Mrs. Challoner’s emotions upon reading her elder daughter’s letter found expression in a series of loud shrieks that brought Sophia running to her room. “Read that!” gasped the afflicted parent, and thrust the note into Sophia’s hands.
When Sophia had mastered its contents she wasted no time, but went off into strong hysterics, drumming her feet on the carpet, and becoming alarmingly rigid. Mrs. Challoner, a practical woman, dashed the contents of a jug of water over her, and upon Sophia recovering sufficiently to break into a flood of tears mixed with sobbing complaints of her sister’s wickedness, she sat down by her dressing-table, and thought very deeply. After some time, during which Sophia had worked herself into a white heat of fury, Mrs. Challoner said abruptly: “Hold your tongue, Sophy. It may do very well, after all.”
Sophia stared at her. Mrs. Challoner threw her a look of unusual impatience, and said: “If Vidal has run off with Mary, I’ll make him marry her.”
Sophia gave a choked scream of rage, “She shan’t have him! She shan’t, she shan’t! Oh, I shall die of mortification!”
“I never thought to marry Mary well,” went on her mother, unheeding, “but I begin to see that nothing in the world could be better than this. Lord, the Gunnings will be nothing to it! To think I was intending Joshua for Mary, and all the time the sly minx was meaning to steal Vidal from under your nose, Sophy! I declare I could positively laugh at myself for being so simple,”
Sophia sprang up, clenching her fists. “Mary to be a Marchioness? I tell you I’ll kill myself if she gets him!”
“Oh, don’t fret, Sophy,” Mrs. Challoner reassured her. “With your looks you will never want for a husband. But Mary, whom I never dreamed would be wed, unless it were to Joshua — ! La, it is the most amazingly fortunate thing that could ever be.”
“She isn’t going to marry Vidal!” Sophia said in a voice that shook with passion. “She’s gone to save my honour, the interfering, hateful wretch! And now it’s her honour will be ruined, and I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it!”
Mrs. Challoner folded up Mary’s letter. “It’s for me to see she’s not ruined, and I promise you I shall see to it. My Lady Vidal — oh, it is famous! I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.”
Sophia’s fingers curled like a kitten’s claws. “It’s me Vidal wants, not Mary!”
“Lord, what has that to say to anything?” said Mrs. Challoner. “It’s Mary he has run off with. Now don’t pout at me, miss! You will do very well, I don’t doubt. There’s O’Halloran, mad for you, or Fraser.”
Sophia gave a little scream. “O’Halloran! Fraser! I won’t marry a plain mister! I won’t! I’d sooner drown myself!”
“Oh well, I’m not saying you might not do better for yourself,” replied Mrs. Challoner. “And if only I can get Mary safe wedded to Vidal there’s no saying who she may not find you. For she has a good heart; I always said Mary had a good heart; and she’ll not forget her mamma and sister, however grand she’s to become.”
The prospect of having a husband found for her by Mary proved too much for Sophia’s self-control. She fell into renewed hysterics, but was startled into silence by a smart box on the ear from a mother who had suddenly discovered that her elder daughter was of more account than her pampered self.
She was bundled off to bed; Mrs. Challoner had no time to waste on tantrums. Her chief fear at that moment was that Mary might return uncompromised, and her night’s repose was quite spoiled by her dread of hearing a knock on the front door. When morning came bringing no news of Mary, her maternal anxieties were allayed, and telling Sophia sharply to stop crying, she set about making herself smart for a visit to his grace of Avon. She chose a gown of stiff damson-hued armazine, with one of the new German collars, and a caravan bonnet with a blind of white sarsenet to belet down at will, and thus attired set forth shortly before noon for Avon House. The door was opened by a liveried porter, and she inquired haughtily for his grace of Avon.
The porter informed her that his grace was from home, and having formed his own opinion of Mrs. Challoner’s estate, prepared to shut the door.
That redoubtable lady promptly put her foot in the way. “Then be so good as to take me to the Duchess,” she said.
“Her grace is h’also h’out of town,” replied the porter.
