Chapter One

“ DO NOT, I BEG OF YOU, MY LORD, SAY MORE!” uttered Miss Milborne, in imploring accents, slightly averting her lovely countenance, and clasping both hands at her bosom.

Her companion, a tall young gentleman who had gone romantically down upon one knee before her chair, appeared put out by this faltered request. “Damn it — I mean, dash it, Isabella!” he expostulated, correcting himself somewhat impatiently as the lady turned reproachful brown eyes upon him. “I haven’t started!”

“Do not!”

“But I’m about to offer for you!” said the Viscount, with more than a touch of asperity.

“I know,” replied the lady. “It is useless! Say no more, my lord!”

The Viscount arose from his knee, much chagrined. “I must say, Isabella, I think you might let a fellow speak!” he said crossly.

“I would spare you pain, my lord.”

“I wish you will stop talking in that damned theatrical way!” said the Viscount. “And don’t keep on calling me ‘my lord’, as though you hadn’t known me all your life!”

Miss Milborne flushed, and stiffened a little. It was perfectly true, since their estates marched together, that she had known the Viscount all her life, but a dazzling career as an acknowledged Beauty, with half the eligible young gentlemen in town at her feet, had accustomed her to a far more reverential mode of address than that favoured by her childhood’s playmate. In some dudgeon, she gazed coldly out of the window, while her suitor took a few hasty turns about the room.

The prospect, which was of neat lawns, well-stocked flowerbeds, and trim hedges, was a pleasing one, but it was not from any love of sylvan settings that Miss Milborne was at present sojourning in the country. Her withdrawal from the Metropolis some weeks previously had been in consequence of her having contracted an odiously childish complaint which had made it necessary for her to disappear from the Polite World at a moment when she might have been pardoned for considering herself, if not its hub, at least its cynosure. Her Mama, quite as sensible as herself of the ridiculous nature of her indisposition, had announced her to be quite worn down by the exigencies of fashionable life, and had whisked her off to Kent in a post-chaise-and-four, where, in a comfortable mansion suitably retired from the haunts of men, she was able not only to recover her health and looks in seclusion, but also to communicate her complaint to two abigails and a youthful pageboy. She had emerged from her sick room some weeks earlier, but since she was still a trifle pale and out of looks Mrs. Milborne, a lady distinguished by her admirable sense, had decided to keep her in the country until (she said) the roses should again bloom in her cheeks. Quite a number of ardent gentlemen had presented themselves at Milborne House, having driven all the way from London in the hopes of being permitted a glimpse of the Incomparable, but the door remained shut against them, and they were obliged to relinquish their nosegays and passionate billets into the hands of an unresponsive butler, and to tool their various chariots back to town without having had even the refreshment of being allowed to press their lips to the fair hand of the Beauty.

Lord Sheringham would undoubtedly have met with the same reception had he not presumed in a very unhandsome way upon his long acquaintance with the family, by riding over from Sheringham Place, where he had been spending the night, leaving his horse at the stables, and walking up through the gardens to enter the house through one of the long windows that opened on to the lawn. Encountering an astonished footman, his lordship, very much at home, had tossed his whip and his gloves on to a table, laid his curly-brimmed beaver beside them, and demanded the master of the house.

Mr Milborne, being quite unblessed by the worldly wisdom which characterized his spouse, had no sooner grasped the purpose of his visit than he suggested vaguely, and not very hopefully, that his lordship had better speak to Isabella himself. “For I’m sure I don’t know, Anthony,” he had said, looking doubtfully at the Viscount. “There’s no saying what may be in their heads, no saying at all!”

Correctly divining this cryptic utterance to refer to his wife and daughter, his lordship had said: “At all events, you’ve no objection, sir, have you?”

“No,” replied Mr Milborne. “That is — Well, no, I suppose I don’t object. But you had best see Isabella for yourself!”

So the Viscount was ushered into the Beauty’s presence before she had time even to draw down the blind against the too-searching light of day, and had plunged without the slightest preamble into the first offer of marriage he had ever made.

Miss Milborne found herself in the unhappy predicament of not knowing her own mind. The Viscount had been one of her acknowledged suitors for the past year, and the fact of her having known him almost from the cradle did not blind her to his charms. He was a handsome young blade, wild enough to intrigue the female fancy, and if not as brilliant a match as the Duke of Severn, who had lately shown flattering symptoms of being on the verge of declaring himself, at least he was much more presentable — his grace being a stolid young man inclined to corpulency. On the other hand, the Viscount was by no means so devout a lover as his friend Lord Wrotham, who had several times offered to blow his brains out, if such a violent act would afford her pleasure. In fact, the suspicion had more than once crossed Miss Milborne’s mind that the Viscount had joined the throng of her admirers for no better reason than that he was never one to be out of the mode. His professed adoration had not so far led him to abandon the pursuit of opera dancers and Cyprians, or to rectify those faults of character to which Miss Milborne had more than once taken exception. She was a little piqued by him. If he would but display a few tangible signs of his devotion, such as reforming his way of life, which was shocking; growing slightly haggard, like poor Wrotham; turning pale at a snub; or being cast into rapture by a smile, she thought she would have been much inclined to accept his proffered suit. But instead of behaving in a fashion which she had come to regard as her due, the Viscount continued on his reprehensible course, according her certainly a good deal of homage, but apparently deriving just as much pleasure as ever from a set of sports and pastimes which seemed to have been chosen by him with a view to causing his family the maximum amount of pain and anxiety.

She stole a look at him under her eyelashes. No, he was not as handsome as poor Wrotham, whose dark, stormy beauty troubled her dreams a little. Wrotham was a romantic figure, particularly when his black locks were dishevelled through his clutching them in despair. The Viscount’s fair curls were dishevelled too, but there was nothing romantic about this, since the disorder was the result of careful combing, and Miss Milborne had a strong suspicion that his passion for herself was not of such a violent nature as to induce him to interfere with his valet’s inspired handiwork. He was taller than Wrotham, rather loose-limbed, and inclined to be careless of his appearance. Not that this criticism could be levelled at him on this occasion, Miss Milborne was obliged to own. He had dressed himself with obvious care. Nothing could have been neater than the cravat he wore, nothing more rigorously starched than the high points of his shirt collar. The long-tailed coat of blue cloth, made for him by no less a personage than the great Stultz, set without a crease across his shoulders; his breeches were of the fashionable pale yellow; and his top boots were exquisitely polished. At the moment, as he paced about the room, his countenance was marred by something rather like a scowl, but his features were good, and if he lacked Wrotham’s romantic expression it was an undeniable fact that he could, when he liked, smile in a way that lent a good deal of sweetness to his wilful, obstinate mouth. He had deceptively angelic blue eyes, at odd variance with the indefinable air of rakishness that sat upon his person. As Miss Milborne watched him, they chanced to encounter hers. For a moment they stared belligerently, then his lordship’s good humour reasserted itself, and he grinned. “Oh, deuce take it, Bella, you know I’m head over ears in love with you!”

“No, I don’t,” said Miss Milborne, with unexpected frankness.

The Viscount’s jaw dropped. “But my dear girl — ! No, really, now, Bella! Most devoted slave! Word of a gentleman, I am! Good God, haven’t I been dangling at your shoestrings ever since I first knew you?”

“No,” said Miss Milborne. The Viscount blinked at her.

“When you first knew me,” said Miss Milborne, not rancorously, but as one stating a plain truth, “you said all girls were plaguey nuisances, and you called me Foxy, because you said I had foxy-coloured hair.”

“I did?” gasped his lordship, appalled at this heresy.

“Yes, you did, Sherry; and, what is more, you locked me in the gardener’s shed, and if it had not been for Cassy Bagshot I should have been left there all day!”

“No, no!” protested his lordship feebly. “Not all day!”

“Yes, I should, because you know very well you went off to shoot pigeons with one of your father’s fowling-pieces, and never gave me another thought!”

