Venetia

V

Venetia opened her eyes to sunlight, dimmed by the chintz blinds across her windows. She lay for a few minutes between sleep and waking, aware, at first vaguely and then with sharpening intensity, of a sense of well-being and of expectation, as when, in childhood, she had waked to the knowledge that the day of a promised treat had dawned. Somewhere in the garden a thrush was singing, the joyous sweetness of its note so much in harmony with her mood that it seemed a part of her happiness. She was content for some moments to listen, not questioning the source of their happiness; but presently she came to full consciousness, and remembered that she had found a friend.

At once the blood seemed to quicken in her veins; her body felt light and urgent; and a strange excitement, flooding her whole being like an elixir, made it impossible for her to be still. No sound but bird-song came to her ears; quiet enfolded the house. She thought it must be very early, and, turning her head on the pillow, tried to recapture sleep. It eluded her; the sunlight, blotched by the pattern on the chintz, teased her eyelids: she lifted them, yielding to a prompting more insistent than that of reason. A new day, fresh with new promise, set her tingling; the thrush’s trill became a lure and a command; she slid from the smothering softness of her feather-bed, and went with a swift, springing step to the window, sweeping back the blinds, and thrusting open the casement.

A cock pheasant, pacing across the lawn, froze into an instant’s immobility, his head high on the end of his shimmering neck, and then, as though he knew himself safe for yet a few weeks, resumed his stately progress. The autumn mist was lifting from the hollows; heavy dew sparkled on the grass; and, above, the sky was hazy with lingering vapour. There was a chill in the air which made the flesh shudder even in the sun’s warmth, but it was going to be another hot day, with no hint of rain, and not enough wind to bring the turning leaves fluttering down from the trees.

Beyond the park, across the lane that skirted Undershaw to the east, beyond its own spreading plantations, lay the Priory: not very far as the crow flew, but a five-mile drive by road. Venetia thought of Aubrey, whether he had slept during the night, whether there were many hours to while away before she could set forth to visit him. Then she knew that it was not anxiety for Aubrey, her first concern for so many years, which made her impatient to reach the Priory, but the desire to be with her friend. It was his image, ousting Aubrey’s from her mind’s sight, which brought such a glow of warmth to her. She wondered if he too was conscious of it; if he was wakeful, perhaps looking out of his window, as she from hers; thinking about her; hoping that she would soon be with him again. She tried to remember what they had talked of, but she could not; she remembered only that she had felt perfectly at home, as though she had known him all her life. It seemed impossible that he should not have felt as strongly as she the tug of sympathy between them; but when she had thought for a little she recalled how widely different were their circumstances, and recognized that what to her had been a new experience might well have meant nothing more to him than a variation on an old theme. He had had many loves; perhaps he had many friends too, with minds more closely attuned to his than she believed her own to be. These troubled her as his loves did not. With his loves she was as little concerned as with his first encounter with herself. That had angered her, but it had neither shocked nor disgusted her. Men—witness all the histories!— were subject to sudden lusts and violences, affairs that seemed strangely divorced from heart or head, and often more strangely still from what were surely their true characters. For them chastity was not a prime virtue: she remembered her amazement when she had discovered that so correct a gentleman and kind a husband as Sir John Denny had not always been faithful to his lady. Had Lady Denny cared? A little, perhaps, but she had not allowed it to blight her marriage. “Men, my love, are different from us,” she had said once, “even the best of them! I tell you this because I hold it to be very wrong to rear girls in the belief that the face men show to the females they respect is their only one. I daresay, if we were to see them watching some horrid, vulgar prize-fight, or in company with women of a certain class, we shouldn’t recognize our own husbands and brothers. I am very sure we should think them disgusting! Which, in some ways, they are, only it would be unjust to blame them for what they can’t help. One ought rather to be thankful that any affairs they may have amongst what they call the muslin company don’t change their true affection in the least. Indeed, I fancy affection plays no part in such adventures. So odd!—for we, you know, could scarcely indulge in them with no more effect on our lives than if we had been choosing a new hat. But so it is with men! Which is why it has been most truly said that while your husband continues to show you tenderness you have no cause for complaint, and would be a zany to fall into despair only because of what to him was a mere peccadillo. ‘Never seek to pry into what does not concern you, but rather look in the opposite direction!’ was what my dear mother told me, and very good advice I have found it. She spoke, of course, of gentlemen of character and breeding, as I do now—for with the demi-beaux and the loose-screws females of our order, I am glad to say, have nothing to do: they do not come in our way.”