Mrs. Challoner’s face fell. “When do you expect her back?” she demanded.
The porter looked down his nose. “H’it is not my place to h’expect her grace,” he said loftily.
Feeling much inclined to hit him, Mrs. Challoner next inquired where the Duke and Duchess might be found. The porter said that he had no idea. “And h’if,” he continued blandly, “you will have the goodness to remove your foot h’out of the way, I shall be h’able to close the door.”
But it was not until the porter had been reinforced by the appearance of a very superior personage indeed that Mrs. Challoner could be induced to leave the doorstep. The superior personage required to know Mrs. Challoner’s business, and when she replied that this concerned the Duke and Duchess only, he shrugged in a very insulting manner, and said that he was sorry for it, as neither the Duke nor the Duchess was in town.
“I want to know where I can find them!” said Mrs. Challoner belligerently.
The superior personage ran her over with a dispassionately appraising eye. He then said suavely: “Their graces’ acquaintances, madam, are cognisant of their graces’ whereabouts.”
Mrs. Challoner went off with a flounce of her wide skirts at that, and reached home again in a very bad temper. She found Eliza Matcham sitting with Sophia, and it was plain from Eliza’s demeanour that she had been the recipient of all Sophia’s angry confidences. She greeted Mrs. Challoner with an excited laugh, saving: “Oh, dear ma’am, I never was more shocked in my life! Only conceive how we have been hoodwinked, for I could have sworn ’twas Sophia he wanted, could not you?”
“It was me! It is me!” choked poor Sophia. “I hope he strangles Mary! And I dare say he has strangled her by now, for he has a horrid temper. And it win serve her right, the mean, designing thing!”
Finding Mrs. Challoner in an unresponsive mood, Miss Matcham soon took her leave of Sophia, and went away agog with her news. When she had gone Mrs. Challoner soundly rated Sophia for her indiscretion. “It will be all over town by to-night!” she said. “I would not have had you tell Eliza for the world.”
“I don’t care,” Sophia answered viciously. “People shan’t think that he preferred her to me, for it’s not true! She’s a shameless hussy, and so I shall tell everyone.”
“You’ll be a fool if you do,” her mother informed her. “Pray who would believe such a tale? People will only laugh at you the more, and say you are jealous.”
She did not tell Sophia of her fruitless mission to Avon House, but went off again directly after luncheon to visit her brother Henry.
She found only her sister-in-law at home, Henry Simpkins being in the city, but Mrs. Simpkins, perceiving her to be big with news, pressed her warmly to await his return, and dine with them. It did not take Mrs. Simpkins long to possess herself of her sister’s news, and the two dames spent a very comfortable few hours, discussing and exclaiming, and forming plans for the runaways’ marriage.
When Henry and Joshua came in, shortly before five, they were immediately apprised of the whole story. Mrs. Challoner told it with a wealth of detail and surmise, and Mrs. Simpkins added riders here and there.
“And only fancy, Henry,” Mrs. Challoner ended triumphantly, “she is the slyest thing! For she pretended she was gone off to save Sophy’s reputation, and all the time she must have meant to run away with the Marquis herself, for if she did not, why didn’t she return as she said she would? Oh, she is the naughtiest piece imaginable!”
A deep groan brought her attention to bear upon her nephew. “Ay, Joshua, it is a sad thing for you,” she said kindly. “But you know I never thought she would have you; for she’s a monstrous pretty girl, and I always said she would make a brilliant marriage.”
“Marriage?” Joshua said deeply. “I wish you don’t live to see her something far other than a wife. Shameless, shameless!”
Mr. Simpkins supported his son. “Time enough to brag of marriages when you have her safe tied to the Marquis,” he said. “If the Duke is indeed from home you must find him. Good God, Clara, one would think you were glad the girl’s gone off like this!”
Mrs. Challoner, knowing her brother’s Puritanical views, hastily dissembled. She told him how she had found both the Duke and the Duchess of Avon absent from town, and he said that she must lose no time in running one or the other to earth. She had no notion how to set about this task, but her sister-in-law was able to assist her. Mrs. Simpkins had not read all the Court journals for years past in vain. Not only could she recite, unerringly, all his grace of Avon’s names and titles, but she was able to inform her sister-in-law that he had a brother living in Half Moon Street, and a sister who had married a commoner, and was now a widow.
