“Pretty well, for one morning’s work!” said Sophy. Mr. Rivenhall was less satisfied. His mother was dismayed to discover that so far from having taken a liking to his cousin he was appalled to think that they might be obliged to house her for months. “I tell you frankly, ma’am, it will not do!” he said. “God knows how long my uncle may be away! I only wish you may not live to regret the day when you consented to take charge of his daughter! The sooner you can fulfill the rest of his expectations, and marry her off to some poor wretch the better it will be for the rest of us!”
“Good gracious, Charles!” said Lady Ombersley. “What in the world has she done to put you out?”
He declined to answer this, merely saying that Sophy was pert, headstrong, and so badly brought up that he doubted whether any man would be fool enough to offer for her. His mother refrained from inquiring further into Sophy’s iniquities, but instead seized the moment to suggest that as a prelude to finding a husband for her she should be allowed to give an evening party, with dancing. “I do not mean a large affair,” she hastened to add. “Perhaps ten couples, or so — in the drawing-room!”
“By all means!” he said. “That will make it quite unnecessary for you to invite young Fawnhope!”
“Oh, quite!” she agreed.
“I should warn you, Mama,” he said, “that we encountered him this morning! My cousin greeted him an as old and valued acquaintance and begged him to call on her here!”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Lady Ombersley. “How very unfortunate, to be sure! But I daresay she does know him, Charles, for she was with your uncle in Brussels last year.”
“She!” said Charles witheringly. “He had no more notion who she was than the Emperor of China! But he will certainly call! I must leave you to deal with that, ma’am!”
With these very unfair words he strode out of his mother’s room, leaving her to wonder in what way he supposed her to be able to deal with a morning call paid by a young man of unexceptionable birth, who was the son of one of her oldest friends. She came to the conclusion that he had no more idea than she, and banished the matter from her mind, bending it instead to the far more pleasant problem of whom to invite to the first party she had held in two months.
She was presently interrupted by the entrance of her niece. Remembering Charles’s dark words, she asked Sophy, with an assumption of severity, what she had done to vex him. Sophy laughed, and almost stunned her by replying that she had done nothing but steal his curricle and tool it round the city for half an hour.
“Sophy!” gasped her ladyship. “Charles’s grays? You could never hold them!”
“To own the truth,” admitted Sophy, “I had the devil’s own work to do so! Oh, I beg your pardon! I did not mean to say that, dearest Aunt Lizzie! Don’t scold! It comes of living with Sir Horace. I know I say the most shocking things, but I do try to mind my wretched tongue! No, and do not give Charles’s pets another thought! He will come about presently. I daresay if he had not engaged himself to marry that tedious girl he would not be so stuffy!”
“Oh, Sophy!” said Lady Ombersley involuntarily. “I own I cannot like Miss Wraxton, try as I will!”
“Like her! I should think not indeed!” exclaimed Sophy.
“Yes, but one should,” said Lady Ombersley unhappily. “She is so very good, and I am sure she wishes to be a most dutiful daughter to me, and it is so ill natured of me not to wish for a dutiful daughter! But when I think that in quite a short time now I shall have her living in the house — but I should not be talking in this style! It is most improper, and you must forget it, if you please, Sophy!”
Sophy paid no heed to this, but echoed, “Living in the house? You are not serious, ma’am?”
Lady Ombersley nodded. “There is nothing at all out of the way in such an arrangement, you know, my love. They will have their own apartments, of course, but — ” She broke off and sighed.
Sophy looked at her fixedly for a few moments, but, rather to her surprise, said nothing. Lady Ombersley tried to put these melancholy reflections out of her mind and began to talk about the party she meant to give. In these plans her niece entered with enthusiasm, and an efficiency that swept Lady Ombersley quite off her feet. By what stages she arrived at agreement with Sophy on all points she was never afterward able to explain, either to Charles or to herself, but at the end of an interview which left her feeling bemused but convinced that no one could boast of having a sweeter-natured or more thoughtful niece than Sophy, she had certainly consented not only to allow Sophy and Cecilia to undertake all the necessary arrangements, but also to permit Sir Horace (through his daughter) to defray the cost of the entertainment.
