me to pay my addresses to you if he believes me to be mad?’

For a moment she stared at him; then her cheeks became suffused, and she pulled her hands away, saying faintly: ‘Oh! But you said you would not—you know you did!’

‘I know nothing of the sort. I said I would not press an unwanted suit upon you. Do not take from me all hope of being able to make myself agreeable to you!’

Miss Abingdon, no longer meeting his eyes, murmured something not very intelligible, and began to nip off the faded blooms from a fine rose tree.

‘I must study to please Sir Walter,’ said his lordship. ‘How is it to be done? I rely upon your superior knowledge of him!’

Miss Abingdon, bending down to pluck a half-blown rose, said haltingly: ‘Well, if—if you don’t wish him to believe you mad, perhaps—perhaps you had better remain with us for a little while, so that he may be brought to realize that you are quite sane!’

‘An excellent plan!’ approved his lordship. ‘I shall be guided entirely by your advice, Miss Abingdon. May I have that rose?’

Sir Walter, informed by the gardener of the whereabouts of his guest and his daughter, came into the rose garden in time to see Miss Abingdon fix a pink rose-bud in the lapel of Lord Stavely’s coat. His reflections on the perversity and undutifulness of females he was obliged to keep to himself, but he told Miss Abingdon, with some asperity, that her aunt was searching for her, and taking Lord Stavely by the arm, marched him off to inspect the stables.

Miss Abingdon found her aunt in a state of nervous flutter, having been informed by her brother of their guest’s derangement. ‘And I thought him such a sensible man! So handsome, too, and so truly amiable!’

‘Oh, my dear aunt, is he not the most delightful creature?’ confided Miss Abingdon, eyes and cheeks aglow. ‘Only fancy his wishing to marry me!’

Miss Maria started. ‘No, no, that is quite at an end! Your papa would never hear of it! And when I think that only yesterday you were vowing you would marry Tom Hatherleigh in spite of anything your papa could say, I declare I don’t know what can have come over you!’

‘Moon madness!’ laughed Miss Abingdon. ‘Just like Lord Stavely! Poor Papa!’