Mr. Simpkins, upon hearing the name of his grace’s brother, brushed him aside. Lord Rupert Alastair was known to him by reputation, and he could assure his sister that this nobleman was depraved, licentious, and a spendthrift, and would be the last person in the world likely to aid her to force Vidal into marriage. He advised her to visit Lady Fanny Marling in the morning, and this she in the end decided to do.
Lady Fanny’s servants were not so well trained as those at Avon House, and Mrs. Challoner, by dint of saying that Lady Fanny would regret it if she refused to see her, managed to gain an entrance.
Lady Fanny, dressed in a négligée of Irish polonaise, with a gauze apron, and a point-lace lappet-head, received her in a small morning-room at the back of the house, and having a vague notion that she must be a mantua-maker or milliner come to demand payment of bills long overdue, she was in no very good humour. Mrs. Challoner had prepared an opening speech, but had no opportunity of delivering it, for her ladyship spoke first, and in a disconcerting fashion. “I vow and declare,” she said stringently, “things are come to a pretty pass when a lady is dunned in her own house! My good woman, you should be glad to have the dressing of me, and as for the people I’ve recommended you to, although I can’t say I’ve ever heard your name before — (I suppose you are Cerisette, or Mirabelle) — I am sure there must be dozens of them. And in any case I’ve not a penny in the world, so it is of no avail to force your way into my house. Pray do not stand there goggling at me!”
Mrs. Challoner felt very much as though she had walked by mistake into a madhouse. Instead of her fine speech, all she could think of to say was: “I do not want money, ma’am! You are quite mistaken!”
“Then if you don’t want money, what in the world do you want?” demanded her ladyship, opening her blue eyes very wide.
She had not offered her unwelcome visitor a chair, and somehow Mrs. Challoner did not care to take one without permission. She had not supposed that Lady Fanny would be so formidable, but formidable she certainly was, in spite of her lack of inches; and her imperious way of speaking, coupled with her air of the great lady, quite threw Mrs. Challoner off her balance. She said somewhat lamely: “I have come to you, ma’am, to learn where I may find the Duke of Avon.”
Lady Fanny’s jaw dropped. She stared at Mrs. Challoner with a mixture of astonishment and indignation. “The Duke of Avon?” she repeated incredulously.
“Yes, ma’am, the Duke of Avon,” reiterated Mrs. Challoner. “It is a matter concerning his honour, let me tell you, and I must see him at once.”
“Good God!” said her ladyship faintly. A flash of anger came into her eyes. “How dare you come to me?” she said. “I vow it passes all bounds! I shall certainly not direct you where you may find him, and I marvel that you should expect it of me.”
Mrs. Challoner took a firm hold on her reticule, and said with determination: “Either the Duke or her grace the Duchess I must see and will see.”
Lady Fanny’s bosom swelled. “You shall never carry your horrid tales to the Duchess, I promise you. I make no doubt at all it’s a pack of lies, but if you think to make mischief with my sister, let me tell you that I’ll not permit it”
“And let me assure you, ma’am, that if you try to prevent me seeing the Duke you will be monstrous sorry for it. Your ladyship need not suppose that I shall keep my mouth shut. If I do not obtain his grace’s direction from you I’ll make an open scandal of it, and so I warn you!”
Lady Fanny curled her lip disdainfully. “Pray do so, my good woman. Really, I find you absurd. Even were his grace ten years younger, I for one should never believe such a nonsensical story.”
Mrs. Challoner felt more than ever that she had strayed into a madhouse. “What has his grace’s age to do with it?” she said, greatly perplexed.
“Everything, I imagine,” replied Lady Fanny dryly.
