The Nonesuch

Chapter 7

Mr Underhill’s optimistic plan of making an early start on Friday morning was not realized. He was certainly up betimes; but in spite of his having hammered on his cousin’s door at an early hour, warning her to make haste, since it was going to be a scorching day, the rest of the breakfast-party, which included Sir Waldo and Lord Lindeth, had finished the handsome repast provided for them before Tiffany came floating into the parlour, artlessly enquiring whether she was late.

“Yes, you are!” growled Courtenay. “We’ve been waiting for you this age! What the deuce have you been about? You have had time enough to rig yourself out a dozen times!”

“That’s just what she does,” said Charlotte impishly. “First she puts one dress on, and decides it don’t become her, and so then she tries another—don’t you, cousin?”

“Well, I’m sure you look very becoming in that habit, love,” interposed Mrs Underhill hastily. “Though if I was you I wouldn’t choose to wear velvet, not in this weather!”

By the time Tiffany had eaten her breakfast, put on her hat to her satisfaction, and found such unaccountably mislaid articles as her gloves, and her riding-whip, the hour was considerably advanced, and Courtenay in a fret of impatience, saying that Lizzie must be supposing by now that they had forgotten all about her. However, when they reached Colby Place they found the family just getting up from the breakfast-table, and Lizzie by no means ready to set out. There was thus a further delay while Lizzieran upstairs to complete her toilet, accompanied by her two younger sisters, who were presently heard demanding of some apparently remote person what she had done with Miss Lizzie’s boots.

During this period Lindeth and Tiffany enjoyed a quiet flirtation, Sir Ralph gave the Nonesuch a long and involved account of his triumph over someone who had tried to get the better of him in a bargain, Courtenay fidgeted about the room, and Lady Colebatch prosed to Miss Trent with all the placidity of one to whom time meant nothing.

“Only two hours later than was planned,” remarked Sir Waldo, when the cavalcade at last set forth. “Very good!”

Miss Trent, who had been regretting for nearly as long that she had ever expressed a wish to see the Dripping Well, replied: “I suppose it might have been expected!”

“Yes, and I did expect it,” he said cheerfully.

“I wonder then that you should have lent yourself to this expedition.”

“One becomes inured to the unpunctuality of your sex, ma’am,” he responded.

Incensed by this unjust animadversion, she said tartly: “Let me inform you, sir, that I kept no one waiting!”

“But you are a very exceptional female,” he pointed out.

“I assure you, I am nothing of the sort.”

“I shall not allow you to be a judge of that. Oh, no, don’t look at me so crossly! What can I possibly have said to vex you?”

“I beg your pardon! Nothing, of course: merely, I’m not in the mood for nonsense, Sir Waldo!”

“That’s no reason for scowling at me!” he objected. “I haven’t been boring you to death for the past half-hour! Of course, I may bore you before the day is out, but it won’t be with vapid commonplaces, I promise you.”

“Take care!” she warned him, glancing significantly towards Miss Colebatch, who was riding ahead of them, with Courtenay.

“Neither of them is paying the least heed to us. Do you always ride that straight-shouldered cocktail?”

“Yes—Mrs Underhill having bought him for my use. He does very well for me.”

“I wish I had the mounting of you. Do you hunt?”

“No. When Tiffany goes out with the hounds she is her cousin’s responsibility, not mine.”

“Thank God for that! You would certainly come to grief if you attempted to hunt that animal. I only hope you may not be saddle-sick before ever we reach Knaresborough.”

“Indeed, so do I! I don’t know why you should think me such a poor creature!”

“I don’t: I think your horse a poor creature, and a most uncomfortable ride.”

“Oh, no, I assure you—” She broke off, checked by a lifted eyebrow. “Well, perhaps he is not very—very easy-paced! In any event, I don’t mean to argue with you about him, for I am persuaded it would be very stupid in me to do so.”

“It would,” he agreed. “I collect it didn’t occur to your amiable charge to lend you her other hack? By the bye, what made your resolution fail the other day?”

She did not pretend to misunderstand him, but answered frankly: “I couldn’t allow her to expose herself!”

He smiled. “Couldn’t you? Never mind! I fancy she contrived to charm Lindeth out of his disapproval, but the image became just a trifle smudged, nevertheless. I added my mite later in the day—which is why I am being treated with a little reserve.”