“And now,” Sophy said buoyantly to Cecilia, “you shall tell me where we must order the cards of invitation and where you in general go for refreshments. I don’t think we should leave that to my aunt’s cook, for he would be busy for so many days he would have very little time for anything else, and that would make everyone uncomfortable, which I don’t at all wish.”
Cecilia regarded her in round-eyed astonishment. “But Sophy, Mama said it should only be quite a small party!”
“No, Cecy, it was your brother who said that,” replied Sophy. “It is going to be a very large party.”
Selina, who was present at this conference, asked shrewdly: “Does Mama know that?”
Sophy laughed. “Not yet!” she admitted. “Do you think she does not care for large parties?”
“Oh, no! Why, there were more than four hundred people invited to the ball she gave for Maria, were there not, Cecilia? Mama enjoyed it excessively, because it was such a capital success, and everyone complimented her on it. Cousin Mathilda told me so.”
“Yes, but the cost of it!” Cecilia said. “She will not dare! Charles would be so angry!”
“Don’t give him a thought!” recommended Sophy. “It is Sir Horace who will bear the cost, not Charles. Make a list of all your acquaintances, Cecy, and I will make one of those of my friends who are in England, and then we will go out to order the cards. I imagine we shall not need more than five hundred.”
“Sophy,” said Cecilia, in a faint voice, “are we going to send out five hundred invitations without even asking Mama?”
Imps of mischief danced in her cousin’s eyes. “Of course we are, dear goose! For once we have despatched them, even your horrid brother cannot recall them!”
“Oh, famous, famous!” cried Selina, beginning to skip round the room. “ What a rage he will be in!”
“ Dare I?” breathed Cecilia, at once scared and dazzled.
Her sister begger her not to be poor spirited, but it was Sophy who clinched the matter, by pointing out to her that she would not have to bear the responsibility and was unlikely to incur much recrimination from her brother, who would have no hesitation in laying the blame at the right door.
Mr. Rivenhall, meanwhile, had gone off to visit his betrothed. He arrived at the Brinklow’s somewhat cheerless house in Brook Street still seething with indignation, but so thankless and perverse was his disposition that no sooner did he find his sentiments shared and his strictures on his cousin endorsed than he took an abrupt turn in quite another direction and said much must be forgiven a girl who could handle his grays as Sophy had. From being a female sunk below reproach Sophy became rapidly an unconventional girl whose unaffected manners were refreshing in an age of simpers and high flights.
This was not just to Miss Wraxton’s taste. To be driving about the city unattended did not suit her sense of propriety, and she said so. Mr. Rivenhall grinned. “No, very true, but I suppose it was in some sort my fault. I did put up her back. There’s no harm done; if she could control my grays, as fresh as they were, she’s a capital whip. All the same, if I have anything to say to it, she is not going to set up her own carriage while she remains in my mother’s charge. Good God, we should never know from one moment to the next where she was, for if I know anything of my abominable cousin Sophy, to drive decorously round the Park would not do for her at all!”
“You take it with a composure that does you the greatest credit, my dear Charles.”
“I didn’t!” he interrupted, with a rueful laugh. “She put me in a thundering rage!”
“I am sure it is not wonderful that she should have. To drive a gentleman’s horses without his leave shows a want of conduct that is above the line of being pleasing. Why, even I have never even requested you to let me take the reins!”
He looked amused. “My dear Eugenia, I hope you never will, for I shall certainly refuse such a request! You could never hold my horses.”
If Miss Wraxton had not been so very well bred she would at this tactless remark have returned a pretty hot rejoinder, for she prided herself a little on her handling of the ribbons; and, although she did not drive herself in London, owned an elegant phaeton which she used when staying at her home in Hampshire. As it was, she was obliged to pause for a moment before saying anything. During this brief period she swiftly formed the resolve of demonstrating to Charles, and his objectionable cousin, that a lady reared on the strictest principles of propriety could be quite as notable a horsewoman as any hoyden who had spent her girlhood junketing about the Continent. She had several times been complimented on her seat on a horse and knew her style to be excellent. She said, “If Miss Stanton-Lacy cares for such things, perhaps she would like to ride with me one afternoon in the Park. That will give her thoughts another direction, diverting them from such foolish notions as setting up her own carriage. Let us make up a party, Charles! Dear Cecilia is not fond of the exercise, I know, or I should solicit her to join us. But Alfred will be pleased to go with me, and you may bring your cousin. Tomorrow? Pray beg her to go with us!”