“It has nothing at all to do with it!” said Mrs. Challoner, growing more and more heated. “You may think to fob me off, ma’am, but I appeal to you as a mother. Yes, your la’ship may well start. It is as a mother, a mother of a daughter that I stand here to-day.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it!” cried Fanny. “Where are my lavender-drops? My poor, poor Léonie! Say what you have to: I shall not credit one word of it. And if you think to foist your odious daughter on to Avon, you make a great mistake! You should have thought of it before. I suppose the girl must be at least fifteen years of age.”
Mrs. Challoner blinked at her. “Fifteen years, ma’am? She’s twenty! And as for foisting her on to the Duke, if he has a shred of proper feeling he will make the best of it — though I am far from admitting her to be unworthy of the very highest honours — and accept her as a daughter (and, indeed, she is a sweet, dutiful girl, ma’am, and reared in a most select seminary) without any demur.”
“My good woman,” said Fanny pityingly, “if you imagine that Avon will do anything of the kind you must be a great fool. He has no proper feelings, as you choose to term them, at all, and if he paid for the girl’s education (which I presume he must have done) I am amazed at it, and you may consider yourself fortunate.”
“Paid for her education?” gasped Mrs. Challoner. “He’s never set eyes on her! What in the name of Heaven is your la’ship’s meaning?”
Fanny looked at her narrowly for a moment. Mrs. Challoner’s bewilderment was writ large on her face. Fanny pointed to a chair. “Be seated, if you please,” she said. Mrs. Challoner sat down thankfully. “And now perhaps you will tell me in plain words what it is you want,” her ladyship continued. “Is this girl Avon’s child, or is she not?”
Mrs. Challoner took nearly a full minute to grasp the meaning of this question. When she had realized its import she bounced out of her chair again, and cried: “No, ma’am, she is not! And I’ll thank your la’ship to remember that I’m a respectable woman even if I wasn’t thought good enough for Mr. Challoner. He married me for all he came of such high and mighty folk, and I’ll see to it that his grace of Avon’s precious son marries my poor girl!”
Lady Fanny’s rigidity left her. “Vidal!” she said with a gasp of relief. “Good God, is that all?”
Mrs. Challoner was still fuming with indignation. She glared at Fanny, and said angrily: “All, ma’am? All? Do you call it nothing that your wicked nephew has abducted my daughter?”
Fanny waved her back to her chair. “You have all my sympathies, ma’am, I assure you. But your errand to my brother is quite useless. He will certainly not be moved to urge his son to marry your daughter.”
“Will he not then?” cried Mrs. Challoner. “I fancy he will be glad to buy my silence so cheaply.”
Fanny smiled. “I must point out to you, my good woman, that it is your daughter and not my nephew that would be hurt by this story becoming known. You used the word ‘abduct’; I know a vast deal to Vidal’s discredit, but I never yet heard that he was in the habit of carrying off unwilling females. I presume your daughter knew what she was about, and I can only advise you, for your own sake, to bear a still tongue in your head.”
This unexpected attitude on the part of her ladyship compelled Mrs. Challoner to play her trump card earlier than she had intended. “Indeed, my lady? You are very much in the wrong, let me tell you, and if you imagine my daughter is without powerful relatives, I can speedily undeceive you. Mary’s grandpapa is none other than a general in the army, and a baronet. He is Sir Giles Challoner, and he will know how to protect my poor girl’s honour.”
Fanny raised her brows superciliously, but this piece of information had startled her. “I hope Sir Giles is proud of his grandchild,” she said languidly.
Mrs. Challoner, a spot of colour on either cheek-bone, hunted with trembling fingers in her reticule. She pulled out Mary’s letter, and threw it down on the table before her ladyship. “Read that, ma’am!” she said in tragic accents.
Lady Fanny picked the letter up, and calmly perused it. She then laid it down again. “I have not a notion what it is about,” she remarked. “Pray who may ‘Sophia’ be?”
“My younger daughter, ma’am. His lordship designed to run off with her, for he dotes madly on her. He sent her word to be ready to elope with him two nights ago, and Mary opened the letter. She is none of your frippery good-for-nothing misses, my lady, but an honest girl, and quite her grandpapa’s favourite. She meant, as you have seen, to save her sister from ruin. Ma’am, she has been gone two days, and I say that the Marquis has abducted her, for I know Mary, and I’ll be bound she never went with him willingly.”