“Are you? Oh, dear, how horrid it is, and how very difficult to know what my duty is! Odious to be scheming against the child!”

“Is that what you are doing? I had no notion of it, and thought the scheming was all on my side.”

“Not precisely scheming, but—but conniving,by allowing you to bamboozle her!”

“My dear girl, how do you imagine you could stop me?”

Miss Trent toyed with the idea of objecting to this mode of address, and then decided that it would be wiser to ignore it.

“I don’t know, but—”

“Nor anyone else. Don’t tease yourself to no purpose! You are really quite helpless in the matter, you know.”

She turned her head, gravely regarding him. “Don’t you feel some compunction, Sir Waldo?”

“None at all. I should feel much more than compunction if I did not do my utmost to prevent Lindeth’s falling a victim to as vain and heartless a minx as I have yet had the ill-fortune to encounter. Do I seem to you a villain? I promise you I am not!”

“No, no! But you do make her show her worst side!”

“True! Does it occur to you that if I employed such tactics against—oh, Miss Chartley—Miss Colebatch there—yourself—I should be taken completely at fault? You would none of you show a side you don’t possess. What’s more, ma’am, I don’t make the chit coquet with me, or boast of her looks and her conquests to impress me: I merely offer her the opportunity to do so—and much good that would do me if she had as much elegance of mind as of person! All I should win by casting out such lures to a girl of character would be a well-deserved set-down.”

She could not deny it, and rode on in silence. He saw that she was still looking rather troubled, and said: “Take comfort, you over-anxious creature! I may encourage her to betray her tantrums and her selfishness but I would no more create a situation to conjure up these faults than I would compromise her.” He laughed suddenly. “A work of supererogation! If she could fly into a passion merely because Julian expressed a mild desire to include Miss Chartley in this party we shan’t suffer from a want of such situations! Who knows! He may feel it incumbent upon him to pay a little attention to Miss Colebatch presently, in which case we shall find ourselves in the centre of a vortex!”

She was obliged to laugh, but she shuddered too, begging him not to raise such hideous spectres. “Though I’ve no real apprehension in this instance,” she added, “Miss Colebatch is the one girl with whom Tiffany has struck up a friendship.”

“Yes, I have observed that the redhead regards her with enormous admiration.”

“I shall take leave to tell you, Sir Waldo,” said Miss Trent severely, “that remark had better have been left unspoken!”

“It would have been, had I been talking to anyone but yourself.”

Fortunately, since she could not think what to say in reply to this, Courtenay came trotting back to them at that moment, to inform them of a slight change of plan. By skirting the cornfield that lay beyond the hedge to their right they could cut a corner, and so be the sooner out of the lane, and on to open ground, he said. The only thing was that there was no gate on the farther side: did Miss Trent feel she could jump the hedge?

“What, on that collection of bad points? Certainly not!” said Sir Waldo.

Courtenay grinned, but said: “I know, but there’s nothing to it, sir! He’ll brush through it easily enough—or she could pull him through it, if she chooses!”

“Oh, could she?” said Miss Trent, her eye kindling. “Well, she don’t choose! By all means let us escape as soon as we may from this stuffy lane!”

“I knew you were a right one!” said Courtenay. “There is a gate on this side, where the others are waiting, and I’ll have it open in a trice.”

He wheeled his hack, and trotted off again. Miss Trent turned her fulminating gaze upon the Nonesuch, but he disarmed her by throwing up his hand in the gesture of a fencer acknowledging a hit, saying hastily: “No, no, don’t snap my nose off! I cry craven!”

“So I should hope, sir!” she said, moving off in Courtenay’s wake. She said over her shoulder, sudden mischief in her face: “I wish that handsome thoroughbred of yours may not make you look no-how by refusing!”

An answering gleam shone in his eyes. “You mean you wish he may! But I’m on my guard, and shall wait for you to show me the way!”

The hedge proved, however, to be much as Courtenay had described it, presenting no particular difficulty to even the sorriest steed, but Tiffany, who was leading the procession round the side of the field, approached it at a slapping pace, and soared over it with inches to spare. Miss Colebatch exclaimed: “Oh, one would think that lovely mare had wings! I wish I could ride like that!”

“I’m glad you don’t ride like that!” said Courtenay, “Wings! She’s more like to end with a broken leg!” He reined his horse aside, saying politely to Sir Waldo: “Will you go, sir?”

