Venetia

VIII

Edward Yardley, secure in the knowledge of his own worth, might rate Damerel cheap, but young Mr. Denny, by no means so self-confident as he tried to appear, recognized in him both amodel and a menace. Like Edward, he rode over to the Priory to enquire how Aubrey did; unlike Edward, he no sooner clapped eyes on Damerel than he became possessed of a deep and envious hatred.

Imber ushered him into the library, where Damerel and Aubrey were playing chess, with Venetia seated on a stool by the sofa, watching the game. This cosy scene afforded him no pleasure at all; and when Damerel rose, and he saw how tall he was, with what careless grace he moved, and how much lazy mockery lurked in his eyes, he knew that his sisters had grossly misled him: they had thought his lordship dull and middle-aged; Oswald perceived at one glance that he was a dangerous marauder.

His visit was not of long duration, but it lasted for quite long enough to enable him to see on what easy terms of intimacy the Lanyons were with their host. They were not only perfectly at home in his house, but they behaved as though they had known him all their lives. Aubrey even called him Jasper; and although Venetia did not go to such outrageous lengths as that she used no formality when she spoke to him. As for Damerel, Nurse might think his attitude avuncular, but Oswald, his perception sharpened by jealousy, was not deceived. When his eyes rested on Venetia there was an expression in them very far from avuncular, and when he addressed her there was a caress in his voice. Oswald glared at him, and tried in vain to think of some adroit way of getting himself and Venetia out of the room. None occurred to him, so he was forced to employ direct tactics, saying rather throatily, and with reddening cheeks, as he shook hands in farewell: “May I speak to you for a moment?”

“Yes, of course you may!” Venetia replied kindly. “What is it?”

“Don’t be gooseish, m’dear!” recommended Aubrey, inspiring Oswald with a longing to wring his neck.

“You have a message for her from Lady Denny, which you would prefer to deliver in private, haven’t you?” suggested Damerel helpfully, but with an unholy twinkle.

In a nobler age one could have answered such impertinence by jostling his lordship as he stood holding open the door, so that he would have been obliged to demand a meeting. Or did one, even in that age, refrain from jostling people in doorways when a lady was present?

Before he had decided this point he had followed Venetia into the hall, and Damerel had shut the door on them. He uttered tensely: “If I know myself, there will be a reckoning between us one day!”

Venetia was accustomed to his dramatic outbursts, but she found this one surprising. “Between us?” she asked. “Now, what in the world have I done to put you in a miff, Oswald?”

“You! Never!” he declared. “It’s no matter—I should not have spoken, but there are times when a man’s feelings may not be suppressed!” He eyed her hungrily. “Only give me the right to call you mine!” he invited.

“What, is that why you wanted to talk to me alone?” she exclaimed. “Of all the ridiculous starts—! I wish you will believe that when I say No, No is precisely what I mean! How can you be so absurd? I am more than six years older than you! Besides, you don’t really wish to marry me in the least!”

“N-not w-wish to marry you?” he stammered, thunderstruck.

Her eyes danced. “Of course you don’t! Only think what a bore it would be to be obliged to settle down as a respectably married man before you have had a great many adventures!”

He had never before looked at the matter in this light, and he could not help feeling secretly rather struck. However, he was too earnest in the pursuit of his calf-love to acknowledge the good sense of her observation. “I ask no greater felicity than to win you!” he assured her.

Her lips quivered irresistibly, but she managed to keep from laughing. Only if one was very cruel did one laugh at a boy in the throes of his first love. She said: “Well, it is excessively kind of you, Oswald, and indeed I am flattered, even if I can’t return your sentiments. Pray don’t talk about it any more! Tell me, is Lady Denny well? And your sisters?”

He ignored this, but said in a gloomy tone: “I shall say no more, except to beg you to believe that my devotion is unalterable. I didn’t come for that purpose, but to tell you that you may count upon me. I am not a consequential prig, like Yardley! I am not afraid of going against etiquette—in fact I don’t care a straw for such stuff, but then, I have seen more of the world than—”

“Oswald, what are you talking about?” Venetia interrupted. “If it is Edward who has put you in this passion—”

“That skirter!” he ejaculated, with awful contempt. “Let him busy himself with his roots, and his cattle: it is all he is fit for!”