Mr. Rivenhall, an intolerant man, had no affection for his Eugenia’s young brother, and generally made it his business to avoid him, but he was struck by Miss Wraxton’s nobility in promoting an engagement which (he guessed) would afford her little pleasure and at once agreed to it, expressing at the same time his sense of obligation to her. She smiled at him and said that it must be an object with her to exert herself in his interests. He was a not much given to the making of graceful gestures, but at times kissed her hand and said that he knew well how utterly he could rely upon her in every predicament. Miss Wraxton then repeated the remark she had previously made to Lady Ombersley, that she was particularly sorry that, at this crisis in the Ombersley fortunes, circumstance had intervened to postpone her union with him. She rather thought that the indifferent state of dear Lady Ombersley’s health made it impossible for her to manage her household just as Charles could wish. Her kind heart made her perhaps overtolerant, and the languor induced by an ailing constitution rendered her blind to certain defects that could speedily be remedied by a helpful daughter-in-law. Miss Wraxton owned that she had been surprised to learn that Lady Ombersley had allowed herself to be persuaded by her brother — a very odd kind of a man, her papa had told her — to assume the charge of his daughter for an unspecified length of time. She passed from this, in the smoothest fashion, to a gently worded criticism of Miss Adderbury, no doubt an excellent woman, but sadly lacking in accomplishments or in control over her spirited charges. But this was a mistake. Mr. Rivenhall would permit no criticism of Addy, who had guided his own first steps; and as for his uncle, Lord Brinklow’s slighting comment made him instantly bristle in defense of his relative. Sir Horace, he informed Miss Wraxton, was a highly distinguished man, with a genius for diplomacy.
“But not, you will own, a genius for rearing a daughter!” said Miss Wraxton archly.
He laughed at that, but said, “Oh, well! I don’t know that there is any real harm in Sophy, after all!”
When Miss Wraxton’s invitation was conveyed to Sophy she professed herself happy to accept it and at once desired Miss Jane Storridge to press out her riding dress. This garment, when she appeared in it on the following afternoon, filled Cecilia with envy but slightly staggered her brother, who could not feel that a habit made of pale blue cloth, with epaulettes and frogs, a la Hussar, and sleeves braided halfway up the arm, would win approval from Miss Wraxton. Blue kid gloves and half-boots, a high-standing collar trimmed with lace, a muslin cravat, narrow lace ruffles at the wrists, and a tall-crowned hat, like a shako, with a peak over the eyes, and a plume of curled ostrich feathers completed this dashing toilette. The tightly fitting habit set off Sophy’s magnificent figure to admiration; and from under the brim of her hat her brown locks curled quite charmingly; but Mr. Rivenhall, appealed to by his sister to subscribe to her conviction that Sophy looked beautiful, merely bowed, and said that he was no judge of such matters.
However that might be, he was no mean judge of a horse, and when he set eyes on Salamanca, being walked up and down the road by John Potton, he did not withhold his praise, but said that he no longer wondered at Hubert’s ecstasies. John Potton threw his mistress up into the saddle, and after allowing Salamanca to indulge his playfulness for a few moments, Sophy brought him mincing up alongside Mr. Rivenhall’s bay hack, and they set off at a sedate pace in the direction of Hyde Park. Salamanca was inclined to resent the existence of sedan chairs, dogs, crossing sweepers, and took instant exception to a postman’s horn, but Mr. Rivenhall, accustomed to be on the alert to prevent misadventure when riding with Cecilia through London streets, knew better than to offer advice or assistance to his cousin. She was very well able to control her mount for herself, which, reflected Mr. Rivenhall, was just as well, since Salamanca could scarcely have been described as an ideal horse for a lady.
This comment was made by Miss Wraxton, whom they found awaiting them, with her brother, within the gates of the Park. Miss Wraxton, after one glance at Sophy’s habit, transferred her gaze to Salamanca, and said, “Oh, what a beautiful creature! But surely he is a little too strong for you, Miss Stanton-Lacy? You should commission Charles to find a well-mannered lady’s horse for you to ride.”