“Lord, if I hadn’t forgotten that!” exclaimed Sherry. “Blew the hat off old Grimsby’s head too! He was as mad as fire! Devilish bad-tempered fellow, Grimsby! Went straight off to tell my father. When I think of the floggings that old man got me — Yes, and now you’ve put me in mind of it, Bella, how the deuce should I be giving you a thought with Father leading me off by the ear, and making me too curst sore to think of anything? Be reasonable, my dear girl, be reasonable!”

“It doesn’t signify in the least,” responded Miss Milborne. “But when you say that you have been dangling at my shoestrings ever since you first saw me, it is the greatest untruth ever I heard!”

“At all events, I liked you better than any other girl I knew!” said the Viscount desperately.

Miss Milborne regarded him in a reminiscent way which he found singularly unnerving. “No, I don’t think you did,” she said at last. “In fact, if you had a preference, I think it was for Hero Wantage.”

“ Hero?” exclaimed the Viscount. “No, dash it all, Bella, I never thought of Hero in all my life. I swear I didn’t!”

“No, I know that,” said Miss Milborne impatiently, “but when we were children you did like her more than you liked me, or Cassy, or Eudora, or Sophy, because she used to fetch and carry for you, and pretend she didn’t mind when she got hurt by your horrid cricket balls. She was only a baby, or she would have seen what an odious boy you were. For you were, Sherry, you know you were!”

Roused, the Viscount said, with feeling: “I’ll swear I wasn’t half as odious as the Bagshot girls! Lord, Bella, do you remember the way that little cat, Sophy, used to run and tell tales about the rest of us to her mother?”

“Not about me,” said Miss Milborne coldly. “There was nothing to tell.” She perceived that her reminiscent mood had infected the Viscount, the gleam in his eye warning her that some quite undesirable recollections were stirring in his memory, and made haste to recall him to the present. “Not that it signifies, I’m sure. The truth is we should not suit, Sherry. Indeed, I am deeply sensible of the honour you have done me, but — ”

“Never mind that flummery!” interrupted her suitor. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t deal extremely. Here’s me, madly in love with you, Bella — pining away, give you my word! No, really, my dear girl, I’m not bamming! When he measured me for this coat, Stultz found it out.”

“I fancy,” said Miss Milborne primly, “that it is the life you lead that is to blame for your being thin, my lord. I don’t flatter myself it can be put to my account.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all!” exclaimed his lordship indignantly. “I should like to know who’s been telling tales about me!”

“No one has been telling tales. I do not like to say it, but you must own that there is no secrecy about your conduct. And I must say, Sherry, I think if you really loved me as you say you do, you would take some pains to please me!”

“Take pains to please you! Take — No, by God, that’s too much, Bella! When I think of the way I’ve been dancing attendance on you, wasting my time at Almack’s night after night — ”

“And leaving early to go to some horrid gaming hell,” interpolated Miss Milborne.

The Viscount had the grace to blush, but he regarded her with a kindling eye, and said grimly: “Pray what do you know of gaming hells, miss?”

“I am thankful to say I know nothing at all of them, except that you are for ever in one, which all the world knows. It grieves me excessively.”

“Oh, does it?” said his lordship, anything but gratified by this evidence of his adored’s solicitude.

“Yes,” said Miss Milborne. An agreeable vision of the Viscount’s being reclaimed from a life of vice by his love for a good woman presented itself to her. She raised her lovely eyes to his face, and said: “Perhaps I ought not to speak of it, but — but you have shown an unsteadiness of character, Sherry, a — a want of delicacy of principle which makes it impossible for me to accept of your offer. I do not desire to give you pain, but the company you keep, your extravagance, the wildness of your conduct, must preclude any female of sensibility from bestowing her hand upon you.”

“But, Bella!” protested his horrified lordship. “Good God, my dear girl, that will all be a thing of the past! I shall make a famous husband! I swear I shall! I never looked at another female — ”

“Never looked at another female? Sherry, how can you? With my own eyes I saw you at Vauxhall with the most vulgar, hateful — ”

“Not in the way of marriage, I mean!” said the Viscount hastily. “That was nothing — nothing in the world! If you hadn’t driven me to distraction — ”

“Fiddle!” snapped Miss Milborne.

“But I tell you I love you madly — devotedly! My whole life will be blighted if you won’t marry me!”

“It won’t. You will merely go on making stupid bets, and racing, and gaming, and — ”

“Well, you’re out there,” interrupted Sherry. “I shan’t be able to, because if I don’t get married I shall be all to pieces.”

This blunt admission had the effect of making Miss Milborne stiffen quite alarmingly. “Indeed!” she said.

“Am I to understand, my lord, that you have offered for my hand as a means of extricating yourself from your debts?”

“No, no, of course I haven’t! If that had been my only reason I might have offered for a score of girls any time these past three years!” replied his lordship ingenuously. “Fact of the matter is, Bella, I’ve never been able to bring myself up to scratch before, though the lord knows I’ve tried! Never saw any female except you I could think of tying myself up to for life — I’ll take my oath I haven’t! Ask Gil! Ask Ferdy! Ask George! Ask anyone you like! They’ll all tell you it’s true.”

“I don’t desire to ask them. I dare say you would never have thought of offering for me either if your father had not left his fortune in that stupid way!”

“No, I dare say I shouldn’t,” agreed the Viscount. “At least, yes, I should! of course I should! But only consider, my dear girl! The whole fortune left in trust until I’m twenty-five, unless I marry before that date! You must see what a devil of a fix I’m in!”

“Certainly,” said Miss Milborne freezingly. “I cannot conceive why you do not immediately offer for one of the scores of females who would doubtless be glad to marry you!”

“But I don’t want to marry anyone but you!” declared her harassed suitor. “Couldn’t think of it! Damn it all, Isabella, I keep on telling you I love you!”

“Well, I do not return your love, my lord!” said Miss Milborne, much mortified. “I wonder you will not offer for Cassy instead, for I’m sure Mrs Bagshot has positively thrown her at your head any time these past six months! Or if you are so squeamish as to object to poor Cassy’s complexion, which I will own to be sadly freckled, I make no doubt Eudora would think herself honoured if you should throw your handkerchief in her direction! But as for me, my lord, though I’m sure I wish you very well, the thought of marriage with you has never entered my head, and I must tell you once more, and for the last time, that I cannot accept your obliging offer!”

“Isabella!” pronounced Lord Sheringham, in boding accents, “don’t try me too far! If you love Another — You know, Bella, if it’s Severn you mean to have, I can tell you now you won’t get him. Youdon’t know the Duchess! Can’t call his soul his own, poor old Severn, and she’ll never let him marry you, take my word for it!”

Miss Milborne rose from her chair abruptly. “I think you are the most odious, abominable creature in the world!” she said angrily. “I never — Oh, I wish you will go away!”

“If you send me away, I shall go straight to the devil!” threatened his lordship.

Miss Milborne tittered. “I dare say you will find yourself mightily at home, my lord!”

The Viscount ground his teeth. “You will be sorry for your cruelty, ma’am, when it is too late!”

“Really, my lord, if we are to talk of play-acting — !”

“Who’s talking of play-acting?” demanded the Viscount.

“You did.”

“Never talked of any such thing! You’re enough to drive a man out of his senses, Isabella!”

She shrugged and turned away from him. The Viscount, feeling that he had perhaps not shown that lover-like ardour which, he was persuaded, consumed him, took two strides towards her and tried to take her in his arms. He received a box on the ear which made his eyes water, and for an instant was in danger of forgetting that he was no longer a schoolboy confronting a tiresome little girl. Miss Milborne, reading retaliation in his face, strategically retired behind a small table, and said tragically: “Go!”

The Viscount regarded her with a measuring eye. “By God, if I could get my hands on you, Bella, I’d — ” He broke off as his incensed gaze absorbed her undeniable beauty. His face softened. “No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “Wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head! Now, Bella, won’t you — ”

“No!” almost shrieked Miss Milborne. “And I wish you will not call me Bella!”

“Oh, very well, Isabella, then!” said his lordship, willing to make concessions. “But won’t you — ”

“ No!” reiterated Miss Milborne. “Go away! I hate you!”