“Well, you must own that he is very fit for that!” said Venetia reasonably. “I daresay his land is in better heart than any you would find in half a day’s journey. Even Powick, you know, doesn’t disdain his advice when it is a matter of farming.”

“I didn’t come to talk about Yardley!” said Oswald. “I merely mentioned—well, it’s no odds! Venetia, if that fellow should offer you an insult, send me word!”

“Edward offer me— Oh, good God, do you mean Damerel? You absurd creature, go home, and try if you can be interested in roots, or cattle, or anything you please as long as it is not me! Lord Damerel is our very good friend, and it vexes me very much to hear you talk in that foolish style about him.”

“You are too innocent, too divinely pure, to be able to read the mind of a man of his stamp,” he told her, his brow darkling. “He may deceive Yardley, but I knew him for what he is the instant I clapped eyes on him! A Man of the Town! It is a—a desecration to think of his so much as touching your hand! When I saw how he looked at you—By God, I was within ames-ace of planting him a facer!”

At that she did laugh. “I wish I might see you make the attempt! No, no, don’t make me any more protestations! What you have said, you know, is the outside of enough! Indeed, it is most improper! Lord Damerel is a gentleman, and if he were not, I am not so innocent that I’m not very well able to take care of myself. Besides, it’s all fustian! Your papa would say you were enacting a Cheltenham tragedy, and that’s precisely what you are doing! If you choose to play-act it is quite your own concern, but you shall not do so at my expense. Goodbye!—Give my fond love to Lady Denny, if you please, and tell her that Aubrey is going on so well that I hope Dr. Bentworth will say, when next he visits him, that I may take him home.”

With these bracing words, she nodded dismissal, and went back into the library before he could form any adequate answer.

He rode home to Ebbersley a prey to mixed emotions, his self-esteem so much wounded by Venetia’s parting speech that for at least a mile he was occupied with extensive plans for renouncing his allegiance, abjuring the society of her sex or perhaps cultivating it in a very cynical way, causing its members to attempt by every art known to them to discover what dark secret was hidden behind his marble front and sardonic sneer. This scheme, though not unattractive, was attended, however, by certain difficulties, chief amongst them being the degradingly conventional standard of behaviour prevailing at Ebbersley, and a marked tendency on Lady Denny’s part to press a Blue Pill on anyone suffering torment of the soul. Nor did the North Riding afford the right background for a mysterious and sinister stranger. For one thing, the country in which Ebbersley was situated was sparsely populated; and for another, he was too well-known to the gentry there, and even in York itself, to have the least hope of figuring as a stranger, much less a mysterious and sinister stranger. He would be obliged to attend the Assemblies, with his mama and his elder sister, because if he refused to go they would raise such a dust that the matter would come to Papa’s ears, and nothing was more certain than that Papa would command him to do as he was bid. As for standing romantically aloof at these functions, and declining all the offers of the Master of Ceremonies to present him to desirable partners, there was no hope of doing that either. The ballroom would be full of girls with whom he had been acquainted all his life, and if he did not ask them to stand up with him Mama would not only scold him for incivility but was quite capable of excusing his behaviour to her friends on the score that he was bilious, or had the toothache. In a better regulated world the father of any young gentleman no longer at school would be compelled to supply his son with an allowance sufficiently handsome to enable him to set up for himself in London, and cut a dash in the fashionable world; but the world was ill-regulated, and Sir John so unenlightened a parent that he thought (and stated) that after sending his heir on a visit to his uncle in Jamaica he had a right to expect him to settle down at home, and learn all the business of managing the considerable estate which would, in due course, be his own.

Fortunately, before he had dwelled for long on his bleak prospects Oswald remembered that in one of the nobler ages that had preceded the present drab century knights and troubadours had apparently been inspired by scornful mistresses to perform heroic deeds. The more disdainful, not to say insulting, the ladies, the greater their devotion had been, and the greater their ultimate triumph when their exploits had convinced the favoured fair ones of their true qualities.