“I daresay he would be only too delighted, but I have discovered that his notions and mine on that subject are widely separated,” replied Sophy. “Moreover, though he is a trifle spirited, there is not an ounce of vice in Salamanca, and he has what the Duke calls excellent bottom — has carried me for league upon dreary league without sign of flagging!” she leaned forward to pat Salamanca’s gleaming black neck. “To be sure, he has not yet lashed out at the end of a long day, which the Duke vows and declares Copenhagen did, when he dismounted from his back after Waterloo, but I hold that to be a virtue in him!”
“Indeed, yes!” said Miss Wraxton, ignoring the unbecoming pretension shown by this careless reference to England’s hero. “You will let me introduce my brother to you; Miss Stanton-Lacy, Alfred!”
Mr. Wraxton, a pallid young gentleman with a receding chin, a loose, wet mouth, and a knowing look in his eyes, bowed, and said he was happy to make Miss Stanton-Lacy’s acquaintance. He then asked her if she had been in Brussels at the time of the great battle and added that he had had some idea of joining as a Volunteer at the height of the scare. “But from one cause and another nothing came of it,” he said. “Do you know the Duke well? Quite the great man, ain’t he? But perfectly affable, they tell me. I daresay you are on famous terms with him, for you knew him in Spain, didn’t you?”
“My dear Alfred,” interposed his sister, “Miss Stanton-Lacy will think you have less than common sense if you talk such nonsense. She will tell you that the Duke has more important things to think of than all of us poor females who hold him in such admiration.”
Sophy looked rather amused. “Well, no, I don’t think I should say that,” she replied. “But I was never one of his flirts, if that is what you mean, Mr. Wraxton. I am not at all in his style, I assure you.”
“Shall we ride on?” suggested Miss Wraxton. “You must tell me about your horse. Is he Spanish? Very handsome, but a little too nervous for my taste. But I am spoilt. My own dear Dorcas here is so very well mannered.”
“Salamanca is not really nervous; he is merely funning,” said Sophy. “As for manners, I hold him to be unequaled. Would you like to see me put him through his paces? Watch! He was Mameluke trained, you know!”
“For heaven’s sake, Sophy, not in the Park!” said Charles sharply.
She threw him one of her saucy smiles, and set Salamanca caracoling.
“Oh, pray be careful!” exclaimed Miss Wraxton. “It is very dangerous! Charles, stop her! We shall have everyone staring at us!”
“You won’t mind if I shake the fidgets out of his legs!” Sophy called. “He is itching for a gallop!”
With that, she wheeled Salamanca about, and let him have his head down the stretch of tan that lay beside the carriage road.
“Yoicks!” uttered Mr. Wraxton, and set off in pursuit.
“My dear Charles, what is to be done with her?” said Miss Wraxton. “Galloping in the Park, and in that habit, which I should blush to wear! I was never more shocked!”
“Yes,” he agreed, his eyes on the diminishing figure in the distance. “But, by God, she can ride!”
“Of course, if you mean to encourage her in such pranks there is no more to be said.”
“I don’t,” he replied briefly.
She was displeased and said coldly, “I must confess that I do not admire her style. I am reminded of nothing so much as the equestriennes at Astley’s Amphitheatre. Shall we canter?”
In this sedate way they rode side by side down the tan until they saw Sophy galloping back to them, Mr. Wraxton still in pursuit. Sophy reined in, wheeled, and fell in beside her cousin. “How much I enjoyed that!” she said, her cheeks in a glow. “I have not been on Salamanca’s back for over a week. But tell me! Have I done wrong? So many prim persons stared as though they could not believe their eyes!”
“You should not ride in that neck-or-nothing fashion in the Park,” Charles replied. “I should have warned you.”
“You should indeed! I was afraid it might be that. Never mind! I will be good now, and if anyone speaks of it to you you will say that it is only your poor little cousin from Portugal, who has been so badly brought up that there is no doing anything about it.” She leaned forward to speak across him to Miss Wraxton. “I appeal to you, Miss Wraxton! You are a horsewoman! Is it not insupportable to be held down to a canter when you long to gallop for miles?”
“Most irksome,” agreed Miss Wraxton. At this moment Alfred Wraxton rejoined them, calling out, “By Jove, Miss Stanton-Lacy, you will take the shine out of them all! You are nothing to her, Eugenia!”