Lady Fanny heard her in dismayed silence. The affair seemed certainly very serious. Sir Giles Challoner was known to her, and she felt sure that if this girl were in truth his grandchild he would not permit her abduction to pass unnoticed. A quite appalling scandal (if it did not turn out to be worse than a mere scandal) seemed to be brewing, and however waspishly Lady Fanny might have predicted that her nephew would in the end create such a scandal, she was not the woman to sit by and do nothing to prevent it. She had a soft corner for Vidal, and a very real affection for his mother. She had also her fair share of family pride, and her first thought was to apprise Avon instantly of this disastrous occurrence. Then her heart failed her. This was no tale to pour into Avon’s ears, at the very moment when his son had been obliged to leave the country for yet another offence. She had no clear idea of what the outcome of it all would be, or whether it would be possible to hush the matter up, but she determined to send word to Léonie.
She cast an appraising glance at Mrs. Challoner. She was a shrewd woman, and Mrs. Challoner would have been startled had she known how much that she had kept to herself Lady Fanny had guessed.
“I’ll do what I can for you,” Fanny said abruptly. “But you will do well to say nothing of this disagreeable matter to anyone. I shall repeat your very extraordinary story to my sister-in-law. Let me point out to you, ma’am, that if you raise a scandal you will lose the object you have in view. Once your daughter’s name is being bandied from lip to lip I can assure you my nephew won’t marry her. As to scandals, ma’am, I leave it to you to decide who will be most hurt by one.”
Mrs. Challoner hardly knew what to reply. Lady Fanny’s manner awed her; she was uncertain of her ground, for she had expected Lady Fanny to be horrified and alarmed. But Lady Fanny was so calm, so delicately scornful that she began to wonder whether she would be able to frighten the Alastairs with the threat of exposure after all. She wished she had her brother by, to advise her. She said rather pugnaciously: “And if I do keep silent? What then?”
Lady Fanny lifted her eyebrows. “I cannot take it upon myself to answer for my brother. I have informed you that I will tell my sister-in-law your story. If you will have the goodness to leave your address, no doubt the Duchess — or the Duke — will visit you.” She stretched out her hand towards a little silver bell, and rang it. “I can only assure you, ma’am, that if wrong has been done his grace will certainly arrange matters honourably. Permit me to bid you good-day.” She nodded dismissal, and Mrs. Challoner found herself rising instinctively from her seat.
The footman was holding the door for her to pass through. She said: “If I do not hear within a day, I shall act as I think best, my lady.”
“There is not the smallest chance that you will hear within the day,” said her ladyship coldly. “My sister is at the moment quite remote from London. You might perhaps hear in three or four days.”
“Well ...” Mrs. Challoner stood hesitating. The interview had not been conducted as she had planned. “I shall wait on you again the day after to-morrow, ma’am. And you need not think I’m to be fobbed off.” She moved towards the door, but paused before she had reached it, and remembered to give Lady Fanny her direction. She then curtsied and withdrew, feeling a little discomfited and considerably annoyed.
Had she been able to transport herself back into the house five minutes later she would have been somewhat comforted. No sooner had the front door closed behind her than Lady Fanny flew up out of her chair, violently rang her hand-bell, and, upon the footman’s return, sent him to find Mr. John Marling at once.
Mr. Marling entered the room presently to find his mamma in a distracted mood.
“Good heavens, John, what an age you have been!” she cried. “Pray shut the door! The most dreadful thing has happened, and you must go immediately to Bedford.”
Mr. Marling replied reasonably: “I fear it will be most inconvenient for me to leave London to-day, mamma, as I am invited by Mr. Hope to accompany him to a meeting of the Royal Society. I understand there will be a discussion on the Phlogistic Theory, in which I am interested.”
Lady Fanny stamped her foot. “Pray what is the use of a stupid theory when Vidal is about to shame us all with a dreadful scandal? You can’t go to any society! You must go to Bedford.”