The vision thus conjured up of winning Venetia’s admiration was agreeable enough to make him abandon any immediate intention of becoming a misogynist, and brought him back to Ebbersley in a sunny mood, which lasted until the recollection that whatever glory the future might hold in store the present was overcast by the shadow of Lord Damerel unluckily coincided with a request from Sir John that he should change his Belcher handkerchief for a more seemly neckcloth before sitting down to dinner with his mother and sisters. These two circumstances naturally threw him back into gloom, and had it not been for the happy chance that had made Lady Denny order a turkey with truffles for dinner his low spirits would have made it impossible for him to fancy anything that was set before him. However, his fainting appetite revived at sight of the turkey, and he made a very good meal. A tendency to relapse into brooding melancholy was frustrated by Sir John, who challenged him to a game of billiards. He had no heart for such idle sport, but in the excitement of beating his father, running out with the longest break he had ever achieved, he forgot his troubles, and became animated and loquacious, particularly when describing his glorious victory to his mama and his sisters later in the evening. Such was his elation that he went up to bed much inclined to think that he had allowed himself to be needlessly disturbed by Lord Damerel’s menacing presence in the district. As soon as Aubrey returned to Undershaw his lordship would no doubt leave the Priory, and be no more seen in Yorkshire for at least a twelvemonth.

Two days later the welcome tidings that Aubrey was at home again came in a note from Venetia to Lady Denny; and, as though Providence had suddenly decided to bestow favours upon young Mr. Denny with a lavish hand, this was almost immediately followed by the news that Edward Yardley, who had been feeling poorly for several days, was in bed with the chicken-pox. Oswald, seeing his path clear of rivals, rode over to Undershaw to make good his opportunity, and arrived there to find Venetia walking in the shrubbery with Damerel.

It was a severe blow, and still worse was the discovery that Damerel had no immediate intention of leaving the Priory. His ostensible reason for prolonging his stay there might be, as his bailiff hoped, to repair some of the ravages which years of neglect had wrought upon his lands, but his real object was insolently patent: Venetia was his quarry, and he was hunting her remorselessly, intent, Oswald was persuaded, on nothing but the gratification of his own evanescent lust. Report credited him with hundreds of lovely victims, and Oswald saw no reason to doubt either its truth, or that no twinge of compunction and no respect for public opinion would check him in the pursuit of his desire. A man whose career had begun with the abduction of a married lady of quality, and included traffic with such trollops as had turned the Priory into a bordello only a year before, was capable of committing any infamy and Damerel had shown years ago how little he cared for public opinion. If his past actions had not betrayed him, one glance at him, Oswald thought, was enough to inform any but such clods as Edward Yardley that he was a reckless freebooter, who would not hesitate, if he could ensnare her in his toils, to bear Venetia off to foreign lands, just as he had borne off his first mistress; and later, when her sweetness no longer pleased his jaded palate, to abandon her. He had already more than half bewitched her; as those who talked comfortably of her calm good sense must surely realize if they did but see the look in her eyes when she raised them to his. Such smiling eyes they were, but never had they smiled so tenderly as they did now. For a disturbing moment Oswald felt that she had suddenly become quite a different person, and was reminded of some story, probably one of Aubrey’s, about a statue brought to life by some goddess or other. Not that Venetia had ever been at all like a statue, but underlying her liveliness she had been cool and rational, affectionate but never blinded by affection, regarding even Aubrey, whom she loved, with amusement, and offering to no one else more than friendliness. This temperate disposition pleased Edward Yardley, because he believed it to be a sign of modesty and good breeding; it had pleased Oswald too, but on quite another count: it transformed her from the prettiest lady in the district into a princess of fairyland whose hand could only be won by the bravest and noblest and most handsome of her many suitors. In his more romantic moments Oswald had frequently imagined himself in this role, either kindling love in her by wit and charm, or by rescuing her (while Edward Yardley stood by, not daring to risk his life in the attempt) from burning houses, runaway steeds, or brutal ravishers. In these dreams she at once fell passionately in love with him, Edward slunk away, shamed and discomfited, and all who had previously treated young Mr. Denny as though he had been a schoolboy thereafter looked up to him in awe, spoke of him with respect, and thought it an honour to entertain him at their parties. They were agreeable dreams, but only dreams. He had never expected them to come true. It was extremely unlikely that Venetia would be trapped in a blazing house, and still more unlikely that in such a contingency he would be at hand to rescue her; she was an accomplished horse-woman; and the sudden intrusion into the peaceful and law-abiding neighbourhood of a brutal ravisher had seemed, even in the dream, to be rather too far-fetched.