“No, you don’t,” said his lordship. “At least, you never did, and damme if I can see why you should suddenly change your mind!”

“Yes, I do! You are a gamester, and a libertine, and

“If you say another word, I will box your ears!” said the Viscount furiously. “Libertine be damned! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Bella!”

Miss Milborne, aware of having been betrayed into unmaidenly behaviour, burst into tears. Before the greatly discomposed Viscount could take appropriate action the door opened and Mrs Milborne came into the room.

Mrs Milborne’s eye took in the situation at a glance, and she lost no time in hustling the discomfited young man out of the house. His protestations fell on inattentive ears. She said: “Yes, yes, Anthony, but you must go away, indeed you must! Isabella is not well enough to receive guests! I cannot imagine who can have let you into the house! It is most obliging in you to have called, and pray convey my respects to your dear Mama, but at this present we are not receiving visitors!”

She put his hat and his gloves into his hands and inexorably showed him out of the front door. By the time she had returned to the drawing room, Isabella had dried her eyes and recovered her composure. Her mother looked at her with raised brows. “Did he make you an offer, my love?”

“Yes, he did,” replied Isabella, sniffing into her handkerchief.

“Well, I see nothing to cry about in that,” said Mrs Milborne briskly. “You should bear in mind, my love, that the shedding of tears has the very disagreeable effect of reddening a female’s eyes. I suppose you refused him?”

Her daughter nodded, sniffing rather more convulsively. “Yes, of course I did, Mama. And I said I could never marry anyone with so little d-delicacy of principle, or — ”

“Quite unnecessary,” said Mrs Milborne. “I wonder you should show so little delicacy yourself, Isabella, as to refer to those aspects of a gentleman’s life which no well-bred female should know anything about.”

“Well, but Mama, I don’t see how one is to help knowing about Sherry’s excesses, when all the town is talking of them!”

“Nonsense! In any event, there is not the least need for you to mention such matters. Not that I blame you for refusing Sherry. At least, I own that in some ways it would be an ideal match, for he is extremely wealthy, and we have always been particular friends of — But if Severn were to offer you, of course there could be no comparison between them!”

Miss Milborne flushed. “Mama! How can you talk so? I am not so mercenary! It is just that I do not love Sherry, and I am persuaded he does not love me either, for all his protestations!”

“Well, I dare say it will do him no harm to have had a setdown,” replied Mrs Milborne comfortably. “Ten to one, it will bring him to a sense of his position. But if you are thinking of George Wrotham, my love, I hope you will consider carefully before you cast yourself away upon a mere baron, and one whose estates, from all I can discover, are much encumbered. Besides, there is a lack of stability about Wrotham which I cannot like.”

In face of the marked lack of stability which characterized Viscount Sheringham, this remark seemed unjust to Miss Milborne, and she said so, adding that poor Wrotham had not committed the half of Sherry’s follies.

Mrs Milborne did not deny it. She said there was no need for Isabella to be in a hurry to make her choice, and recommended her to take a turn in the garden with a view to calming her spirits and cooling her reddened cheeks.

The Viscount, meanwhile, was riding back to Sheringham Place in high dudgeon. His self-esteem smarted intolerably; and, since he had been in the habit, during the past twelve month, of considering himself to be desperately enamoured of the Incomparable Isabella, and was not a young gentleman who was given to soul searching, it was not long before he was in a fair way to thinking that his life had been blighted past curing. He entered the portals of his ancestral home in anything but a conciliatory mood, therefore, and was not in the least soothed by being informed by the butler that her ladyship, who was in the Blue Saloon, was desirous of seeing him. He felt strongly inclined to tell old Romsey to go to perdition, but as he supposed he would be obliged to visit his mother before returning to London, he refrained from uttering this natural retort, contenting himself with throwing the butler a darkling glance before striding off in the direction of the Blue Saloon.

Here he discovered not only his parent, a valetudinarian of quite amazing stamina, but also his uncle, Horace Paulett.

Since Mr Paulett had taken up his residence at Sheringham Place some years previously, upon the death of the late Lord Sheringham, there was nothing in this circumstance to astonish the Viscount. He had, in fact, expected to find his uncle there, but this did not prevent his ejaculating in a goaded voice: “Good God, you here, uncle?”

Mr Paulett, who was a plump gentleman with an invincible smile and very soft white hands, never permitted himself to be annoyed by his nephew’s patent dislike and frequent incivility. He merely smiled more broadly than ever, and replied: “Yes, my boy, yes! As you see, I am here, at my post beside your dear mother.”

Lady Sheringham, having provided herself with a smelling-bottle to fortify her nerves during an interview with her only child, removed the stopper and inhaled feebly. “I am not sure I do not know what would become of me if I had not my good brother to support me in my lonely state,” she said, in the faint, complaining tone which so admirably concealed a constitution of iron and a strong determination to have her own way.

Her son, who was quite as obstinate as his parent, and a good deal more forthright, replied with paralysing candour: “From what I know of you, ma’am, you would have done excellent well. What’s more, I might have stayed at home every now and then. I don’t say I would have, because I don’t like the place, but I might have.”

So far from evincing any gratification at this handsome admission, Lady Sheringham sought in her reticule for a handkerchief, and applied this wisp of lace and muslin to the corners of her eyes. “Oh, Horace!” she said. “I knew how it would be! So like his father!”

The Viscount did not fall into the error of reading any complimentary meaning into this remark. He said: “Well, dash it, ma’am, there’s no harm in that! Come to think of it, who else should I be like?”

“Whom, my boy, whom!” corrected his uncle gently. “We must not forget our grammar!”

“Never knew any,” retorted the Viscount. “And don’t keep on calling me your boy! I may have a lot of faults, but at least that’s one thing no one can throw in my face!”

“Anthony, have you no consideration for my poor nerves?” quavered his mother, bringing the vinaigrette into play again.

“Well, tell that platter-faced old fidget to take himself off!” said the Viscount irritably. “Never can see when he’s not wanted, and the lord knows I’ve given him a hint times without number!”

“Ah, my b — But I must not call you that, must I? Then let it be Sherry, for that, I collect, is what your cronies, your boon companions, call you, is it not?”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,” responded his nephew. “If you hadn’t taken it into your head to come and live here, you wouldn’t have to call me anything, and that would suit me to a cow’s thumb!”

Mr Paulett shook a finger at him. “Sherry, Sherry, I fear your suit cannot have prospered! But never mind, dear boy! Persevere, and you will see how she will come about!”

The Viscount’s cerulean eyes lit with sudden wrath, and a tide of red coloured his cheeks. “Hell and the devil confound it!” he exclaimed furiously. “So you’re at that, are you? I’ll thank you to be a little less busy about my affairs!”

Lady Sheringham abandoned tactics which appeared unlikely to succeed, and contrived to possess herself of one of his lordship’s hands. This she held between both of hers, squeezing it eloquently, and saying in a low tone: “Dearest Anthony, remember I am your Mother, and do not keep me in suspense! Have you seen dear Isabella?”

“Yes, I have,” growled the Viscount.

“Sit down, my love, beside me. Did you — did you make her an offer?”

“Yes, I did! She won’t have me.”

“Alas! The dearest wish of my heart!” sighed Lady Sheringham. “If I could but see you married to Isabella, I could go in peace!”

Her son looked at her in a bewildered way. “Go where?” he demanded. “If it’s the Dower House you’re thinking of, there’s nothing that I know of to stop you going there any day you choose. What’s more, you may take my uncle along with you, and I won’t say a word against it,” he added generously.

“Sometimes I think you wilfully misunderstand me!” complained Lady Sheringham. “You cannot be ignorant of the enfeebled state of my health!”

“What, you don’t mean that you’re going to die, do you?” said the Viscount incredulously. “No, no, you won’t do that! Why, I remember you used to say the same to my father, but nothing came of it. Ten to one, it’s having my uncle always hanging about the place that wears you down. Give you my word, it would kill me in a week, and there’s never been a thing the matter with my nerves.”

“Anthony, if you have no consideration for me, at least you might consider your uncle’s sensibility!”