“When you ask, mamma, what is the use of the Phlogistic Theory, and apparently compare it with Vidal’s exploits, I can only reply that the comparison is ridiculous, and renders the behaviour of my cousin completely insignificant,” said Mr. Marling with heavy sarcasm.
“I do not want to hear another word about your tiresome theory,” declared her ladyship. “When our name is dragged in the mud we shall see whether Vidal’s conduct is insignificant or no.”
“I am thankful to say, ma’am, that my name is not Alastair. What has Vidal done now?”
“The most appalling thing! I must write at once to your aunt. I always said he would go too far one of these days. Poor, poor Léonie! I vow my heart quite aches for her.”
Mr. Marling watched her seat herself at her writing-table, and once more inquired: “What has Vidal done now?”
“He has abducted an innocent girl — not that I believe a word of it, for the mother’s a harpy, and I’ve little doubt the girl went with him willingly enough. If she didn’t, I shudder to think what may happen.”
“If you could contrive to be more coherent, mamma, I might understand better.”
Lady Fanny’s quill spluttered across the paper. “You will never understand anything except your odious theories, John,” she said crossly, but she paused in her letter-writing, and gave him a vivid and animated account of her interview with Mrs. Challoner.
At the end of it, Mr. Marling said in a disgusted voice: “Vidal is shameless. He had better marry this young female and live abroad. I quite despair of him, and I feel sure that while he is allowed to run wild in England we shall none of us know a moment’s peace.”
“Marry her? And pray what do you suppose Avon would have to say to that? We can only hope and trust that something may yet be done.”
“I had better journey to Newmarket, I suppose, and inform my uncle,” said Mr. Marling gloomily.
“Oh John, don’t be so provoking!” cried his mother. “Léonie would never forgive me if I let this come to Avon’s ears. You must fetch her from the Vanes at once, and we will lay our heads together.”
“It is impossible not to feel affection for my Aunt Léonie,” announced Mr. Marling, “but have you considered, mamma, that she is capable of treating even this piece of infamy with levity?”
“It does not signify in the least. All you need do is to bear this letter to her, and bring her back to town,” said Lady Fanny imperatively.
Mr. Marling, disapproving but obedient, arrived at Lady Vane’s house near Bedford that evening. There were several people staying there, but he contrived to meet his aunt in a room apart. His countenance was so lugubrious that she asked him in quick alarm if anything were amiss?
“Aunt,” said Mr. Marling gravely, “I am the bearer of bad tidings.”
Léonie turned pale. “Monseigneur?” she faltered.
“No, ma’am, so far as I am aware my uncle enjoys his customary health.”
“Ah, mon Dieu, it is Dominique! He has been shot in a duel? drowned in his yacht? dead of a fever? Speak, you!”
“My cousin is well, ma’am. Do not alarm yourself on that score. But the news is the worst imaginable.”
“If he is well it cannot be the worst,” said Léonie. “Please do not prepare me for a shock any more; I find it too alarming. What has happened to my son?”
“Madam, I regret to be obliged to soil your ears with the story, which I myself find excessively disagreeable. Vidal has abducted — I fear perhaps with violence — a young female of virtue and family.”
“Oh, mordieu, it is the bourgeoise!” said Léonie. “And now Monseigneur will be more displeased than ever! Tell me it all!”
Mr. Marling regarded her with an expression of pained severity. “Possibly, my dear aunt, you would prefer to read it. I have a billet for you from my mother.”
“Give it to me at once, then,” said Léonie, and fairly snatched it from his hand.
Lady Fanny’s agitated scrawl covered three pages. Léonie read them quickly, and exclaimed at the end that Fanny was an angel. She said that she would return to town at once, and upon her hostess coming into the room, greeted her with apologies, and the information that Lady Fanny was ill, and needed her. Lady Vane was all solicitude, and put a number of sympathetic questions to John which caused that conscientious young man to wriggle uncomfortably. She prevailed on Léonie to postpone her departure at least until next morning, and this Léonie consented to do out of consideration for her nephew, who had been travelling all day.