But Damerel had come in their way, and although he was not a demi-beau he was certainly a loose-screw. Lady Denny had been obliged to receive him with the appearance at least of complaisance, but she was not going to pursue so undesirable an acquaintance; and there could be little doubt that she would be horrified when she discovered that her young protegee was not only on the best of terms with him but was also committing the gross impropriety of visiting his house. Could she be made to understand that he, like those nameless, aberrant husbands, had two sides to his character? Venetia thought not. The best to be hoped was that she would understand that while Aubrey lay at the Priory his sister would go to him though Damerel were a Caliban.

The clatter of shutters being folded back in the parlour beneath her room roused her from these doubtful reflections. If the servants were stirring it was not so very early after all: probably about six o’clock. Seeking an excuse for rising an hour before her usual time she remembered the several not very pressing duties which had been left undone on the previous day, and decided to perform them immediately.

She was no bustling housewife, but by the time she came into the breakfast-parlour she had visited the dairy and the stables; discussed winter-sowing with the bailiff; delivered to the poultry-woman, in a slightly expurgated form, a remonstrance from Mrs. Gurnard; listened in return to a Jeremiad on the general and particular perversity of hens; and directed an aged and obstinate gardener to tie up the dahlias. It seemed improbable that he would do so, for he regarded them as upstarts and intruders, which in his young days had never been heard of, and always became distressingly deaf whenever Venetia mentioned them.

Mrs. Gurnard, to Venetia’s relief, took it for granted that she would drive over to see poor Master Aubrey, but was thrown into dignified sulks by Venetia’s refusal to carry with her a sizeable hamper packed as full as it would hold with enough cooked food for a banquet. When asked, in a rallying tone, if she supposed Aubrey to be living on a desert island she replied that there were many who would consider him to be better off on a desert island than abandoned to the rigours of Mrs. Imber’s cookery. Mrs. Imber, said Mrs. Gurnard, besides being feckless, inching, and unhandy, was one whom she could never bring herself to trust. “I’ve not forgotten the pullets, miss, if you have, and what’s more I never shall, not if I live to be a hundred!”

“Pullets?” said Venetia, bewildered.

“Cockerels!” uttered Mrs. Gurnard, her eyes kindling. “Cockerels every one, miss!”

But as Venetia could perceive no connection between cockerels and Mrs. Imber’s cookery she remained adamant, and went off to collect the various items which Nurse, in the agitation of the moment, had omitted to pack. These included the shirt she was making for Aubrey, and her tatting, both to be found in her sewing-basket, together with needles, thread, scissors, her silver thimble, and a lump of wax. Venetia was to wrap all these things up neatly in a napkin, and to be sure not to forget any of them; but as Venetia knew that the only certainty was of being told that she had brought the wrong thread and the very scissors Nurse had not wanted she preferred, in spite of its formidable dimensions, to take the basket itself to the Priory.

Fulfilling Aubreys’ behests was an even more difficult task, for he wanted not only such simple matters as a supply of paper and several pencils, but a number of books as well. He had told her that she would find his Phaedo on the desk in the library, and so she did; but Guy Mannering was only found after an exhausting search, a zealous housemaid, to whom the sight of a book lying open on a chair was an offence, having wedged it, upside-down, into a shelf devoted to text-books and lexicons. Virgil presented no problem: Aubrey had certainly asked for the Aeneid; but Horace blandly offered a choice of several volumes, and Venetia was quite unable to remember whether Aubrey wanted Odes, or Satires, or even Epistles. In the end, she added all three to her collection, and Ribble bore off the pile to the waiting tilbury, where Fingle, the middle-aged groom, received them from him with the cheerful prognostication that the next thing anyone would know was that Master Aubrey had studied himself into a brain-fever.