“Yes, if you wish—but rather more tamely! Your cousin is an intrepid horsewoman, and might become an accomplished one, but you should teach her not to ride at a hedge as if she had a stretch of water to clear. She’ll take a rattling fall one of these days.”

“Lord, sir, I’ve told her over and over again to ride fast at water, and slow at timber, but she never pays the least heed to what anyone says! She’s a show-off—though I’ll say this for her!!—she don’t care a rush for a tumble!”

“And rides with a light hand,” said Julian, with a challenging look at Sir Waldo.

“Yes, and such a picture as she presents!” said Miss Colebatch.

Miss Trent, following Sir Waldo over the hedge, observed, as she reined in beside him, that that at least was true. He shrugged, but did not reply. The rest of the party joined them; and as they were now upon uncultivated ground they rode on in a body for some way, and the opportunity for private conversation was lost.

It was when they had covered perhaps half the distance to Knaresborough that Miss Trent, herself uncomfortably hot, noticed that Miss Colebatch, who had started out in tearing spirits, had become unusually silent. Watching her, she saw her sag in the saddle, and then jerk herself upright again; and she edged her horse alongside her, saying quietly: “Are you feeling quite the thing, Miss Colebatch?”

A rather piteous glance was cast at her, but Elizabeth, trying to smile, replied: “Oh yes! That is, I—I have the headache a little, but pray don’t regard it! I shall be better directly, and I would not for the world—It is just the excessive heat!”

Miss Trent now perceived that under the sun’s scorch she was looking very sickly. She said: “No wonder! I find it insufferably hot myself, and shall be thankful to call a halt to this expedition.”

“Oh, no, no!” gasped Elizabeth imploringly. “Don’t say anything—pray!”Her chest heaved suddenly, and her mouth went awry. “Oh, Miss Trent, I d-do feel so s-sick!” she disclosed, tears starting to her eyes.

Miss Trent leaned forward to catch her slack bridle, bringing both their horses to a halt. She had not come unprepared for such an emergency, and, thrusting a hand into her pocket, produced a bottle of smelling-salts. By this time the rest of the party had seen that something was wrong, and had gathered round them. Miss Trent, dropped her own bridle, supported Elizabeth’s wilting frame with one arm while she held the vinaigrette under her nose with her other hand. She said: “Miss Colebatch is overcome by the heat. Lift her down, Mr Underhill!”

He dismounted quickly, very much concerned, and, with a little assistance from Lindeth, soon had poor Elizabeth out of the saddle. Miss Trent was already on the ground, and after directing them to lay their burden on the turf desired them to retire to a distance.

Elizabeth was not sick, but she retched distressingly for some minutes, and felt so faint and dizzy that she was presently glad to obey Miss Trent’s command to lie still, and to keep her eyes shut. Ancilla remained beside her, shielding her as much as possible from the sun, and fanning her with her own hat. The gentlemen, meanwhile, conferred apart, while Tiffany stood watching her friend, and enquiring from time to time if Ancilla thought she would soon be better.

After a few moments the Nonesuch detached himself from the male group, and came towards Ancilla. He made a sign to her that he wished to speak to her; she nodded, and, leaving Tiffany to take her place, got up, and went to him.

“Just as you foretold, eh?” he said. “How is she?”

“Better, but in no cause to go on, poor girl! I have been racking my brains to think what were best to do, and can hit upon nothing. I think, if she could but get out of the sun she would revive, but there are no trees, and not even a bush to afford her some shade!”

“Do you think, if her horse were led, she could go on for half a mile? Underhill tells us that there’s a village, and an inn: no more than a small alehouse, I collect, but he says the woman who keeps it is respectable, and the immediate need, as you say, is to bring Miss Colebatch out of the sun. What do you think?”

“An excellent suggestion!” she replied decidedly. “We must at all events make the attempt to get her there, for she can’t remain here, on the open moor. I believe that if she could rest in the cool, and we could get some water for her, she will soon recover—but she must not go any farther, Sir Waldo!”

“Oh, no! There can be no question of that,” he agreed. “We’ll take her to the inn, and decide then how best to convey her home.”

She nodded, and went back to the sufferer, who had revived sufficiently to think herself well enough to resume the journey. She was encouraged by Tiffany, who greeted Miss Trent with the news that Lizzie was much better, and needed only a rest to make her perfectly ready to ride on. When she learned that they were to go to Courtenay’s inn she said enthusiastically that it was the very thing. “We may all of us refresh there, and get cool!” she said. “You will like that, won’t you, Lizzie?”