“Well, if he don’t like it he can go away,” replied his lordship incorrigibly.

“No, no, I am too old a hand to be offended by a young man crossed in love!” Mr Paulett assured him. “I know too well the feelings of mortification you are labouring under. It is very distressing indeed. A sad disappointment to us all, I may say.”

“In every way so eligible!” mourned Lady Sheringham. “The estate would round off yours so delightfully, Anthony, and dearest Isabella is so precisely the girl out of all others whom I would have chosen for my only son! Her father’s sole heir, and although it cannot compare with yours, her fortune will not be contemptible!”

“Damme, ma’am, I don’t want her fortune! All I want is my own fortune!” said his lordship.

“If she had accepted your hand you would have had it, and I am sure I should have been glad to see it in your hands, though heaven knows you would squander the entire principal before one had time to look about one! Oh, Anthony, if I could but prevail upon you to relinquish a way of life which fills my poor heart with terror for your future!”

His lordship disengaged himself hurriedly. “For the lord’s sake, ma’am, don’t put yourself in a taking over me!” he begged.

“I knew she would reject you!” said Lady Sheringham. “What delicately nurtured female, I ask of you, my son, would consent to marry one of whose footsteps are set upon the path of Vice? Must she not shrink from those libertine propensities which — ”

“Here, I say, ma’am!” protested the startled Viscount. “It’s not as bad as that, ’pon my soul it’s not!”

His uncle heaved a sigh. “You will allow, dear boy, that there is scarcely an extravagant folly you have not committed since you came of age.”

“No, I won’t,” retorted the Viscount. “Dash it, a man can’t be on the Town without kicking up a lark or so every now and then!”

“Anthony, can you tell your Mother that there is not a — a Creature (for I cannot bring myself to call her a Female!) with whom you are not ashamed to be seen in the most public of places? Hanging upon your arm, and caressing you in a manner which fills me with repugnance?”

“No, I can’t,” replied the Viscount. “But I’d give a monkey to know who told you about that little ladybird!”

He rolled a choleric eye towards his uncle as he spoke, but that gentleman’s attention was fixed upon the opposite wall, and his thoughts appeared to be far removed from earthly considerations.

“You will break my heart!” declared Lady Sheringham, applying her handkerchief to her eyes again.

“No, I shan’t, ma’am,” said her son frankly. “You didn’t break your heart over any of Father’s fancies that ever I heard of! Or if you did you can’t do it again. Stands to reason! Besides, when I’m married I shall hedge off, never fear!”

“But you are not going to be married!” Lady Sheringham pointed out. “And that is not all! Never in my life have I been so mortified as when I was obliged to apologize to General Ware for your abominable behaviour on the road to Kensington last month! I was ready to sink! Of course you were intoxicated!”

“I was no such thing!” cried his lordship, stung on the raw. “Good God, ma’am, you don’t think I could graze the wheel of five coaches if I’d shot the cat, do you?”

His mother let her handkerchief drop from a suddenly nerveless hand. “Graze the wheels of five coaches?” she faltered, looking at him as though she feared for his sanity.

“Five of ’em all in a row, and never checked!” asserted the Viscount. “Sheerest piece of curst ill fortune that I overturned old Ware’s phaeton! Must have misjudged it. Cost me the wager, too. Backed myself to graze the wheels of the first seven vehicles I met past the Hyde Park turnpike without oversetting any of ’em. Can’t think how I came to bungle it. Must have been old Ware’s driving. He never could keep the line: a mere whipster! No precision of eye at all!”

“Unhappy boy!” exclaimed his mother in throbbing accents. “Are you dead to all sense of shame? Horace, speak to him!”

“If he does,” said the Viscount, his chin jutting dangerously, “he’ll go out through that window, uncle or no uncle!”

“Oh!” moaned his afflicted parent, sinking back on her couch and putting a hand to her brow. “What, what, I ask of you, brother, have I done to deserve this?”

“Hush, my dear Valeria! Calm yourself, I beg!” said Mr Paulett, clasping her other hand.

“No wonder poor Isabella rejected his suit! I cannot find it in me to blame her!”

“Alas, one cannot but feel for the sake of the estate it may be for the best!” said Mr Paulett, strategically retaining his clasp on that frail but protective hand. “Loth as I am to say it, I cannot consider poor Sherry fit to assume the control of his fortune. Well for him that it is held in trust for him!”

“Oh, is it well for me?” interjected poor Sherry wrathfully. “Much you know about it! And why my father ever took it into his head to make you a trustee beats me! I don’t mind Uncle Prosper — at least, I dare say I could handle him, if it weren’t for you, for ever putting a spoke in my wheel! And don’t stand there bamming me that you’re mighty sorry Bella wouldn’t have me, because I know you’re not! Once I get the confounded Trust wound up, out you’ll go, and well you know it! If my mother chooses to let you batten upon her, she may do it, but you won’t batten on me any longer, by Jupiter you won’t!”

“Ah!” said Mr Paulett, smiling in a maddening way. “But there are two years to run before the Trust comes to an end, my dear boy, and we must hope that by that time you will have seen the error of your ways.”

“Unless I get married!” the Viscount reminded him, his eyes very bright and sparkling.

“Certainly! But you are not, after all, going to get married, dear boy,” his uncle pointed out.

“Oh, aren’t I?” retorted his lordship, striding towards the door.

“Anthony!” shrieked Lady Sheringham. “What in heaven’s name are you going to do?” She released her brother’s hand, and sat up. “Where are you going? Answer me, I command you!”

“I’m going back to London!” answered the Viscount. “And I’m going to marry the first woman I see!”

Chapter Two

AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED, THE VISCOUNT’S Parthian shot immediately prostrated his parent. She evinced every sign of falling into a fit of the vapours, and was only revived by the reflection that the Viscount was no longer present to be chastened by the sight of his mother suffering from strong hysterics. A little hartshorn-and-water, tenderly administered by Mr Paulett, a few lavender drops sprinkled upon a handkerchief, and some gentle hand-slapping presently made it possible for the afflicted lady to open her eyes, and to straighten her turban. She at once confided to Mr Paulett her conviction that Anthony would bring home some dreadful, vulgar creature from the opera-ballet on his arm, if only to spite her, and expressed a fervent longing for the quiet of the family tomb.

Mr Paulett did not feel that there was much danger of his nephew’s marrying anyone in the immediate future. He said that he would find Anthony, and represent to him that his unfilial behaviour was leading his mother’s tottering steps to the very brink of the grave, but by the time he had restored the lady to such health as remained to her, and had pointed out to her that a young gentleman desperately enamoured of a Beauty was not very likely to fall into matrimony with some other female, the Viscount was already upon the road to London.

He was driving his curricle. A pair of spirited bays were harnessed to it; a sharp-faced Tiger was perched up behind him; his portmanteau was strapped in its place; and the Viscount, with all the air of one shaking the dust of a loathed spot from his shoes, drove along at a spanking pace, and with very little regard for whatever other vehicles he might chance to meet on the road.

The Viscount had had many grooms, and several Tigers, but it required an iron nerve to drive out with him in one of his wild fits, and since these attacked him with alarming frequency, and very few grooms possessed the requisite amount of disregard for their lives and limbs, none of them had remained long in his service. By the greatest piece of good fortune he had chanced upon the individual at present hanging on to the curricle behind him. The acquaintanceship had begun with the picking of the Viscount’s pocket, as he emerged from a jeweller’s shop on Ludgate Hill. Jason, who had started life in a Foundling Hospital, passed by way of the streets of London to a racing stable, and thence, through a series of disreputable circumstances, back to the streets of London, was an inexpert thief, but an inspired handler of horses. At the very moment when the Viscount, grappling his captive by the collar, was preparing to drag him off to the nearest Roundhouse, the prime bit of blood between the shafts of his lordship’s phaeton took exception to a wagon which was advancing up the street, and reared suddenly, knocking the groom, who should have been holding his head but was gaping at the Viscount instead, off his feet. A commotion was at once set up during which Jason wriggled out of the Viscount’s slackened hold, and, instead of taking to his heels, leaped for the chestnut’s head. In a very few moments order had been restored, the chestnut apparently recognizing a master-mind in the dirty and ragged creature who had prevented him from bolting, and was now addressing uncouth blandishments to him. Since he was, with good reason, quite the most unpopular horse in the Viscount’s stables, even having the reputation of being willing to savage anyone for the very moderate sum of a meg, or half-penny, the circumstance of his dropping his head into the unsavoury bosom before him most forcibly struck his owner. The Viscount at once forgot the contretemps which had brought this wizard to his notice, and there and then engaged him to be his new Tiger. Jason — he had no other name, and no one, least of all himself, knew how he came by that one — never having encountered even such careless good nature as the Viscount’s in the unnumbered years of his life, emerged from the trance into which his unexpected luck had pitchforked him to find himself in the employment of a nobleman considered by his relations to be volatile past reclaim, but in whom he recognized, in that moment of blinding enlightenment, a god come down to earth.