Feeling that she had acquitted herself in a manner worthy of a scholar’s sister, Venetia then drove off to the Priory, where any hopes she might have cherished of earning encomium were speedily dashed. “Oh, you need not have brought them after all!” said Aubrey. “Damerel has a capital library—a first-rate affair, large enough for a catalogue! He found it for me last night, and brought me up the books I particularly wanted. I warned him, when I saw what a splendid collection it is, that he would find it hard to be rid of me, but he says I may always borrow any volumes I choose. Oh, is that you, Fingle? Good-morning: have you taken a look at Rufus? Lord Damerel’s groom has him in charge, but I daresay you’ll wish to see that foreleg for yourself. No, don’t set those books down: I find I don’t want ‘em!”

“Odious, odious boy!” Venetia said, bending over him to drop a kiss on his brow. “When it took me half-an-hour to find Guy Mannering, and I brought all your Horace, because I couldn’t remember which volume you wanted!”

“Stoopid!” he said, smiling up at her. “I’ll keep Guy Mannering, though, in case I want something to read in the night.”

She withdrew it from the pile Fingle was still holding, nodded dismissal to him, a twinkle in her eyes which caused him to cast up his own expressively, and ventured to ask Aubrey how he had slept.

“Oh—tolerably well!” he replied.

“There is no truth in you, love. I collect that you spurned the syrup of poppies Nurse was so careful to bring with her?”

“After the laudanum Damerel gave me! I should rather think I did! He agreed I should be better without it, too, so Nurse went off to bed in a miff, which I was heartily glad of. Damerel brought up a chess-board, and we had a game or two. He’s an excellent player: I won only once. Then we fell to talking—oh, till past midnight! Did you know he had read classics? He went to Oxford—says he has forgotten all he ever knew, but that’s humbug! I should think he had been a pretty good scholar. He has visited Greece, too, and was able to describe things to me—things worth describing! Not like that fellow who stayed with the Appersetts last year, and had nothing more to say of Greece than that he couldn’t drink the wine because of the resin in it, and had been eaten alive by bed-bugs!”

“So you enjoyed your evening?”

“Yes—but for my curst leg! However, if I hadn’t taken a toss I daresay I might never have met Damerel, so I don’t regret it.”

“It must be very agreeable to be able to talk with someone who enters into the things you care for most,” she agreed,

“It is,” he said frankly. “What’s more, he knows better than to ask me, a dozen times in an hour, how I feel, or if I wouldn’t like another pillow! I don’t mean that you do so, but Nurse is enough to throw a saint into a pelter! I wish you had not brought her: Marston can do all I need—and without putting me in a bad skin!” he added, with his rueful, twisted smile.

“My dear, I couldn’t have kept her away from you! Tell me once how you find yourself this morning, and then I promise—word of a Lanyon!—I won’t ask you again!”

“Oh, I’m well enough!” he replied shortly. She said nothing, and after a moment he relented, and grinned at her. “If you must know, I feel devilish—as though I had dislocated every joint in my body! But Bentworth assures me it’s no such thing, so my aches are of no consequence, and will soon go off, I daresay. Let us play piquet—that is, if you mean to stay for a while? You’ll find some cards somewhere—on that table, I think.”

She was fairly well satisfied, although upon first entering the room she had thought he looked pale and drawn. It was not to be expected, however, that a boy of such frail physique should not have been badly shaken by his fall; that he was not in one of his testy, unapproachable moods encouraged her to hope that he not suffered any very serious set-back. When Nurse presently came in, to put a fresh compress round his swollen ankle, Venetia saw, at a glance, that she too was taking an optimistic view of his situation, and was still more cheered. Nurse might show a lamentable want of tact in her management of Aubrey, but she knew his constitution better than anyone, and if she, with years of experience at her back, saw more cause for scolding than for solicitude an anxious sister could banish foreboding.

Upon Marston’s coming into the room with a glass of milk for the invalid Venetia drew Nurse into the adjoining dressing-room, saying, as she shut the door: “You know what he is! If he thought we cared whether he drank it or no he would refuse to touch it, just to teach us not to treat him as though he were a baby!”