Miss Colebatch agreed to it, saying valiantly that she knew she would soon feel as well as any of them; but when she was helped to her feet her head swam so sickeningly that she reeled, and would have fallen but for the support of Miss Trent’s arm around her. She was lifted on to her saddle, and was told by Courtenay, in a heartening voice, that she had nothing to do but hold on to the pommel, and sniff the vinaigrette if she felt faint. “No, you don’t want the bridle: I’m going to lead White Star,” he said. “And no need to be afraid of falling off, because I shan’t let you!”

“Thank you—so very sorry—so stupid of me!” she managed to say.

“No such thing! Here, Tiffany, you know the way to Moor Cross! Lindeth is going to ride ahead to warn old Mrs Rowsely, so you’d best go with him!”

She was very willing to do this, announcing gaily that they would form the advance guard, and cantered off with Lindeth. When the rest of the party reached the village, she came dancing out of the little stone inn, crying: “Oh, it is the prettiest place imaginable! Do make haste and come into the taproom! Only fancy, I had never been in a taproom before, but there’s no parlour, so I was obliged to! It is so diverting! You’ll be enchanted, Lizzie!”

Miss Colebatch, whose headache had developed into a severe migraine, was only dimly aware of being addressed, and she did not attempt to respond. Courtenay’s hand, which had been grasping her elbow, was removed, and she almost toppled into the arms of the Nonesuch, who was waiting to receive her. He carried her into the inn, where an elderly landlady, over-awed by this unprecedented invasion, dropped a nervous curtsy, and begged him to lay Miss down on the settle. She had placed a folded blanket over its uncompromising wooden seat, and fetched down a flock pillow: two circumstances to which Tiffany proudly drew his attention, saying that it was she who had directed Mrs Rowsely to do so.

“And while Lizzie rests we are going to sit on the benches outside, just as if we were rustics!” she said, laughing. “Lindeth has ordered home-brewed for you, but I am going to drink a glass of milk, because Mrs Rowsley has no lemons. It seems very odd to me, and I detest milk, but I don’t mean to complain! Do come out! Ancilla will look after poor Lizzie.”

She flitted away again, but he lingered for a few moments, while Miss Trent desired the landlady to bring a bowl of water, and some vinegar. The door of the inn opened directly into the taproom, but there was no other ventilation, the tiny latticed windows resisting Sir Waldo’s efforts to force them open. The room was low-pitched and stuffy, and a strong aroma of spirituous liquors pervaded the air.

Sir Waldo said abruptly: “This won’t do. I collect there’s no other room than the kitchen on this floor, but there must be a bedchamber abovestairs. Shall I arrange to have her moved to it?”

“If I could be sure that no one will come in, I believe it would be better to remain here.” she replied, in a low tone. “It would be far hotter, immediately under the roof, you know.”

“Very well: I’ll attend to it,” he said.

Half-an-hour later she emerged from the inn. Three empty tankards and a milk-stained glass stood on one of the benches against the wall of the house: of Tiffany and Sir Waldo there was no sign, but she saw Lindeth and Courtenay walking down the street. They hastened their steps when they caught sight of her, and came up, anxiously asking how Elizabeth did.

“Asleep,” she answered. “Where is Tiffany?”

“Oh, she has gone off to look at the Church with Sir Waldo!” said Courtenay. “Lindeth and I have been enquiring all over for some sort of a carriage, but there’s nothing to be had, so we’ve decided—that is, if you agree!—that I’d best ride to Bardsey, and see what I can come by there. Do you think Lizzie will be well enough to be driven home when she wakes, ma’am?”

“I hope so. I expect she will pluck up when she has had some tea.” She smiled at Julian. “Poor girl, she is so much distressed at having spoilt your party! She made me promise to beg your pardon, and even suggested that we should continue without her!”

“What, abandon her in a common alehouse? I should rather think not!” exclaimed Courtenay.

“There’s no question of that, of course,” Julian said. “I am only sorry she should be feeling so poorly. I wish we might bring a doctor to her!”