The Viscount, who had never made the least attempt to reform himself, did much to reform his new Tiger, not, indeed, from any particular zeal, but because he felt the force of his friends’ representations that continued intimacy with a man whose Tiger could be counted on to relieve one of one’s purse, fobs, and seal, had certain grave drawbacks. The Viscount promised to mend matters, which he did by thrashing his Tiger soundly, and laying orders on him never to rob any of his master’s friends again. Jason, who cared less for the thrashing than for the frown upon his deity’s face, promised to tread a path of rectitude, and made such efforts to keep to this that in a very short time nothing more than a warning word to him, or, at the worst, a command to restore whatever he might have filched from some chance-met acquaintance, was necessary to preserve the utmost harmony between the Viscount and his cronies.

For the rest, although he might lack polish, he proved to be the most devoted servant the Viscount had ever hired. No slave could have been less critical of his owner’s vagaries, or more tireless in his attentions. He had been overturned in his lordship’s curricle five times; had had his leg fractured by a kick from a half-broken horse; had accompanied the Viscount on some of his more hazardous expeditions; and was generally supposed to be willing to engage on his behalf on any enterprise, inclusive of murder.

As he hung on to the straps of the curricle behind the Viscount, he observed dispassionately that he knew all along that they wouldn’t stay above two days in that ken. Receiving no answer to this remark, he relapsed into silence breaking it only at the end of a mile to recommend his master to pull in for the corner, unless he was wishful to throw them both out on to their bowsprits. His tone indicated that if the Viscount had any such wish he was prepared cheerfully to endure this fate.

However, the Viscount, having had time to work off the first heat of his rage, steadied his pair, and took the corner at no more than a canter. The main road to London lay a couple of miles farther on, the lane that led to it from Sheringham Place winding alongside the Viscount’s acres for some way, and then curling abruptly away to serve a small hamlet, one or two scattered cottages, and the modest estate owned by Mr Humphrey Bagshot. Mr Bagshot’s house was set back from the lane and screened by trees and a shrubbery, the whole being enclosed by a low stone wall. The Viscount, whose attention was pretty equally divided between his horses and his late disappointment, kept his moody gaze fixed on the road ahead, and would not have spared a glance for this wall had not his Tiger suddenly recommended him to cast his daylights to the left.

“There’s a female a-wavin’ at you, guv’nor,” he informed his master.

The Viscount turned his head, and found that he was sweeping past a lady who was perched on top of the wall, somewhat wistfully regarding him. Recognizing this damsel, he reined in, backed his pair, and called out: “Hallo, brat!”

Miss Hero Wantage seemed to find nothing amiss in this form of salutation. A little flush mounted to her cheeks; she smiled shyly, and responded: “Hallo, Sherry!”

The Viscount looked her over. She was a very young lady, and she did not at this moment appear to advantage. The round gown she wore was of an unbecoming shade of pink, and had palpably come to her at secondhand, since it seemed to have been made originally for a larger lady, and had been inexpertly adapted to her diminutive size. A drab cloak was tied round her neck, its hood hanging down over her shoulders; and in her hand she held a crumpled and damp handkerchief. There were tear-stains on her cheeks, and her wide grey eyes were reddened and a little blurred. Her dusky ringlets, escaping from a frayed ribbon, were tumbled and very untidy.

“Hallo, what’s the matter?” asked the Viscount suddenly, noticing the tear-stains.

Miss Wantage gave a convulsive sob. “Everything!” she said comprehensively.

The Viscount was a good-natured young man, and whenever he thought of Miss Wantage, which was not often, it was with mild affection. In his graceless teens he had made use of her willing services, had taught her to play cricket, and to toil after him with the game-bag when he went out for a little hedgerow shooting. He had bullied her, and tyrannized over her, lost his temper with her, boxed her ears, and forced her to engage in various sports and pastimes which terrified her; but he had permitted her to trot at his heels, and he had allowed no one else to tease or ill-treat her. Her situation was not a happy one. She was an orphan, taken out of charity when only eight years old to live in her cousin’s house, and to be brought up with her three daughters, Cassandra, Eudora, and Sophronia. She had shared their lessons, and had worn their outgrown dresses, and had run their numerous errands — such services being, her Cousin Jane informed her, a very small return for all the generosity shown her. The Viscount, who disliked Cassandra, Eudora, and Sophronia only one degree less than he disliked their Mama, gave it as his considered opinion, when he was fifteen years old, that they were brutes, and treated their poor little cousin like a dog. He had therefore no difficulty now, as he looked at Miss Wantage, in interpreting correctly her somewhat sweeping statement. “Those cats been bullying you?” he said.

Miss Wantage blew her nose. “I’m going to be a governess, Sherry,” she informed him dolefully.

“Going to be a what?” demanded his lordship.

“A governess. Cousin Jane says so.”

“Never heard such nonsense in my life!” said the Viscount, slightly irritated. “You aren’t old enough!”

“Cousin Jane says I am. I shall be seventeen in a fortnight’s time, you know.”

“Well, you don’t look it,” said Sherry, disposing of the matter. “You always were a silly little chit, Hero. Shouldn’t believe everything people say. Ten to one she didn’t mean it.”

“Oh yes!” said Miss Wantage sadly. “You see, I always knew I should have to be one day, because that’s why I learned to play that horrid pianoforte, and to paint in water-colours, so that I could be a governess when I was grown-up. Only I don’t want to be, Sherry! Not yet! Not before I have enjoyed myself just for a little while!”

The Viscount cast off the rug which covered his shapely legs. “Jason, get down and walk the horses!” he ordered, and sprang down from the curricle and advanced to the low wall. “Is that mossy?” he asked suspiciously. “I’m damned if I’ll spoil these breeches for you or anyone else, Hero!”

“No, no, truly it’s not!” Miss Wantage assured him. “You can sit on my cloak, Sherry, can’t you?”

“Well, I can’t stay for long,” the Viscount warned her. He hoisted himself up beside her and put a brotherly arm round her shoulders. “Now, don’t go on crying, brat: it makes you look devilish ugly!” he said. “Besides, I don’t like it. Why has that old cat suddenly taken it into her head to send you off? I suppose you’ve been doing something that you shouldn’t.”

“No, it isn’t that, though I did break one of the best teacups,” said Hero, leaning gratefully against him. “It’s partly because Edwin kissed me, I think.”

“You’re bamming me!” said his lordship incredulously. “Your wretched little cousin Edwin hasn’t got enough bottom to kiss a chambermaid!”

“Well, I don’t know about that, Sherry, but he did kiss me, and it was the horridest thing imaginable. And Cousin Jane found out about it, and she said it was my fault, and I was a designing hussy, and that she had nourished a snake in her bosom. But I am not a snake, Sherry!”

“Never mind about that!” said Sherry. “I can’t get over Edwin! If it don’t beat all! He must have been foxed, and that’s all there is to it.”

“No, indeed he wasn’t,” said Hero earnestly.

“Then it just shows how you can be mistaken in a man. All the same, Hero, you shouldn’t let a miserable, snivelling fellow like that kiss you. It’s not the thing at all.”