Yet that was what had happened, for Damerel, though not precisely corresponding to the creature of the dream, was certainly a ravisher. But instead of seeking protection from his loathsome advances Venetia, utterly deceived by the mask he wore, was positively encouraging them. Like the statue, she had been brought to life, but not by a goddess, not even by her heroic young adorer, but by her would-be seducer.

As he watched the meeting of their eyes, and listened to their light, funning talk, some hardly recognized perception of the affinity between them made Oswald feel so sick with hatred of Damerel that he could not bring himself to respond to any of the attempts made to draw him into the conversation, but answered only in a manner that sounded boorish even in his own ears, and soon took an abrupt leave of his hostess. This hatred, so much more intense than the dislike he felt for Edward Yardley, or the jealousy with which he would have regarded any other rival, sprang from his unacknowledged recognition in Damerel of the romantic figure he himself longed to become. He was the devil-may-care outlaw who roamed the world, dark secrets locked in his bosom, nameless crimes littering his past; and had Venetia not existed Oswald would almost certainly have copied his style of dress, his unconventional manners, and would have done his best to have acquired his air of unconcerned assurance. These were all things which a youth chafing against the restrictions of a polite age admired: but when he met them in a rival he bitterly resented them, because he knew himself to be at a disadvantage, playing the Corsair’s role in front of the Corsair himself.

Had Sir John been privileged to know what emotions were raging in his son’s breast he might have regretted his decision not to send him up to Oxford or Cambridge, but he was too well accustomed to Oswald’s moodiness to attach any significance to what he thought a fit of the sullens, arising out of the boy’s calf-love for Venetia. He merely trusted that this phase would be as short-lived as it was violent, and paid no other heed to it than to recommend Oswald not to make a fool of himself. Lady Denny would have shown more sympathy had she had the leisure to study him, but Edward Yardley, not content (she said) with contracting chicken-pox himself, had communicated it to Anne, the youngest of the Denny family, whom he had met out walking with the rest of the schoolroom party on the very day he later took to his bed. He was so kind as to indulge her with a ride on his horse, for he was very fond of children, and that was when the mischief must have been done. Anne had lost no time in passing it on to her next sister, Louisa, and to the nursery-maid; and Lady Denny lived in hourly expectation of seeing a rash break out on Elizabeth as well, and had no eyes for her only son’s spiritual ills.

Having no particular friend in the neighbourhood, and despising the company of his sisters, Oswald had very little to do but brood over the disastrous effect of Damerel’s continued residence at the Priory; and it was not long before he had persuaded himself that before Damerel’s arrival on the scene he had been in a fair way to winning Venetia. He recalled every instance of her past kindness, and by magnifying these, minimizing her occasional snubs, and contrasting both with her present attitude he soon became convinced that Damerel had deliberately cut him out, and occupied most of his waking hours trying to think how best to win her back.

He had arrived at no satisfactory answer to this problem when he became an unsuspected witness of an episode which brought all his festering resentment to a head. Having ridden to Undershaw on the flimsiest excuse, the first sight to meet his eyes, as he dismounted in the stableyard, was Damerel’s big gray being led into the stable by Aubrey’s groom. Fingle said, with the hint of a dour smile, that his lordship had ridden in not five minutes earlier, bringing with him a book for Mr. Aubrey. Oswald vouchsafed no reply to this, but he looked so thunderous that the hinted smile grew into a broad grin, as Fingle watched him stride off towards the house.

Ribble, opening the door to Oswald, rather thought that Miss Venetia was in the garden; but when Oswald asked ominously after Lord Damerel he shook his head. He had not seen his lordship that day.

“Oh, indeed?” said Oswald. “Yet his horse is in the stables!”