He and she set forth next day in her grace’s huge travelling coach. Léonie did not seem to be greatly disturbed by her son’s conduct. She said cheerfully that it was very odd of Dominique to abduct the wrong sister, and asked John what he supposed could have happened. John, who was feeling tired and annoyed, said that he could not venture a guess.
“Well, I think it was very stupid of him,” said the Duchess.
Mr. Marling said austerely: “Vidal’s conduct is nearly always stupid, ma’am. He has neither sense nor decency.”
“Indeed?” said the Duchess dangerously.
“I have endeavoured again and again to interest him in serious things. I am his senior by six years, and I have not unnaturally supposed that my advice and frequent warnings would not go entirely unheeded. It seems I was wrong. The late scandalous happenings at Timothy’s make it positively unpleasant for me to enter the clubs, where I am aware that I must be indicated to any stranger as the cousin of a notorious rake and — not to mince matters — murderer. Moreover — ”
“I will tell you something, John,” interrupted the Duchess. “You should be very grateful to Dominique, for of a certainty no one would point you out at all if you were not his cousin.”
“Good God, aunt, do you imagine I wish to achieve notoriety in such a fashion? It is of all things the most repugnant to me. As for this latest exploit — well, I ascribe it very largely to my Uncle Rupert’s influence. Vidal has always chosen to be intimate with him to a degree I and, I may say, my mother, have considered to be unwise in the extreme. I don’t doubt he learned his utter disregard for morality from him.”
“I find you insupportable!” stated the Duchess. “My poor child, it is quite plain to me that you are jealous of Dominique.”
“Jealous?” repeated Mr. Marling, astounded.
“Of a certainty,” nodded the Duchess. “To shoot a man dead: it is terrible, you say. For you could not do it. You could not shoot an elephant dead. To elope with a woman: it is scandalous! Bien entendu, but you, you could not persuade even a blind woman to elope with you, which I find not scandalous, but tragic.”
Mr. Marling was unable to think of a suitable retort. His aunt, having disposed of him in this one withering speech, smiled affably, and patted his knee. “We will discuss now what I must do to rescue Dominique from this impasse.”
Mr. Marling could not resist the temptation of saying: “I apprehend that the unfortunate young female at present in his company is more in need of rescue.”
“Ah, bah!” cried the Duchess, “it is not possible to talk to you, for you are without sense!”
“I am sorry, ma’am, if I disappoint you, but you appear to regard this affair very lightly.”
“I do not regard it lightly at all,” said Léonie stiffly. “Only I do not believe that it is just as this Mrs. Challoner has told Fanny. If Vidal has taken her daughter to France I think she went very willingly, and the matter solves itself. Mrs. Challoner would have me believe that the one sister went with my son to save the other. Voilà une histoire peu croyable. I ask myself, if this were true where is the girl now? In England, bien sûr, for why should Vidal take to France someone he did not want?”
“I’ve thought of that too, Aunt Léonie, and I have the answer, though I am must afraid you will not credit it. If the story is true, Vidal will have taken her for revenge.”
There was a long silence. The Duchess clasped and unclasped her hands. “That is what you think, John?”
“It is possible, ma’am, you’ll agree.”
“Yes. In a black mood Dominique might ... I must go to Rupert at once! Why do we go so slowly? Tell them to hurry!”
“Go to my uncle?” John echoed. “I cannot conceive what good he will be to you!”
“No?” Léonie said fiercely. “I will tell you, then. He will go to France with me, and find Dominique and this girl.”
“Lord, ma’am, do you tell me you’ll go off to France with him?”
“Why not?” demanded Léonie.
“But, aunt, it will be thought prodigious strange if it becomes known. People will think you have run away with my uncle. Moreover, I consider him a most unsuitable escort for any lady, accustomed as you are, my dear ma’am, to every delicate attention to her comfort.”
“I thank you, John, but I am quite in the way of running off to France with Rupert, and he will look after me very well,” said her grace. “And now, mon enfant, if I am not to murder you we will talk no more of Vidal, or of Rupert, or of anything.”