“Oh, yes,” said Nurse bitterly. “Anything Marston or his lordship tells him he’ll do, just as if it was them that had looked after him from the day he was born!. For all the use I am I might as well be back at home—not that I mean to leave this house until he does, nor ever did, so his lordship could have spared his breath!”

“Why, did he try to send you away?” Venetia asked, surprised.

“No, and I should hope he knew better than to think he could! It was me saying to Master Aubrey that if he preferred to have Marston to wait on him I’d as lief pack up and go—well, miss, he was so twitty and troublesome last night that anyone might be excused for being put out! But as for meaning it, his lordship should have known better, and no need at all for him to remind me that it wouldn’t do for your to visit here without I’m in the house! I know that well enough, and better you shouldn’t come at all, Miss Venetia! It’s my belief Master Aubrey wouldn’t care if neither of us came next or nigh him, not while he can clutter up his bed with a lot of unchristian books, and lie there talking to his lordship about his nasty heathen gods!”

“He would very soon wish for you if he were to be really ill,” Venetia said soothingly. “I think too that he is just at the age when he’s not a child, but not quite a man either, and excessively jealous of his dignity. Do you remember how uncivil Conway was to you at very much the same age? But when he came home from Spain he didn’t care how much you cosseted and scolded him!”

Since Conway held the chief place in her heart Nurse would by no means admit that he had ever conducted himself in any way that fell short of perfection, but she disclosed that his lordship had said much the same thing as had Venetia about Master Aubrey. She added that no one understood better than she Master Aubrey’s hatred of his disability, and his passionate desire to show himself as hearty and as independent as his more fortunate contemporaries: an unprecedented announcement which furnished Venetia with a pretty accurate notion of his lordship’s skill in handling hostile and elderly females.

There could be no doubt that he had succeeded in considerably mollifying Nurse. She might resent Aubrey’s preference for his society, but she could not wholly condemn anyone who, besides showing so proper a regard for Aubrey’s well-being, managed to keep him in cheerful spirits under conditions calculated to cast him into a state of irritable gloom.

“I’m not one to condone sin, Miss Venetia,” she said austerely, “but nor I’m not one to deny anyone their due neither, and this I will say: he couldn’t behave kinder to Master Aubrey, not if he was the Reverend himself.” She added, after an inward struggle: “And for all he’d no need to tell me what my duty is to you, Miss Venetia, it was a sign of grace I didn’t think to see in him, and there’s no saying that the Lord ‘won’t have mercy on him, if he was to forsake his way—not but what salvation is far from the wicked, as I’ve told you often and often, miss.”

This lapse into pessimism notwithstanding, Venetia, was encouraged to think that Nurse was fairly well reconciled to her sojourn under an unhallowed roof. Aubrey, when regaled with the passage, said that her change of heart could only have arisen from Damerel’s having ridden off to Thirsk for the express purpose of buying a roll of lint.

“As amatter of fact, it was no such thing: he went on some business of his own, but when Nurse started grumbling, about the lint—it’s for my ankle, you know!—he said he would procure some, and she took it into her head he was going to Thirsk for no other reason. Up till then she wasn’t talking about his kindness, I promise you! She said he roared in the congregation.”

“She didn’t!” Venetia exclaimed, awed.

“Yes, she did. Do you know where it comes? We could not find it, though we looked in all the likeliest places.”

“So you repeated it to Damerel!”

“Of course I did! I knew he wouldn’t care a rush for what Nurse said of him.”

“I expect he enjoyed it,” Venetia said, smiling. “When did he set out for Thirsk?”

“Oh, quite early! Now you put me in mind of it he gave me a message for you: something about being obliged to go to Thirsk, and hoping you’d pardon him. I forget! It was of no consequence: just doing the civil! I told him there was not the least need. He said he thought he should be back again by noon—oh, yes! and that he trusted you wouldn’t have gone away by then. Venetia, pray look on that table, and see if Tytler is there! Nurse must have moved it when she bandaged my ankle, for I had been reading it, and only laid it down when you came in. She can’t come near me without meddling! Essay on the Principles of Translation—yes,that’s it: thank you!”