Ribble did not seem to be surprised, but he looked a little worried, and replied after a moment’s pause that his lordship very often walked up to the house through the garden, entering it by way of the door Sir Francis had had made in the ante-room which led to his library. Ribble added, as Oswald gave a snort of indignation: “His lordship frequently brings Mr. Aubrey books, sir, and stays talking with him for quite a while—about his studies, I understand.”

There was a troubled note in his voice, but Oswald did not hear it, or realize that Ribble was trying to reassure himself. He thought him a gullible old fool, and turned on his heel, saying that if Miss Lanyon was in the garden he would look for her there, since he had come to visit her, not Mr. Aubrey. He strode off, seething with anger. Even Edward Yardley, who had been permitted to enter Undershaw for years, never did so except through the front door, yet this buccaneering stranger was apparently free to walk in whenever he chose, and without the least ceremony.

There was no sign of Venetia either in the gardens or the shrubbery, but just as Oswald was about to follow Damerel’s example, and go into the house through the ante-room door, he bethought him of the orchard. She was not there either, but Oswald heard her voice, raised in laughing protest, and coming from an old barn, which had once housed cattle, and had been used of late years as a storehouse for the gardener’s tools and a workshop for Aubrey, who occasionally amused himself with carpentry. There was no mistaking the voice that spoke in answer to hers, and when he heard it Oswald fell into such a fever of suspicious rage that without so much as considering the impropriety of his conduct he went stealthily up to the barn, and paused beside the big double-door, out of sight, but well within hearing of whatever might be going on inside the barn. A cautious peep revealed no glimpse of Venetia, but it did show him Damerel’s back-view, as he stood in the middle of the floor with his head tilted back, as though Venetia were some way above him.

This puzzled Oswald, unfamiliar with the barn, but, in fact, Venetia had mounted by means of a short ladder into the open loft which covered half the barn, to rescue a litter of hungry kittens, whose parent, absent from her duties for a day and a night, was presumed to have met with an untimely end. Damerel had located her by the simple expedient of calling her name, and had been instantly summoned to her assistance. “For that ladder is not at all steady, and I had as lief not climb down it carrying the kittens,” she explained.

“Is that what you have in that basket?” he asked. “How the deuce did they get up there?”

“Oh, they were born here! It’s the kitchen-cat: she always comes here to have her kittens. But I’m afraid something must have happened to her this time, and the poor little things are starving. That I cannot bear, though if they can’t lap yet I suppose they will have to be drowned.”

“Well, that fate will be preferable to starvation,” he said. “Hand over the orphans!”

She knelt on the edge of the loft, and reached the basket down to his upstretched hand. He grasped it, and set it down on the floor, and looked up again, rather wickedly smiling. “Shall I hold the ladder for you, my dear delight?”

“Certainly not!” said Venetia firmly.

“But you said it was unsteady!”

“It is, but if I could come up it I can come down it.”

“Do!” he said cordially. “I shall have a stiff neck if I’m obliged to converse with you at that level. Or shall I come up?”

She looked down at him with laughter in her eyes, but said severely: “No, you will not come up! Odious creature! You know very well I can’t come down that ladder while you stand there watching me!”

“Can’t you? Oh, that’s easily remedied!” he retorted, and removed the ladder, and laid it down.

It was this impish action which drew the protest from her which Oswald heard. “Fiend!” she said. “Do put it back, and go away!”

“Not I!” he replied, grinning up at her.

“But it is most unchivalrous of you!” she complained.

“No, no, on the contrary! The ladder is clearly unsafe.”

She tried to make her mouth prim, but failed. “Do you know, my dear friend, that besides being most ungentlemanly you are shockingly untruthful?” she enquired.

“No, am I? Do you know entrancing your face is when seen from this angle?”

She was still kneeling, resting her hands on the edge of the loft, and looking directly down at him. “Upside down? Well, of all the unhandsome things to say! Now, Damerel, will you be so very obliging as to stop behaving like a horrid schoolboy, and set the ladder up again?”

“No, dear torment, I will not!”

“Wretch! Do you mean to keep me a prisoner up here? I warn you, the instant your back is turned I shall jump down!”

“Oh, don’t wait for that! Jump now!” he said. “I’ll catch you!”

“Thank you, I had as lief not be caught!”