Miss Trent assured him that matters were not very serious, and recommended Courtenay to saddle up. He went off to the small stableyard to do this, just as Tiffany and the Nonesuch came strolling down the street. Tiffany had caught the sweeping skirt of her velvet habit over her arm, and from the sparkling countenance she had upturned to Sir Waldo’s Miss Trent judged that he had been entertaining her very agreeably.

“Oh, is Lizzie better now?” she demanded, running up to Miss Trent. “Is she ready to go on?”

“Well, she’s asleep at the moment, but I am afraid she won’t be stout enough to ride any farther.”

“Then what’s to be done?” asked Tiffany blankly. “How can you say she won’t be stout enough? I’m persuaded she would wish to do so!”

“Even if she did wish it, it would be very imprudent,” Ancilla said. “Indeed, Tiffany, I couldn’t permit it! You wouldn’t wish her to run the risk of making herself really ill!”

“No, of course I shouldn’t!” Tiffany said impatiently. “But what a fuss for nothing more than a headache! I should have thought she would have tried to be better!”

“My dear, she is quite determined to be better, not because she wishes to ride any more, but because she is so much distressed at the thought of spoiling the expedition. I have assured her that we are all agreed that it is a great deal too sultry—”

“You can’t mean that it must be given up!” cried Tiffany, looking in dismay from Ancilla to Lindeth.

It was he who answered her, saying gently: “You wouldn’t care to go without her. None of us would! Another day, when it isn’t so hot—”

“Oh, no!” Tiffany interrupted imploringly. “I hate put-offs! I know what it would be—we should never go to the Dripping Well, and I want to!”

“Yes, we will go, I promise you,” he said. “It is very disappointing that we can’t go today, but—”

“We can go today!” she insisted. “Not Lizzie, if she doesn’t care for it, but the rest of us!”

He looked slightly taken aback for an instant, but a moment later smiled, and said: “You don’t mean that, I know. In any event, we can’t go, because we’ve settled that your cousin is to ride to Bardsey, to see if he can come by a carriage there.”

Her face cleared at that; she said eagerly, “So that Lizzie can drive the rest of the way? Oh, that’s a capital scheme!”

“So that she can be driven home,” he corrected.

“Oh! Yes, well, perhaps that would be best. I daresay he would much prefer to drive Lizzie home, too, and it will make Lizzie feel much more comfortable to know she hasn’t spoilt the day for us after all. Only consider! She will be perfectly safe with Courtenay, and so we may be easy! Do say you will go, Lindeth! Ancilla? Sir Waldo?”

Ancilla shook her head, trying to frown her down; but Sir Waldo, apparently divorced from the scene, was pensively observing through his quizzing-glass the gyrations of a large white butterfly, and evinced no sign of having heard the appeal. But Courtenay, leading his horse out of the yard, did hear it, and it was he who answered.

“Go where? To Knaresborough? Of course not! We are none of us going there. I wonder you should think of such a thing!”

“Why shouldn’t I? I don’t mean you,either: you are to drive Lizzie home! We need not all go with her!”

“Miss Trent must! Ma’am, you surely won’t leave Lizzie?”

“Of course not,” she replied. “Don’t say any more, Tiffany! You must know you cannot go without me, and that I cannot under any circumstances leave Miss Colebatch.”

“I could go if Courtenay went,” Tiffany argued.

“Well, I’m not going,” said Courtenay. “I’m going to Bardsey, to try if I can find some sort of a vehicle there. But it ain’t on a pike-road, so the odds are I shan’t be able to get anything better than a gig. Would a gig serve, ma’am?”

“No, no, of course it wouldn’t!” interposed Tiffany. “She would have the sun beating down upon her head, and that would never do! I don’t think she should attempt the journey until it is cooler, do you, Ancilla? Poor Lizzie, I daresay she would liefer stay in this delightful inn! Then we can all ride home together, when the rest of us come back from Knaresborough! She will be quite well by that time, and Ancilla won’t object to staying with her, will you, Ancilla?”

Lindeth, who was beginning to look extremely troubled, said: “I don’t think you can have considered. It would be quite improper for two ladies to spend the day in a taproom!”

“Oh, fudge! I shouldn’t care a rush, so why should Lizzie? She will have Ancilla to bear her company!”

“But you could not enjoy the expedition, knowing that they were so uncomfortably situated!” he suggested.