“We cannot go four abreast,” said Miss Wraxton ignoring this remark. “Charles, fall behind with Alfred! I cannot converse with Miss Stanton-Lacy across you.”
He complied with this request, and Miss Wraxton bringing her mare alongside Salamanca, said with all the tact upon which she plumed herself. “I am persuaded that you must find our London ways strange at first.”
“Why, I imagine they cannot differ greatly from those of Paris, or Vienna, or even Lisbon!” said Sophy.
“I have never visited those cities, but I believe — indeed, I am sure — that the tone of London is vastly superior,” said Miss Wraxton.
Her air of calm certainty struck Sophy as being so funny that she went into a peal of laughter. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” she gasped. “But it is so ridiculous, you know!”
“I expect it must seem so to you,” agreed Miss Wraxton, her calm quite unimpaired. “I understand that a great deal of license is permitted on the Continent to females. Here it is not so. Quite the reverse! To be thought bad ton, dear Miss Stanton-Lacy, would be very dreadful. I know that you will not take it amiss if I give you a hint. You will of course wish to attend the Assemblies at Almack’s, for instance. I assure you, the veriest breath of criticism to reach the ears of the Patronesses, and you may say farewell to any hope of obtaining a voucher from them. Tickets may not be purchased without a voucher, you know. It is most exclusive! The rules, too, are very strict, and must not be contravened by a hairsbreadth.”
“You terrify me,” said Sophy. “Do you think I shall be blackballed?”
Miss Wraxton smiled. “Hardly, since you will make your debut under dear Lady Ombersley’s aegis! She will no doubt, tell you just how you should conduct yourself, if her health permits her to take you there. It is unfortunate that circumstances have prevented me from occupying that position which would have enabled me to have relieved her of such duties.”
“Forgive me!” interrupted Sophy, whose attention had been wandering, “but I think Madame de Lieven is waving to me, and it would be very uncivil not to notice her!”
She rode off as she spoke, to where a smart barouche was drawn up beside the track, and leaned down from her saddle to shake the languid hand held up to her.
“Sophie!” pronounced the Countess. “Sir Horace told me I should meet you here. You were galloping ventre a terre. Never do so again! Ah, Mrs. Burrell, permit me to present to you Miss Stanton-Lacy!”
The lady seated beside the Ambassador’s wife bowed slightly, and allowed her lips to relax into an infinitesimal smile. This expanded a little when she observed Miss Wraxton, following in Sophy’s wake, and she inclined her head, a great mark of condescension.
Countess Lieven nodded to Miss Wraxton, but went on talking to Sophy. “You are staying with Lady Ombersley. I am a little acquainted with her, and I shall call. She will spare you to me perhaps one evening. You have not seen Princess Esterhazy yet, or Lady Jersey? I shall tell them I have met you, and they will want to hear how Sir Horace does. What did I promise Sir Horace I would do? Ah, but of course! Almack’s! I will send you a voucher, ma chere Sophie, but do not gallop in Hyde Park.” She then told her coachman to drive on, included the whole of Sophy’s party in her slight, valedictory smile and turned to continue her interrupted conversation with Mrs. Drummond Burrell.
“I was not aware that you are acquainted with the Countess Lieven,” said Miss Wraxton.
“Do you dislike her?” Sophy asked, aware of the coldness in Miss Wraxton’s voice. “Many people do, I know. Sir Horace calls her the great intrigante, but she is clever and can be very amusing. She has a tendre for him, as I daresay you have guessed. I like Princess Esterhazy better myself, I own, and Lady Jersey better than either of them, because she is so much more sincere, in spite of that restless manner of hers.”
“Dreadful woman!” said Charles. “She never stops talking! She is known as Silence, in London.”
“Is she? Well, I am sure, if she knows it, she does not care a bit, for she dearly loves a joke.”
“You are fortunate knowing so many of the Patronesses of Almack’s,” observed Miss Wraxton.
Sophy gave her irrepressible chuckle. “To be honest, I think my good fortune lies in having such an accomplished flirt for a father!”
Mr. Wraxton giggled at this, and his sister, dropping a little behind, brought her mare up on Mr. Rivenhall’s other side, and said in a low tone, under cover of some quizzing remark made to Sophy by Mr. Wraxton: “It is a pity that men will laugh when her liveliness betrays her into saying what cannot be thought becoming. It brings her too much into notice, and that, I fancy, is the root of the evil.”