“I think, if you should not object very much to my leaving you, that I’ll take a turn in the garden,” said Venetia, handing him the book, and watching him in some amusement as he found his place in it.

“Yes, do!” said Aubrey absently. “They will be plaguing me to eat a nuncheon soon, and I want to finish this.”

She laughed, and was about to leave him when a gentle tap on the door was followed by the entrance of Imber, announcing Mr. Yardley.

“What?” ejaculated Aubrey, in anything but a gratified tone.

Edward came in, treading cautiously, and wearing his most disapproving face. “Well, Aubrey!” he said heavily. “I am glad to see you looking stouter than I had expected.” He added, in a lower voice, as he clasped Venetia’s hand: “This is unfortunate indeed! I knew nothing of what had happened until Ribble told me of it half-an-hour ago! I was never more shocked in my life!”

“Shocked because I took a toss?” said Aubrey. “Lord, Edward, don’t be such a slow-top!”

Edward’s countenance did not relax; rather it seemed to grow more rigid. He had not exaggerated his state of mind; he was profoundly shocked. He had ridden to Undershaw in happy ignorance, to be met with the alarming tidings that Aubrey had had a bad accident, which had made him instantly fear the worst; and hardly had Ribble reassured him on this head than he was stunned by the further news that Aubrey was lying under Damerel’s roof, with not only Nurse in attendance on him but his sister also. The impropriety of such an arrangement really appalled him; and even when he was made to understand that Venetia was not sleeping at the Priory he could not forbear the thought that any disaster (short of Aubrey’s death, perhaps) would have been less harmful than the chance that had pitchforked her into the company of a libertine whose way of life had for years scandalized the North Riding. The evils of her situation were, in Edward’s view, incalculable; and foremost amongst them was the probability that such a man as Damerel would mistake the inexperience which led her to behave so rashly for the boldness of a born Cytherean, and offer her an intolerable insult.

A level-headed man, Edward did not suppose that Damerel was either so foolhardy or so steeped in villainy as to attempt the seduction of a girl of virtue and quality; but he was very much afraid that Venetia’s open, confiding manners, which he had always deplored, might encourage him to believe that she would welcome his advances; while the peculiar circumstances under which she lived would certainly lead him to think that she had no other protector than a crippled schoolboy.

Edward saw his duty clear; he saw too that the performance of it was more than likely to involve him in consequences repugnant to a man of taste and sensibility; but he did not shrink from it: he set his jaw, and rode off to the Priory, not in such a spirit of knight-errantry as Oswald Denny would have brought to the task, but inspired by a sober man’s determination to protect the reputation of the lady whom he had chosen to be his bride. At the best, he hoped to bring her to a sense of her impropriety; at the worst, he must bring Damerel to a precise understanding of Venetia’s true circumstances. This task could not be other than distasteful to one who prided himself on his correct and well-regulated life; and it might, if Damerel were as careless of public opinion as he was said to be, plunge him into just the sort of scandal his disposition urged him to avoid. He was by no means deficient in courage, but he had not the smallest wish, whatever Damerel’s offences might be, to find himself confronting his lordship early one morning with a pistol in his hand and twenty yards of cold earth between them. If it came to that it would be because Aubrey’s recklessness and Venetia’s incorrigible imprudence had forced him into a position from which, as a man of honour, he could not draw back, even when he considered her to have courted whatever ill might befall her by stepping beyond the barriers of strict propriety, and so giving such men as Damerel a false notion of her character.

It was therefore not with romantic ardour that he rode from Undershaw to the Priory but with a sense of outrage and an exacerbated temper rather hardened than mollified by being kept under rigid control.

His arrival almost coincided with that of Damerel, from Thirsk. As he dismounted, Damerel came striding round the corner of the house from the stables, a package tucked, with his riding-whip, under one arm while he pulled off his gloves. At sight of Edward he checked, in surprise, and for a few moments they stood looking one another over in silence, hard suspicion in one pair of eyes, and in the other a gathering amusement. Then Damerel lifted an enquiring eyebrow, and Edward said stiffly: “Lord Damerel, I believe?”