“Oh, couldn’t she?” said Courtenay, with a crack of rude laughter. “You don’t know her! I can tell you this, Tiffany! you may as well stop scheming, because you won’t cozen me into going to Knaresborough, and that’s my last word!”

A flush rose to her cheeks; her eyes blazed. “I think you are the horridest, most disobliging toad!”she said passionately. “I want to go to Knaresborough, I will go!”

“Tiffany!” uttered Miss Trent, in despairing accents. “For heaven’s sake—!”

Tiffany rounded on her. “Yes, and I think you’re as disagreeable and unkind as he is, Ancilla! You ought to do what I want, not what Lizzie wants! She shouldn’t have come with us if she meant to be ill!”

“Take a damper!” said Courtenay sharply, looking towards the door of the inn. “Hallo, Lizzie! Are you feeling more the thing now?”

Miss Colebatch, steadying herself with a hand on the door-frame smiled waveringly, and said: “Yes, thank you. I’m much better—quite well! Only so very sorry to have been such a bother!”

Tiffany ran to her. “Oh, you are better! I can see you are! I knew you would be! You don’t wish to go home, do you? Only think how flat it would be!”

“Miss Colebatch, don’t come out into the sun!” interposed Miss Trent, taking her hand. “I am going to ask the landlady to make some tea for us, so come and sit down again!”

“Yes, some tea will refresh you,” agreed Tiffany. “You’ll be as right as a trivet then!”

“Oh, yes! Only I don’t think—I’m afraid if I tried to ride—”

“But you’re not going to ride, Miss Colebatch,” said Julian. “Underhill is to fetch a carriage for you, and we are none of us going to Knaresborough. It’s far too hot!”

“Yes, that’s right, Lizzie,” corroborated Courtenay. “I’m just off—and I’ll tell you what! I’ll get an umbrella to shield you from the sun, even if I have to steal one! So just you stay quietly in the taproom with Miss Trent until I return! I shan’t be gone much above an hour, I hope.”

“An hour?” exclaimed Tiffany. “And what am I to do, pray? Do you imagine I’m going to sit in that odious, stuffy taproom for a whole hour? I won’t!”

“Oh, so it’s odious and stuffy now, is it?” said Courtenay. “I thought you said you wouldn’t care a rush if you were obliged to spend the rest of the day in it? Yes, you can look daggers at me if you choose, but I know what you are, and that’s a selfish little cat! You never did care a button for anyone but yourself, and it’s my belief you never will!”

Tiffany burst into tears; and Miss Colebatch, sympathetic tears starting to her own eyes, cried: “Oh, Courtenay, no! You mustn’t—It is all my fault for being so stupid! Oh, Tiffany, I beg your pardon!”

“You beg her pardon?” ejaculated Courtenay.

“Mr Underhill, will you please mind your tongue?” said Miss Trent, with all the authority of her calling. “Stop crying, Tiffany! If you don’t care to stay here, I suggest you ride into Bardsey with your cousin. Then you may enjoy your quarrel without making the rest of us uncomfortable!”

Courtenay opened his mouth, encountered a quelling look, and shut it again.

“I won’t!” sobbed Tiffany. “I hate Courtenay, and I don’t want to go to Bardsey!”

Miss Trent, well aware of the ease with which Tiffany could lash herself into a fit of hysterics, cast a harassed look round in search of support. Lindeth, his lips rather firmly compressed, and his eyes lowered, neither spoke nor moved; but the Nonesuch, amusement in his face, strolled up to Tiffany, and said: “Come, come, my child! The beautiful Miss Wield with swollen red eyes? Oh, no, I beseech you! I couldn’t bear to see it!”

She looked up involuntarily, hiccupping on a sob, but with her tears suddenly checked. “Swollen—Oh, no! Oh, Sir Waldo, are they?”

He put a finger under her chin, tilting up her face, and scrutinizing it with the glinting smile so many females had found fascinating. “Thank God, no! Just like bluebells drenched with dew!”

She revived as though by magic. “Are they? Oh, how pretty!”

“Ravishing, I promise you.”

She gave a delighted little trill of laughter. “I mean how prettily said!”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” he agreed, carefully drying her cheeks with his own handkerchief. “What very long eyelashes you have! Do they ever become tangled?”

“No! Of course they don’t! How can you be so foolish? You are trying to flatter me!”

“Impossible! Don’t you wish to ride to Bardsey?”

Her face clouded instantly. “With Courtenay? No, I thank you!”