“But how could I prevent him, Sherry, when he caught me, and squeezed me so tightly that I could scarcely breathe?”

The Viscount gave a crow of laughter. “Lord, only to think of Edwin turning into such an out-and-outer! It seems to me I had best teach you a trick or two to counter that kind of thing. Wonder I didn’t do it before.”

“Thank you, Sherry,” said Hero, with real gratitude. “Only now that I am being sent to be a governess in a horrid school in Bath, I don’t suppose I shall need any tricks.”

“It’s my belief that it’s all a hum,” declared Sherry. “You don’t look like any governess I’ve ever seen, and I’ll lay you odds no school would hire you. Do you know anything, Hero?”

“Well, I didn’t think I did,” replied Hero. “Only Miss Mundesley says I shall do very well, and it is her sister who has the school, so I dare say it has all been arranged between them. She is our governess, you know. At least, she used to be.”

“I know,” nodded Sherry. “Sour-faced old maid she was, too! I’ll tell you what, brat: if you go to this precious school they’ll make you a damned drudge, and so I warn you! Come to think of it, what the devil are they about, turning a chit like you upon the world?”

“Miss Mundesley says I shall be very strictly taken care of,” said Hero. “They are not turning me upon the world, exactly.”

“That’s not the point. Damme, the more I come to think of it the worse it is! You’re not a pauper brat!”

Miss Wantage raised her innocent eyes to his face. “But that is what I am, Sherry. I haven’t any money at all.”

“That don’t signify,” said the Viscount impatiently. “What I mean is, females of your breeding aren’t governesses! Never knew your father myself, but I know all about him. Very good family — a curst sight better than the Bagshots! What’s more, you’ve got a lot of damned starchy relations. Norfolk, or some such place. Heard my mother speak of them. Sounded to me like a very dull set of gudgeons, but that’s neither here nor there. You’d better write to them.”

“It wouldn’t be of any use,” sighed Hero. “I think my father quarrelled with them, because they wouldn’t do anything for me when he died. So I dare say they wouldn’t object to my becoming a governess at all.”

“Well, I do,” said the Viscount. “In fact, I won’t have it. You’ll have to think of something else.”

Miss Wantage saw nothing either arbitrary or unreasonable in this speech. She agreed to it, but a little doubtfully. “Marry the curate, do you mean, Sherry?” she asked, slightly wrinkling her short nose.

The Viscount stared at her in the liveliest astonishment. “Why the devil should I mean anything of the sort? Of course I don’t! Of all the nonsensical girls, you’re the worst, Hero!”

Miss Wantage accepted this rebuke meekly enough, but said: “Well, I think it’s a nonsensical notion too, but Cousin Jane says it must be the curate, or that horrid school.”

“You don’t mean to tell me that the curate wants to marry you?” demanded Sherry.

Miss Wantage nodded. “He has offered for me,” she said, not without pride.

“It seems to me,” said his lordship severely, “that you have been getting devilish flighty since I saw you last! Marry the curate, indeed! I dare say he kissed you behind the door too?”

“Oh no,Sherry!” Miss Wantage assured him. “He has behaved with the greatest propriety, Cousin Jane says!”

“So I should hope!” said his lordship, rather spoiling the austerity of this remark, however, by adding reflectively, a moment later: “Sounds to me like another dull dog.”

“Yes, he is,” agreed Hero. “I quite think he may be very kind, but oh, Sherry, if you won’t be offended with me, indeed I would rather be a governess, for I don’t at all want to marry him!”

“What beats me,” said his lordship, “is why he should want to marry you! He must be a curst rum touch, Hero. You’d never do for a parson’s wife! You can’t have told him how you glued the Bassenthwaites’ pew that time everyone was in such a pucker.”

“Well, no, I didn’t,” admitted Hero. “But it was you who did the glueing really, Sherry.”

“If that isn’t a female all over!” exclaimed Sherry. “Next you’ll say you had nothing to do with it!”

Miss Wantage tucked a small, confiding hand into his arm. “I did help, didn’t I, Anthony?”

“Yes, and spilled the glue over my new smalls because you thought you heard someone coming, silly chit!” said the Viscount, recalling this incident with a darkling look in his eye.

Miss Wantage gave a little chuckle. “Oh, how you did slap my cheek! It was red for hours and hours, and I had to make up such a tale to account for it!”

“No, did I really?” said the Viscount, rather conscience-stricken, and giving the cheek a friendly rub. “What a deuced young brute I was! Not but what you’d have tried the patience of a saint, brat, often and often!”

“Yes, that is what my cousins say, and I can’t but feel that I should try the curate’s patience even more, Sherry, because I do seem always to be getting into a scrape, though indeed I don’t mean to. At least, not every time.”

“Don’t keep on harping on the curate!” ordered the Viscount. “The whole idea of your marrying him is the greatest piece of nonsense I ever heard! In fact, it’s a very good thing I chanced to come down here, for the lord knows what silly trick you’d have tried to play off if I hadn’t caught you in time!”

“No, and I am so glad to see you again, Anthony,” she replied. “I thought perhaps you would come.”

“Good God, did you? Why?”

“To wait on Isabella,” she replied innocently.

“Ha!” uttered his lordship, with a harsh and bitter laugh.

Miss Wantage looked wonderingly up at him. “You don’t sound very pleased, Sherry. Would she not see you?”

“Pleased!” ejaculated his lordship. “Much I have to be pleased about!”

“I know she wouldn’t receive any of the other gentlemen, though they came all the way from London for the purpose, but I did think she would see you.”

“Well, she did,” said the Viscount shortly. “And for all the good I got by it, I might as well have stayed — Here, who told you I wanted to marry Bella?”

“You did,” answered Miss Wantage simply. “It was when you came down last year. Don’t you remember?”

“No, I can’t say that I do, but it don’t signify. She won’t have me.”

“Sherry!” cried Miss Wantage, quite shocked. “You don’t mean that you have offered, and she has refused you?”

“Yes, I do. And that’s not all!” said the Viscount, his wrongs rising forcibly to his mind. “She said my character was unsteady, and I’d no delicacy of principle! That, from a girl I’ve known all my life!”

“It isn’t true!” Hero said, warmly clasping his hand.

“I’m a gamester, and a libertine, and she don’t like the company I keep. I’m — ”

“Sherry,” interrupted Hero anxiously, “can she have heard about your opera dancer, do you think?”

“Well, upon my word!” gasped the Viscount. “What the devil do you know about my opera dancer? And don’t say I told you, because that I never did!”

“No, no, Edwin told me! That is, he told Cassy, because they had a quarrel, and it was really she who told me.”

“You’ve no business to be talking of such things!” said his lordship sternly. He thought it over, his brow creasing. “Besides, it don’t make sense! Edwin told Cassy, because they had a quarrel? Where’s the sense in that?”

“Why, Sherry, because he said that before she set her cap at you, she might as well know — ” Miss Wantage broke off,flushing deeply. “Oh, I wish I didn’t say things I ought not to!” she said, much mortified. “Truly, I didn’t mean to be such a cat!”

“Oh!” said his lordship. “So that’s what’s in the wind, is it? As a matter of fact, I knew it,” he added, momentarily abandoning the grand manner. “And you may tell your cousin Cassy, with my compliments, that she may as well spare herself the trouble, for I haven’t come to that yet! Now, don’t go blurting that out at her the first time you see her again! And stop chattering about my opera dancer! I’ve a very good mind to go up to the house and have a word with Edwin! Prating about my affairs all round the countryside! Now I know where my damned meddling uncle had it from! Pack of lies!”

“Haven’t you got an opera dancer after all?” asked Miss Wantage. “Because if you haven’t, I will tell Isabella so myself, and then perhaps you can be comfortable.”

“You won’t say anything about it at all!” said the harassed Viscount.

“Yes, but Sherry — ”

“ No, I tell you! For one thing, a pretty behaved female don’t mention such subjects; and for another — Well, you wouldn’t understand!” He encountered an inquiring look from the eyes which met his so frankly, and cast about in his brain for a suitable explanation. “Confound you, Hero, there’s nothing in it! Everyone has a fancy piece or two, but it don’t signify a jot, take my word for it!”