They were the only rehearsed words he was destined to utter. From then on the meeting proceeded on lines quite unlike any for which he had prepared himself. Damerel strolled forward, saying: “Yes, I’m Damerel, but you have the advantage of me, I fear. I can guess that you must be a friend of young Lanyon’s, however. How do you do?”

He smiled as he spoke, and held out his hand. Edward was obliged to shake hands with him, a friendly gesture which forced him to abandon the formality he had decided to adopt.

“How do you do?” he responded, with civility, if not with warmth. “Your lordship has guessed correctly: I am a friend of Aubrey Lanyon—I may say a lifelong friend of his family! I cannot suppose that my name is known to you, but it is Yardley—Edward Yardley of Netherfold.”

He was mistaken. After a frowning moment Damerel’s brow cleared, he said: “Does your land lie some few miles beyond my south-western boundary? Yes, I thought so.” He added, with his swift smile: “I flatter myself I am making progress in my knowledge of the neighbourhood! Have you been visiting Aubrey?”

“I have only this instant arrived, my lord—from Undershaw, where I was informed by the butler of this very unfortunate accident—He told me also that Miss Lanyon was here.”

“Is she?” said Damerel indifferently. “I’ve been out all the morning, but it’s very probable. If she’s here she will be with her brother: do you care to go up?”

“Thank you!” Edward said, with a slight bow. “I should like to do so, if Aubrey is sufficiently well to receive a visitor.”

“I daresay it won’t do him any harm,” replied Damerel, leading the way through the open door into the house. “He’s not much hurt, you know: no bones broken! I sent for his doctor to come to him last night, but I don’t think I should have done so if he hadn’t told me that he had a diseased hip-joint. He is none too comfortable, but Bentworth seems to be satisfied that if only he can be kept quiet for a time no evil consequences need be anticipated. Once he had discovered the existence of my library I saw that there would not be the least difficulty about that.”

There was a laugh in his voice; none at all in Edward’s as he answered: “He always has his head in a book.”

Damerel had moved to where a frayed bell-pull hung beside the stone fireplace; as he tugged at it he shot a swift, appraising glance at Edward. The gleam of amusement in his eyes was pronounced, but he said only: “You, I apprehend, are too well-acquainted with him to be astonished by the scope and power of his quite remarkable intelligence. I, on the other hand, after sitting with him for some hours last night, my forgetful and, alas! indolent brain at full stretch to bear me up through arguments which ranged from disputed texts to percipient mind, retired from the lists persuaded that what threatened the boy was not a crippled leg but an addled brain!”

“Do you think him so clever?” asked Edward, rather surprised. “For my part I have often thought him lacking even in commonsense. But I myself am not at all bookish.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think he has any commonsense at all!” returned Damerel.

“I confess I consider it a pity he had not enough to refrain from riding a horse he could not master,” said Edward, with a slight smile. “I warned him how it would be when I first set eyes on that chestnut. Indeed, I begged him most earnestly not to make the attempt.”

“Did you?” said Damerel appreciatively. “And he didn’t heed you? You astonish me!”

“He has been very much indulged. That, of course, was made inevitable, to some degree, by his sickliness; but he has been allowed to have his own way beyond what is proper, from the circumstances attached to his upbringing,” said Edward, painstakingly explaining the Lanyons. “His father, the late Sir Francis Lanyon, though in many respects a most estimable man, was eccentric.”

“So Miss Lanyon informed me. I should suppose him to have been a curst rum touch, myself, but we won’t quarrel over terms!”

“One hesitates to speak ill of the dead,” persevered Edward, “but towards his children he displayed an almost total want of interest or consideration. One would have expected him to have provided his daughter with a chaperon, for instance, but such was not the case. You may have wondered, I daresay, at the freedom of Miss Lanyon’s manners, and, not knowing the circumstances, have thought it odd that she should be permitted to go abroad quite unattended.”