“What, are you afraid I’ll let you fall? Little craven! And you a Lanyon of Undershaw!”

“Pooh!” said Venetia, making a face at him. She then altered her position, drew her flounced skirt tightly round her ankles, swung her legs over the edge of the loft, and slid down into Damerel’s arms.

He caught her, and held her in a strong grip, but whatever might have been his next intention was frustrated by Oswald, who at this moment revealed his presence, starting forward with a wrathful imprecation.

His purpose was to command Damerel to unhand Venetia, and, if necessary, to wrest her from his grasp, but as Damerel, without showing the smallest sign of surprise, much less of discomfiture, had already set her on her feet, and released her, there was no need to do this. He was unable, on the spur of the moment, to think of anything else to say, and stood glaring at Damerel instead.

Venetia had been startled by his sudden appearance, but she betrayed no more discomfiture than Damerel, merely saying: “Oh, is it you, Oswald? What a pity you should not have arrived just one minute earlier! You might have played the knight-errant to my damsel in distress. Would you believe it?—finding me engaged on an errand of mercy up there, Lord Damerel treacherously removed the ladder!” She laughed at Damerel. “In fact, you remind me strongly of my brother Conway!”

“And worse you cannot say of anyone, I collect!” His lazy yet penetrating gaze rested on Oswald’s flushed countenance for a moment. There was a good deal of amusement in his eyes, but some not unkindly understanding as well. “I shall go and seek comfort of Aubrey,” he said.

Oswald, standing in the doorway still, hesitated, but after a moment’s indecision, moved reluctantly aside to allow him to pass.

Venetia bent to pick up her basket. “I must take these unfortunate kittens up to the house. At least their eyes are open, so perhaps they will be able to lap.”

“Wait!” uttered Oswald.

She looked enquiringly at him. “Why?”

“I must and will speak to you! That fellow—!”

“If you mean Damerel, as I conclude you must, I wish you will say so, and not call him that fellow! It is not at all becoming in you to speak in such a way of a man so much older than you are, and particularly when you’ve no cause to do so.”

“No cause!” he exclaimed hotly. “When I find him here, f-forcing his improper attentions upon you!”

“Fiddle!”

He flushed. “How can you say that? When I saw—and heard—”

“You neither saw nor heard him forcing anything upon me. And you won’t,” she added calmly.

“You don’t understand! You—”

“Yes, I do.”

He stared at her, rather nonplussed. “You know nothing about men of his stamp! You’ve let him hoax you with his curst cajolery into thinking he means no harm, but if you knew what his reputation is—”

“Well, I do know, better than you, I daresay.”

“The fellow’s a rake! No female is safe with him!”

She gave an involuntary laugh. “How very dreadful! Oswald, do, pray, stop talking fustian! You can’t think how absurd it is!”

“It’s true!” he said earnestly.

“Yes, it’s true that he’s a rake, but I assure you there is no need to worry over my safety. I expect you mean it kindly, but I shall be very much obliged to you if you will say no more!”

He stared at her fiercely, and ejaculated: “You’re bewitched!”

The oddest little smile flickered in her eyes. “Am I? Well, never mind! It is quite my own affair, after all. Now I must take these kittens up to the kitchen, and see what can be done for them.”

He resolutely barred the way. “You shall hear me!” he declared. “You hope to fob me off, but it will not do!”

She looked at him for a measuring instant, and then sat down on Aubrey’s bench, and folded her hands in her lap, saying, with resignation: “Very well: say what you wish, if nothing else will do for you!”