Miss Wantage was perfectly ready to take his word, but she felt that the question had not been thoroughly thrashed out. “Well, but, Sherry, perhaps you did not explain it to Isabella quite well? Don’t you think — ”

“No, I don’t,” said his lordship hastily. “The long and the short of it is that Bella don’t care a rap for me.”

Miss Wantage, finding this hard to believe, suggested that poor Isabella must have had the headache.

“No, it wasn’t that. Not but what she did look a trifle pale, now you put me in mind of it. But Incomparable as ever!” he added loyally.

“She is very pretty,” said Miss Wantage. “She even looked pretty when she had spots.”

“ Spots?” repeated the Viscount, in a stunned voice. “She never had a spot in her life!”

“Well, not ordinary spots, like Sophy, but the ones you have with the measles, I mean.”

“Isabella didn’t have the measles!”

“Yes, she did,” replied Hero. “That’s why her Mama brought her home. She felt dreadfully poorly, and Mrs Milborne told Cousin Jane that the spots came all over her.”

“ No!” said the Viscount, revolted.

“They do, you know,” explained Hero.

“Of course I know that! But Isabella can’t have had the measles! They said she was worn down by the gaieties of London!”

Hero looked surprised at this. “Well, I don’t know why they should have said that, because they must have known it was the measles. Two of the abigails had it as well, besides Mrs Milborne’s page.”

“Good God!” said the Viscount. A grin dispelled the look of shocked dismay on his face. “So that’s why she wouldn’t receive anyone! Poor girl! By Jove, I’d give a monkey to see Severn’s face, if he knew! Deuced romantic fellow, Severn! Wouldn’t like it at all!”

“Is he the Duke?” inquired Hero interestedly.

Gloom descended once more upon her companion. He nodded.

“Is — is she going to marry him, Sherry?”

“It’s my belief he won’t come up to scratch,” replied the Viscount frankly. “Not that I care. My hopes are quite cut-up!”

“Oh, Sherry, do you mind very much?” asked Hero, her heart wrung.

“Of course I mind!” said his lordship testily. “My whole life is blighted! Might as well go to the devil without more ado. Which is what I very likely shall do, because if I don’t get my hands on my fortune I shall be punting on tick before you know where you are, and we all know what that means!”

Hero nodded wisely. The Viscount laughed, and pinched her nose. “You haven’t a notion what it means! Never heard of a cent-per-cent in your life, have you, brat? Or of a poor devil finding himself in the basket?”

“Yes, I have! That’s on all the stagecoaches, and you ride in it if you are very poor!”

“Well, it may come to that yet,” grimaced Sherry. “The thing is that my principal’s tied up in the stupidest Trust anyone ever thought of. Would you believe it, I’m kept on a beggarly allowance until I reach the age of twenty-five, unless I’m married before then? A couple of my damned uncles manage everything — or they should, but Prosper’s too curst lazy to keep an eye on the other old scoundrel! He can’t stand the fellow any more than I can — none of my father’s relatives can bear the sight of my mother’s family, and God knows I don’t blame them, for a bigger set of spongers I’ll swear you never clapped eyes on! — but will he bestir himself to get rid of the fellow? Not he! There he sits, in my house, living at my expense, and ten to one feathering his nest with my money, not to mention putting a lot of nonsensical notions into my mother’s head, and pretending he’s disappointed Bella wouldn’t have me! Disappointed! He was so glad he couldn’t keep the smile off his greasy face! Damme if I know why I haven’t napped him a rum’un any time these past six years!” He broke off, the look of bewilderment on Hero’s face recalling him to a sense of his company. “Here, don’t you let me hear you using cant like that!” he admonished her. “If they hadn’t made me as mad as Bedlam between the lot of them, I shouldn’t have said it. At least, I should, but not to a female.”

“No, I won’t,” said Miss Wantage obediently.

“That’s what you say now,” retorted the Viscount, “but I know you, Hero! I never could let my tongue go when you were within hearing but what, as sure as check, out you’d come with it, with never less than half a dozen tabbies in the room, too! ‘But Anthony says it, Cousin Jane!’ You can’t be surprised I used to box your ears now and then!”

“Well, I truly won’t this time,” Hero assured him. “I couldn’t very well, because I don’t know what it means.”

“No, and you are not going to know, so it’s no use plaguing the life out of me to tell you! All that signifies is that there was no bearing it any longer. When it comes to being told — by my own mother, mark you! — that no woman of sensibility would accept of me, it’s the outside of enough! All because I had the curst bad luck to upset old General Ware’s phaeton! Anyone would have thought I’d murdered the fellow, but no such thing! He shot into the hedge, all right and tight, not a penny the worse for it! What’s more, I pulled him out, and considering it was his devilish bad handling of the ribbons which lost me my wager there are plenty of fellows in my place who would have left him there! But was he grateful? No! Tottered straight off to write and complain of me to my mother!”

“Never mind, Sherry!” Miss Wantage said, squeezing his arm. “They are all horrid, and unkind! They always were. Only I did think that Isabella — ”

“I’ll not hear a word against her!” said the Viscount nobly. “She is, and will always be, the Incomparable! But if she thinks I’m going to wear the willow for her sake, she’s mightily mistaken! And it wouldn’t surprise me above half if that’s just what she’d like me to do, for of all the heartless baggages I ever encountered — But that’s neither here nor there.”

“What are you meaning to do, Sherry?” asked Miss Wantage solicitously.

“Just what I told my mother, and my platter-faced uncle! Marry the first female I see!”

Miss Wantage gave a giggle. “Silly! That’s me!”

“Well, good God, there’s no need to be so curst literal!” said his lordship. “I know it’s you, as it turns out, but — ” He stopped suddenly, and stared down into Miss Wantage’s heartshaped countenance. “Well, why not?” he said slowly. “Damme, that’s exactly what I will do!”

Chapter Three

FOR ONE DAZED MOMENT MISS WANTAGE COULD only gaze blankly up at him. “M-marry me, Sherry?” she stammered.

“Yes, why not?” responded his lordship. “This is, unless you have some objection, and considering the way you were ready to marry the curate I can’t for the life of me see why you should have!”

“No, no, I wasn’t ready to marry the curate!” protested Hero. “I told you that I would prefer to be a governess!”

“Well, never mind about that,” said his lordship. “It’s no use your saying that you’d prefer to be a governess to marrying me, because it’s absurd! No one would. Dash it, Hero, I don’t want to talk like a coxcomb, and I dare say I may want for principle, and have libertine propensities, and spend all my time in gaming hells, besides being the sort of ugly customer no woman of sensibility could stomach, but you can’t pretend that you wouldn’t be far more comfortable with me than at that curst school you keep on prosing about!”

Miss Wantage was far from wanting to pretend anything of the sort, but the notion of marrying one who had for a number of years appeared to her in much the same light as he appeared to his Tiger seemed so fantastic that she could neither credit him with any serious intentions, nor believe that such a dazzling change in her bleak future could really take place. “Oh, Sherry, don’t please!” she begged, a catch in her voice. “I know it’s a hum, but, please, I wish you will not!”

“It’s no such thing!” the Viscount said. “In fact, the more I think of it the more it seems to me an excellent plan.”

“But, Sherry, you love Isabella!”

“Of course I love Isabella!” responded Sherry. “Though, mind you, I don’t say I’d have offered for her if I hadn’t been so deuced uncomfortably circumstanced, for to tell you the truth, Hero, I’d as lief not be married. However, it’s no use thinking of that! Married I must be, and if I can’t have the Incomparable I’d as soon have you as any other. Sooner,” he added handsomely. “I’m devilish fond of you, Hero. It’s my belief we should deal famously, for you don’t take pets, or go off into odd humours, and you won’t expect me to alter all my habits, and spend my time dancing attendance on you.”

“Oh, no, no!”