“No doubt I should, had I met her when she was a girl,” responded Damerel coolly. He turned his head, as Imber came into the hall. “Imber, here is Mr. Yardley, who has come to visit our invalid! Take him up—and see that Mrs. Priddy has that bundle of lint, will you?” He nodded to Edward to follow the butler, and himself walked off to one of the saloons that led from the hall.

Edward trod up the broad, shallow staircase in Imber’s wake, his feelings almost equally divided between relief at finding Damerel apparently indifferent to Venetia, and annoyance at the casual way he had been dismissed.

In general he ignored Aubrey’s frequent rudeness, but that scornful adjuration to him not to be a slow-top vexed him so much that he was obliged to suppress a sharp retort. He never allowed himself to speak hastily, and it was therefore in a measured tone that he said, after a moment: “Let me point out to you, Aubrey, that if you would not try to be quite such a hard-goer this unfortunate accident would never have occurred.”

“It was not, after all, so very unfortunate,” intervened Venetia. “How kind in you to have come to see how he does!”

“I must regard as unfortunate—to put it no higher!—an accident that places you in an awkward situation,” he said.

“Well, pray don’t tease yourself over that!” she said soothingly. “To be sure, I had rather Aubrey were at home, but I am able to visit him every day, you know, and he, I am persuaded, has not the least wish to be at home. I must tell you, Edward, that nothing could be greater than Damerel’s kindness to Aubrey, or his good nature in allowing Nurse to order everything precisely as she chooses here. You know her way!”

“You are very much obliged to his lordship,” he replied gravely. “I do not deny it, but you will scarcely expect me to think your indebtedness anything but an evil, the consequences of which may, I fear, be far-reaching.”

“What consequences? I hope you mean to tell me what you mean, for I promise you I don’t know! The only consequence I perceive is that we have made an agreeable new acquaintance—and find the Wicked Baron to be very much less black than rumour has painted him!”

“I make every allowance for your ignorance of the world, Venetia, but surely you cannot be unaware of the evil that attaches to acquaintance with a man of Lord Damerel’s reputation! I should not wish to make a friend of him myself, and in your case—which is one of particular delicacy—every feeling revolts against such an acquaintance!”

“Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?” muttered Aubrey savagely.

Edward glanced at him. “If you wish me to understand you, Aubrey, I fear you will be forced to speak in English. I do not pretend to be scholar.”

“Then I’ll give you a tag well within your power to translate! Non amo te, Sabidi!”

“No, Aubrey, pray don’t!” begged Venetia. “It is mere nonsense, and to be flying into a rage over it is the most nonsensical thing of all! Edward is only in one of his fusses over propriety—and so, let me tell you, is Damerel! For when you vexed poor Nurse so much that she threatened to leave you, my love, what must he do but tell her she must remain here to safeguard my reputation? Anyone might think I was a chit just emerged from the schoolroom!”

Edward’s countenance relaxed a little; he said, with a slight smile: “Instead of a staid and middle-aged woman? His lordship was very right, and I don’t hesitate to say that it gives me a better opinion of him. But I wish you will discontinue your visits to Aubrey. He is not so badly hurt as to make your attendance on him necessary, and if you come only to entertain him—well, I must say, however much you may resent it, Aubrey, that I think you deserve to be left to entertain yourself! Had you but listened to older and wiser counsel none of this awkwardness would have arisen. No one has more sympathy than I for the disability which makes it imprudent—indeed, I am afraid I must say foolhardy!—for you to attempt to ride such a headstrong animal as that chestnut of yours. I told you so at the outset, but—”

“Are you imagining that Rufus bolted with me?” interrupted Aubrey, his eyes glittering with cold dislike. “You’re mistaken! The plain truth is that I crammed him! A piece of bad horsemanship which had nothing to do with my disability! I’m well aware of it—don’t need to have it thrust down my throat!”

“That is certainly an admission!” said Edward, with an indulgent little laugh. “Neck-or-nothing, eh? Well, I don’t mean to give you a scold. We must hope your tumble has taught you the lesson you wouldn’t learn from me.”

“Much more likely!” Aubrey said swiftly. “I never dared learn of you, Edward: as well as your caution I might have acquired your hands—quod avertat Deus!”