He raised his brows. “You are severe! Do you dislike her?”
“Oh, no, no!” she said quickly. “It is merely that I have no great taste for just that kind of sportive playfulness.”
He looked as though he would have liked to have said something more, but at this moment a very military-looking cavalcade came into sight, cantering easily toward them. It consisted of four gentlemen, whose dashing side whiskers and soldierly bearing proclaimed their profession. They glanced idly at Mr. Rivenhall’s party. The next instant there was a shout, and a hurried reining in, and one of the quartet exclaimed in ringing accents, “By all that’s wonderful, it’s the Grand Sophy!”
Confusion and babel followed this, all four gentlemen pressing up to grasp Sophy’s hand and pelting her with questions. Where had she sprung from? How long had she been in England? Why had they not been told of her arrival? How was Sir Horace?
“Oh, but, Sophy, you’re a sight for sore eyes!” declared Major Quinton, who had first hailed her.
“You have Salamanca still! Lord, do you remember riding, him, when you were almost snapped up by old Soult?”
“Sophy, what’s your direction? Are you living in London now? Where’s Sir Horace?”
She was laughing, trying to answer them all, while her horse sidled, and fidgeted, and tossed his head. “ Ah! Never mind about me! What are you all doing in England. I thought you in France still! Don’t tell me you have sold!”
“Debenham has, lucky dog! I’m on furlough. We’re stationed in England — what a thing it is to belong to the Gentlemen’s Sons — and Talgarth has become a great man, almost a Tiger! Yes, I assure you! A.D.C. to the Duke York. You notice the air of consequence. But he is condescension, not the least height in his manner — yet!”
“Silence, rattle!” said his victim. He was rather older than his companions, a handsome, dark man, with a decided of fashion and a languid manner. “Dear Sophy, I am tolerably certain that you cannot have been in London above many days. Not the smallest rumor of any volcanic disturbance I come to my ears, and you know how quick I am to get all of the news!”
She laughed. “Oh, that is too bad of you, Sir Vincent, but I don’t create disturbances. You know I don’t!”
“I know nothing of the kind, my child. When last I saw you, you were engaged in arranging in the most ruthless fashion the affairs of the most bewildered family of Belgians I have yet encountered. They had all my sympathy, there was nothing I could do to help them. I know my limitations.”
“Those poor Le Bruns! Well, but someone had to help them out of such a tangle! I assure you, everything was settled most satisfactorily! But come! I forget my manners in all this excitement! Miss Wraxton, do pray forgive me, and allow me to present to you Colonel Sir Vincent Talgarth, and beside him, Colonel Debenham. And this is Major Titus Quinton, and — oh, dear, ought I to have said your name first, Francis? It is one of the things I never know, but no matter! Captain Lord Francis Wolvey! And this is my cousin Mr. Rivenhall. Oh, and Mr. Wraxton also!”
Miss Wraxton inclined her head politely; Mr. Rivenhall, bowing slightly to the rest of the party, addressed himself to Lord Francis, saying, “I don’t think I ever met you, but your brother and I were up at Oxford together.”
Lord Francis leaned forward in his saddle to shake him by the hand. “Now I know who you are!” he announced. “You are Charles Rivenhall! Thought I couldn’t be mistaken! How do you do? Do you still box? Freddy was used to say he never knew an amateur with a more punishing right!”
Mr. Rivenhall laughed. “Did he? He felt it often enough, but I take no credit for that. He was always glaringly abroad!”
Major Quinton, who had been regarding him intently, said, “Then that is very likely where I have see you. Jackson’s Saloon! You are the fellow Jackson says he might have made into a champion if only you had not been a gentleman!”
This remark naturally beguiled all three gentlemen into a sporting conversation. Mr. Wraxton hung on the outskirts of it, occasionally interpolating a few words which no one paid any heed to; Sophy smiled benignly to see her friends and her cousin so happily absorbed; and Colonel Debenham, who had excellent manners, and a kind heart, began to make painstaking conversation to Miss Wraxton. By tacit consent, the military gentlemen turned to accompany Mr. Rivenhall’s party up the track, and the entire cavalcade moved forward at a walking pace.