“With me?”

“With you! But—but you are not going—are you?”

“Not unless you do.”

A provocative smile lilted on her lips. “Ancilla wouldn’t permit it!” she said with a challenging glance cast at her preceptress.

“What, even though Courtenay goes with us?” He turned towards Miss Trent, interrogating her with one quizzical eyebrow. “What do you say, ma’am?”

She had been listening to this interchange with mixed feelings, torn between gratitude to him for averting a storm, and indignation at the unscrupulous methods he employed. Her answering look spoke volumes, but all she said was: “I am persuaded Mrs Underhill would raise no objection, if her cousin is to go with Tiffany.”

“Then I’ll go and saddle the horses again,” he said. “You, Julian, will remain to keep watch and ward over the ladies!”

“Of course,” Julian replied quietly.

“Unless you should choose instead to accompany us?” suggested Tiffany, blithely forgetting that it had been agreed that two defenceless females could not be abandoned in an alehouse.

“No, I thank you,” he said, and turned from her to persuade Miss Colebatch, with his sweetest smile, to retire again into the taproom.

Miss Trent had seen the look of shocked dismay in his face when it had been so forcibly borne in upon him that his goddess had feet of clay; and her heart was wrung with pity. She might tell herself that his well-wishers might rejoice in his disillusionment, but she was conscious of an irrational and almost overpowering impulse to find excuses for Tiffany. She subdued it, strengthened by the saucy look her artless charge cast at Julian before she tripped off in Sir Waldo’s wake. It was abundantly plain to her that Tiffany saw nothing in Julian’s refusal to ride to Bardsey but an expression of jealousy, which in no way displeased her. Tiffany delighted in setting her admirers at loggerheads, and never wasted a thought on the pain she inflicted; and had she been told that Julian was as much hurt by his cousin’s behaviour as by hers she would have been as incredulous as she was uncaring. But Miss Trent’s heart had more than once been wrung by the puzzled look in Julian’s eyes when he had watched Sir Waldo flirting with Tiffany, and she could not help longing to reassure him.

She stayed to see the riding-party off before joining Miss Colebatch and Julian in the taproom. She found them already discussing a pot of tea, Elizabeth reclining on the settle and looking rather more cheerful, and Lindeth not seeming to be in need of reassurance. Miss Trent warmly, if silently, applauded the good manners which prompted him to appear very well satisfied with his situation; and at once seconded his efforts to divert Elizabeth. She, poor girl, was still far from being her usually lively self, for, in addition to an aching head, she was suffering the mortification of knowing that she had ruined what should have been a day of pleasure, and had made her dear friend cry. She could not help laughing when Julian, amongst other schemes for ensuring her privacy, announced his intention of borrowing an apron from the landlady, and carrying tankards out to any thirsty patrons of the Bird in Hand; but a moment later she was wondering whether Tiffany would ever forgive her, and saying, for perhaps the fiftieth time, that she could not conceive what had come over her, or how she could have been so stupid.

“Well, for my part,” said Miss Trent, “I am glad that something did come over you! I was wishing I had never expressed a desire to visit the Dripping Well, and was never more thankful than when it was decided to abandon the scheme.”

“You are always so kind! But Tiffany was so set on it!”

“My dear Miss Colebatch, if Tiffany suffers no worse disappointments than today’s she may count herself fortunate!” replied Ancilla lightly. “I wish you won’t tease yourself merely because she flew into one of her tantrums! You must know what a spoilt child she is!”

“It is that, isn’t it?” Julian said eagerly. “Just—just childishness! She is so lovely, and—and engaging that it’s no wonder she should be a trifle spoilt.”

“No, indeed!” she said, adding with what she felt to be odious duplicity: “You must not blame Mrs Underhill, however. I daresay she should have been stricter, but her own nature is so gentle and yielding that she is no match for Tiffany. And she does so much dread her passions! I must own I do too! No one can be more enchanting than Tiffany, and no one that I ever met can more easily throw an entire household into discomfort! I can’t tell you, sir, how very much obliged I am to your cousin for coming to our rescue as he did!”

He responded only with a quick, constrained smile, and she said no more, hoping that she had given him enough to digest for the present, and had perhaps made him wonder whether Sir Waldo’s conduct had not sprung rather from a laudable impulse to nip a painful scene in the bud than from any desire to cut out his young cousin.