It was at this moment that Damerel entered the room, saying cheerfully: “May I come in? Ah, your servant, Miss Lanyon!” He met her eyes for a brief instant, and continued in the easiest style: “I’ve told Marston to bring up a nuncheon for you to eat with Aubrey, and my errand is to discover whether you like to drink tea with it—and also to carry off your visitor to share my nuncheon.” He smiled at Edward. “Come and bear me company, Yardley!”

“Your lordship is very obliging, but I never eat at this hour,” Edward said stiffly.

“Then come and drink a glass of sherry,” replied Damerel, with unimpaired affability. “We will leave our graceless invalid to the ministrations of his sister and his nurse—indeed, we must! for Mrs. Priddy, having now a large stock of lint at her disposal, is about to descend upon him, armed with salves, compresses, and lotions, and you and I, my dear sir, will not be welcome here!”

Edward looked vexed, but as he could scarcely refuse to be dislodged there was nothing to be done but to take his leave. Nor did he receive any encouragement to stay from Venetia, who said frankly: “Yes, pray do go away, Edward! I know you mean it kindly, but I cannot have Aubrey put into a passion! He is not at all the thing yet, and Dr. Bentworth particularly charged me to keep him quiet.”

He began to say that he had not meant to put Aubrey in a passion; but the moralizing strain in him made it impossible for him to refrain from pointing out how wrong it was of Aubrey to fly into a rage only because one who had his interests sincerely to heart thought it his duty to reprove him. Before he was more than halfway through this speech, however, Venetia, seeing Aubrey raising himself painfully on his elbow, interrupted, saying hastily: “Yes, yes, but never mind! Just go away!”

She pushed him towards the door, which Damerel was holding open. He had intended to offer to escort her back to Undershaw, but before he could do so he had been irresistibly shepherded out of the room, and Damerel was shutting the door behind him, saying in a consolatory tone: “The boy is pretty well knocked-up, you know.”

“One can only hope it may be a lesson to him!”

“I daresay it will be.”

Edward gave a short laugh. “Ay! if one could but make him realize that he owes his aches to his own folly in persisting in his determination to ride horses he can’t control! For my part I consider it the height of imprudence in him to jump at all, for with that weak leg, you know—”

“But what a pudding-hearted creature he would be if he didn’t do so!” said Damerel. “Did you ever know a halfling who deemed prudence a virtue?”

“I should have supposed that when he knows what the consequences of a fall might be—However, it is always the same with him! he will never brook criticism—flies into a miff at the merest hint of it! I don’t envy you the charge of him!”

“Oh, I shan’t criticize him!” replied Damerel. “I have not the least right to do so, after all!”

Edward made no answer to this, merely saying, as he descended the stairs: “I do not know when Miss Lanyon means to return to Undershaw. I should be pleased to escort her, and had meant to have offered it.”

There was a decidedly peevish note in his voice. Damerel’s lips twitched, but he replied gravely: “I am afraid I don’t know either. Would you wish me to discover for you?”

“Oh, it is of no consequence, thank you! I daresay she won’t leave Aubrey until she has coaxed him out of his sullens—though it would be better for him if she did!”

“My dear sir, if you feel her groom to be an insufficient escort, do, I beg of you, make yourself at home here for as long as you choose!” said Damerel. “I would offer to go with her in your stead, but I might not be at hand, you know, and, I own, I should not have thought it at all necessary. However, if you feel—”

“No, no! it was merely—But if she has her groom there is of course no need for me to remain. Your lordship is very good, but I have a great deal of business to attend to, and have wasted too much of my time already.”

He then took formal leave, refusing all offers of refreshment, but expressing, in punctilious terms, his sense of obligation for the kindness shown to Aubrey, and his hope that it would soon be possible to relieve his lordship of so unwanted a burden.

To all of this Damerel listened politely, but with a disquieting twinkle in his eye. He said, in the careless way which had previously offended Edward: “Oh, Aubrey won’t worry me!” and having waved farewell almost before Edward’s foot was in the stirrup turned back into the house, and went up to Aubrey’s room again.