Sophy found that Sir Vincent had brought his horse up to walk beside hers, and said suddenly, “Sir Vincent, you are the very man I need! Let us draw a little ahead!”
“Nothing in this life, enchanting Juno, could afford me more pleasure!” he instantly responded. “I have no fancy for the Fancy. On no account tell anyone that I said that! It is quite unworthy of me! Are you about to transport me by accepting a heart laid often at your feet and as often spurned? Something informs me that I indulge my optimism too far and that you are going to demand of me some service that will plunge me into a morass of trouble and end in my being cashiered.”
“Nothing of the sort!” declared Sophy. “But I never knew anyone, other than Sir Horace, whose judgment I would rather trust when it comes to buying a horse. Sir Vincent, I want to purchase a pair for my phaeton!”
They had by this time considerably outdistanced the rest of the party. Sir Vincent made his roan drop to a walk, and said brokenly, “Allow me a moment in which to recover my manhood! So that is all the use you have for me!”
“Don’t be so absurd!” said Sophy. “What better could I have for anyone?”
“Dear Juno, I have told you a great many times, and shall tell you no more!”
“Sir Vincent,” said Sophy severely, “you have dangled after every heiress who has come in your way from the day I first met you.”
“Shall I ever forget it? You had lost a front tooth and tore your dress.”
“Very likely. Though I have not the least doubt that you don’t recall the occasion at all and have this instant made that up. You are a more hardened flirt even than Sir Horace, and you only offer for me because you know I shall not accept your suit. My fortune cannot be large enough to tempt you.”
“That,” acknowledged Sir Vincent, “is true. But better men than I, my dear Sophy, have been known to cut their coats to suit their cloth.”
“Yes, but I am not your cloth, and you know very well that indulgent though he may be, Sir Horace would never permit me to marry you, even if I wished to, which I do not.”
“Oh, very well!” sighed Sir Vincent. “Let us talk of horseflesh then!”
“The thing is,” confided Sophy, “that I was obliged to sell my carriage horses when we left Lisbon, and Sir Horace had no time to attend to the matter before he sailed for Brazil. He said my cousin would advise me, but he was quite out! He will not.”
“Charles Rivenhall,” said Sir Vincent, looking at her from under drooping eyelids, “is held to be no bad judge of a horse. What mischief are you brewing, Sophy?”
“None. He has said he will not stir in the matter, and also, that it would be improper for me to visit Tattersall’s. Is that true?”
“Well, it would certainly be unusual.”
“Then I won’t do it. My aunt would be distressed, and she has enough to plague her already... Where else can I buy a pair that will suit me?”
He gazed meditatively ahead between his horse’s ears. “I wonder if you would care to buy two of Manningtree’s breakdowns before they come into the open market?” he said presently. “Quite done up, poor fellow, and is selling off all his cattle. What’s your figure, Sophy?”
“Sir Horace told me not above four hundred, unless I saw a pair it would be a crime not to buy.”
“Manningtree would sell you his match bays for less than that. As handsome a pair as you could wish for. I should buy them myself if I had a feather to fly with.”
“Where may I see them?
“Leave that to me. I’ll arrange it. What’s your direction?”
“At Lord Ombersley’s house in Berkeley Square, that big one, at the corner!”
“Of course. So he is your uncle, is he?”
“No, but his wife is my aunt.”
“And Charles Rivenhall is therefore your cousin. Well, well! How do you contrive to amuse yourself, my Sophy?”
“I own, I did wonder how I should do so, but I find that the whole family is in a sad tangle, poor dears, and I do hope I may be able to make them more comfortable!”
“I have no particular liking for your uncle, who is one of my esteemed Chief’s cronies; on the only occasion when I solicited your beautiful cousin Cecilia to dance with me at Almack’s her forbidding brother forestalled me in a fashion as swift as it was crude. Someone ought to tell him that I am only interested in heiresses; and yet my withers are strangely wrung! Almost my heart goes out to the family. Do they tread blindly toward their doom, Sophy, or did they willingly receive a firebrand into their midst?”
She gave a chuckle. “They tread blindly, but I am not a firebrand!”
“No, I used the wrong word. You are like poor Whinyates’s rockets; no one knows what you will do next!”