Some hours later aunt and nephew, each meticulously polite to the other, reached Lady Fanny’s house in town. It was the dinner hour, and her ladyship was about to sit down to a solitary meal when the Duchess came quickly into the dining-room.
“Oh, my dearest love!” exclaimed Fanny, embracing her. “Thank heaven you have come! It is all too, too true!”
Léonie flung off her cloak. “Tell me at once, Fanny; he has abducted her? Truly he has abducted her?”
“Yes,” Lady Fanny asseverated. “I fear so. That odious woman was here again to-day, and indeed she means mischief, and I don’t doubt she’ll make herself vastly unpleasant unless we can buy her off, which I thought of at once, only, my love, I do not know how in the world we are to do so unless you have a great deal of money by you, for I’ve not a penny. I declare I could kill Vidal! It is so unthinking of him to ravish honest girls — not that I believe she is honest for a moment, Léonie. The mother is a horrid, designing creature if ever I saw one, and oh, my dear, she brought the other sister here to-day, and ’twas that made me believe in her ridiculous story, for all I’m sure the most of it’s a pack of lies. The child is quite provokingly lovely, Léonie, and do you know, she makes me think of what I was at her age? As soon as I clapped eyes on her I saw that there was nothing could be more natural than for Vidal to be in love with her.” She broke off as the serving-man came into the room to lay two more covers, and begged Léonie to be seated. Further discussion being impossible before the servant, she began to talk of the latest town gossip, and even, for want of something to say, asked her son kindly whether he would not like to go to the Royal Society to-night. John deigned no reply, but when dinner was over he informed the two ladies that although it was unhappily out of his power to repair to the Royal Society, he proposed to occupy himself with a book in the library.
Upstairs in the privacy of her boudoir, Fanny poured out the rest of her tale. She said that Sophia Challoner had scarce opened her little sulky mouth, but she could vow the chit was furious at having Vidal stolen from her. “The veriest minx, my dear! Oh, I know the signs, trust me! If the sister is at all like her, and how can she not be? poor Vidal is most horridly taken in. There’s no doubt he took her off to Prance with him, for if he did not, where is she? What shall we do?”
“I am going to Paris,” Léonie said. “First I will see this Mrs. Challoner. Then I shall tell Rupert he must take me to France. If it is all true, and the girl is not a — what is the word, I want, please?”
“I know what you mean, my love, never fear,” Lady Fanny said hastily.
“Well, if she is not that, then I must try to make Dominique marry her, for it is not at all convenable that he should ruin her. Besides, I am sorry for her,” Léonie added seriously. “To be alone like that, and in someone’s power is very uncomfortable, I can assure you, and me, I know.”
“The mother will never rest till she has caught Vidal, but what of Justin, Léonie? I vow I’ll have no hand in this. He can be so excessively unpleasant, you know.”
“I have thought of Justin, but though I do not like to deceive him, I see that this time I must. If Dominique must marry the girl I will make up a clever lie to tell him, and he must not know that it was all due to Dominique’s folly. That would make him very enraged, tu sais.”
“He’ll not believe you,” Lady Fanny said.
“Yes, he will believe me, perhaps, because I do not lie to him — ever,” said Léonie tragically. “I have thought of it all, and I am very miserable. I shall write to him one big lie, that cousin Harriet is indisposed, and I have gone to stay with her, and she is so old he will certainly not find that surprising. Then, if it is necessary that Dominique marries this girl whom already I detest, I will make him do it, only it will not appear that I was ever in Paris, for I shall come home, and I shall know nothing of Dominique at all. Then Dominique will write to tell Monseigneur that he is married — and if it is true the girl is Sir Giles’ granddaughter it is not after all so very dreadful — and I shall pretend how glad I am, and perhaps Justin will not mind so much.”
Fanny caught her hands. “My dearest love, you know he will be furious, and when Justin is angry he is more dangerous than ever Dominique could be.”
Léonie’s lip trembled. “I know,” she said. “But at least it will not be so bad as the truth.”