It was not very encouraging, but there was so much that Oswald was burning to say, and had, indeed, several times rehearsed, that he was not at all daunted. He plunged, stammering a little, into a speech that began as worldly-wise advice from a man of wide experience to a singularly innocent and gullible girl, but very soon changed to a diatribe against Damerel, and an impassioned declaration of undying love for Venetia. It lasted for quite a considerable time, and Venetia made no attempt to check it. Nor did she laugh, for it was apparent to her that her youthful admirer had worked himself into a dangerously overwrought condition, and believed himself to be far more violently in love with her than she had guessed. She gathered from one or two of his utterances that he was persuaded that she had been in a fair way to returning his love until Damerel had cast his spell over her; and although she knew that she had never given him the smallest encouragement she was vexed with herself for not having perceived that a turbulent boy with a yearning for romance and a marked turn for dramatizing himself was quite capable of exaggerating mere elder-sisterly kindness into something far warmer. So she let him talk himself out uninterrupted, thinking that since so many wild and tangled emotions had been festering in his bosom he would probably feel much better for being allowed to pour them forth, and even a little ashamed of himself. However, when he reached the stage of urging her to marry him, and outlining, in a rapture of fantasy, a wedding-trip that included the more remote parts of the globe, and would, at the lowest computation, take quite three years to accomplish, she judged it to be time to intervene, and to administer a damper calculated to make him fall out of love with her as suddenly as he had fallen into it.

As soon as he paused, eagerly scanning her face to see what effect his eloquence had had on her, she rose, and said, as she picked up her basket: “Well, now, Oswald, if you have finished talking nonsense, you may listen to what I have to say, and after that you may go home! You have been quite amazingly impertinent, but I don’t mean to scold you for that, because I can see that you’ve hoaxed yourself into thinking I was as good as promised to you before Damerel came to the Priory. How you can be so conceited as to suppose I should have a tendre for a boy not very much older than Aubrey I can’t think! I wish you will try to cure yourself of make-believe, and learn to be a little more sensible! It seems to me that you imagine so much that it gets to be quite real to you, which leads you, you know, to say the most absurd things! Only consider, for instance, what would happen if I were as silly as you, and agreed to marry you! Do you soberly suppose that Sir John and Lady Denny would have nothing to say to such a ridiculous match?”

“Nothing they could say would turn me from my purpose!” he averred.

“Oh, wouldn’t it?” she retorted. “We should just fly to the Border, I collect, since you’re not of age, and be married over the anvil! I should cut a pretty figure! What next should we do? Set forth on this wonderful journey of yours?— which sounds to me excessively uncomfortable, and, indeed, would be more than uncomfortable, because we should soon find ourselves without a feather to fly with. Or have you bamboozled yourself into believing that Sir John will be so obliging as to put you in command of a handsome independence?” She paused, and could not help smiling at the sudden change in his expression. A baffled and angry scowl, which made him look like a thwarted schoolboy, was now being bent upon her, and seemed to indicate that he was already more than half out of love. She moved forward, saying: “You see how foolish it is, don’t you? Don’t let us say any more about it! When you are as old as I am I expect you will be very much in love, not play-acting, with a girl who is at this present sewing samplers in the schoolroom, and if you remember me at all, which you very likely won’t, you’ll wonder how you came to make such a cake of yourself! Go home now—and no more dangling after me, if you please!”

By this time Oswald was hating her quite as much as he had adored her, but not being prone in his most equable moods to consider what was the true state of his feelings he was quite incapable of performing this feat when a prey to emotion. In the jumble of hurt, and fury, and chagrin into which Venetia’s cool mockery had plunged him he saw only one thing clearly, and that was that she looked on him as a schoolboy. He said in a voice that shook with anger: “You think I’m too young to love, do you? Well, you’re wrong!”

With these bitter words, and before she had had time to realize his intention, he seized her, and managed, though not very expertly, to get his arms round her.

Venetia, more concerned for the unhappy kittens, which were very nearly tilted out of the basket by this sudden onslaught, than for herself, cried sharply: “Take care! You idiotish boy, let me go at once!”

But Oswald, who had never before held a girl in his arms, was in the grip of a novel and exciting sensation, and he hugged her rather more tightly, and kissed first her ear, then her eyebrow, and then her cheekbone in several dogged attempts to reach her lips. Between these assaults he said in a breathless, exultant voice: “A child, am I? I’ll show you!”

“Oswald, stop! How dare you—oh, thank goodness!”

If Oswald wondered what had drawn this unexpected exclamation from her, or why she suddenly ceased struggling, he was not left for more than a very few seconds in doubt. A hand was thrust roughly into his neckband, and closed like a vice, nearly choking him, and its fellow grasped the seat of his riding-breeches; he was plucked bodily away from Venetia, jerked round, propelled irresistibly to the doorway, and sent sprawling through it.