“Of course, I know it ain’t a love match,” pursued his lordship. “For my part, I’ve done with love, since Isabella cut up all my hopes. I dare say there is nothing that would please her more than to think that she had embittered my life, just as she seems like to do to poor George’s, but I’ll be damned if I mean to administer to her vanity by letting her know it!”

A sympathetic sigh from his companion brought his attention round to her. He surveyed her somewhat doubtfully, as an unwelcome thought occurred to him. “I wish you weren’t so devilish young!” he complained. “A pretty pickle we shall be in if you take it into your head to fall in love with some fellow or other after we’re tied up! Come to think of it, you’re too young to be married at all. Damme, you’re nothing but a baby!”

“Augusta Yarford was married when she was only just seventeen, Sherry,” offered Miss Wantage hopefully.

“That’s a very different matter. She’d been out a couple of seasons, and if ever a girl was up to snuff it was Gussie Yarford! But you have never been into society at all, or met anyone besides your precious cousin Edwin, and some dab of a parson.”

“And you, Sherry,” she said, smiling shyly at him.

“Yes, but I don’t signify, any more than if I had been your brother.” A qualm seized him. “I suppose I ought not to do it,” he said, with a vague feeling of chivalry. “I don’t mind people calling me a libertine, but I’m damned if I’ll have them saying I took advantage of a chit not out of the schoolroom!”

Miss Wantage clasped her hands together in her lap, and said rather breathlessly: “Sherry, if you think I might suit, please — please do marry me, for I know I should like it above all things!”

“Yes, but you’ve no more notion of what it means than that sparrow,” said the Viscount bluntly. He thought this over for a moment, and added: “In fact, much less.”

“But I should like very much always to be with you, Sherry, because you are never cross with me, and I should enjoy such fun, and go to London, and see all the things I’ve only heard of, and go to parties, and balls, and not be scolded, or sent to that dreadful school, and — oh, Sherry, it wasn’t k-kind in you to put it into my head if you d-didn’t really mean it!”

The Viscount patted her shoulder in a perfunctory way, a slightly rueful grin quivering on his lips. Shatter-brained he might be, but the full implication of this artless speech was not lost on him. “Oh, lord!” he said.

Miss Wantage swallowed a sob, and said valiantly: “You were only funning. Of course I should have known that. I didn’t mean to tease you.”

“No, I wasn’t,” said his lordship. “Damme, why shouldn’t I marry you? I know you haven’t had time to fix your affections, but ten to one you never will, and in any event you won’t find me the sort of husband who’s for ever kicking up a dust over trifles. I shan’t interfere with your pleasures, as long as you keep ’em discreet, my dear. And you needn’t fear I shall be forcing my attentions on you. I told you I was done with love. A marriage of convenience, that’s what it will be! Dash it, it may not be as romantic as I dare say you’d have liked, but you can’t deny it will be more amusing than being a governess!”

Miss Wantage nodded fervently, her eyes like stars. “And I do think it is romantic,” she said.

“That’s because you know nothing about it,” replied Sherry cynically. “Never mind! You’ll enjoy cutting a dash in London, at all events.”

Miss Wantage agreed to this with enthusiasm. But the next instant a thought occurred to her which quenched the sparkle in her eyes. “Oh, how I wish we could! But they will never, never let us, Sherry!”

“Who’s to stop us?” he demanded. “That’s one thing my father didn’t put into the damned Trust! I can marry anyone I please, and no one can say a word.”

“But they will,” said Hero bodingly. “You know they will, Sherry! Your Mama wishes you to make a Brilliant Match, and she will do everything in her power to prevent your throwing yourself away upon me. I have no fortune, you see.”

“I know that, but it don’t signify in the least. Once the Trust ends, I shall have plenty for the pair of us.”

“Lady Sheringham will not think so. And Cousin Jane would pack me off to Bath tomorrow if she knew!”

“Hang it, I don’t see that, Hero, dashed if I do! She’ll say it’s a devilish good match: she’s bound to!”

“That’s just it, Sherry: she would say it was far too good for me! She would be so angry! Because, you know, she does hope that perhaps you might take a liking to Cassy, or even Eudora.”

“Well, I shan’t. Never could abide the sight of either of them, or of Sophy, for that matter, and it’s not likely I shall change at my time of life. However, there’s a good deal in what you say, Hero, and if there’s one thing I detest more than another it’s a parcel of women arguing at me, and having the vapours every five minutes, which is what would happen, sure as check! And if your cousin did pack you off to Bath I should be obliged to go there to rescue you, and I can’t bear the place. There’s only one thing for it: we must go off without saying a word about it to anyone. Once the knot’s tied, and we can do that fast enough if I get a special licence, they won’t say anything — or, at any rate, if they do, it won’t be to us.”

“Won’t it?” Hero asked doubtfully.

“No, because for one thing there’d be no sense in it, and for another we can show them the door,” said the Viscount.

“You don’t think Cousin Jane will say that I am under age, and have it put at an end? People can, can’t they, Sherry?”

The Viscount gave this his profound consideration. “No,” he pronounced finally. “She won’t do that. Don’t see how she could. I mean, only think, Hero! I’m not a dashed adventurer, eloping with an heiress! I’m devilish eligible! She’ll be obliged to swallow it with a good grace. Dare say she’ll look to you to find husbands for those insipid girls.”

“Well, if you think I could, I would try very hard to do so,” said Hero seriously.

“No one could find husbands for such a parcel of dowdies,” replied his lordship, with brutal candour. “Besides, I don’t like them, and I won’t have them in my house. Come along! We’ve wasted enough time. Someone will be bound to come looking for you, if we dawdle here much longer. Hi, Jason!”

“Come now?” gasped Miss Wantage. “But I have nothing with me, Sherry! Must I not pack a portmanteau, or at least a bandbox?”

“Now, will you have sense, Hero? Do you expect me to come driving up to the front door to pick you up? If you go back, and start packing a portmanteau you’ll be discovered.”

“Oh, yes, but — You don’t think I should creep out of the house when it is dark, and join you here?”

“No, I don’t,” replied his lordship. “I don’t want to kick my heels in this damned dull place for the rest of the day! Besides, there’s no moon, and if you think I’m going to drive up to town in the dark, you’re mightily mistaken, my girl! I can’t see what you want with a portmanteau. If the rest of your gowns are anything like the one you have on now, the sooner you’re rid of them the better! I’ll buy you everything you want when we get to London.”

“Oh, Sherry, will you?” cried Miss Wantage, her cheeks in a glow. “Thank you! Let us go quickly!”

The Viscount sprang down into the lane, and held up his hands. “Jump, then!”

Miss Wantage obeyed him promptly. Jason, who had led the horses up to them, regarded her fixedly, and then turned an inquiring eye upon his master.

“I’m taking this lady up to London, Jason,” announced the Viscount.

“Ho!” said the faithful henchman. “Ho, you are, are you, guv’nor?”

“Yes, and what’s more, I don’t want a word said about it. So no tattling in whatever boozing-ken you go to, mind that! And no tattling in the stables either!”

“I can keep my chaffer close,” replied Jason, with dignity, “but it queers me what your lay is this time!”

The Viscount tossed Miss Wantage up into the curricle, gathered the reins in his hand, and prepared to mount beside her. “I’m going to be married.”

“You never!” gasped Jason. “But she ain’t the right one, guv’nor! Lor’, you must have had a shove in the mouth too many, and I never suspicioned you was lushy, so help me bob! Werry well you carries it, guv’nor! werry well, indeed! Gammoning me wot knows you you was sober as a judge, and all the time as leaky as a sieve! But what’ll you say when you comes about, me lord? A rare set-out that’ll be, and you a-blamin’ of me for letting you make off with the wrong gentry-mort!”

“Confound your impudence, of course I’m sober!” said the Viscount wrathfully. “You keep your nose out of my affairs! What the devil are you laughing at, Hero?”

“I think he’s so droll!” gurgled Miss Wantage. “What is a gentry-mort?”

“God knows! The fellow can’t open his mouth without letting fall a lot of thieves’ cant. Not fit for your ears at all. Stand away from their heads! all’s right!”

The curricle moved forward. Jason sprang nimbly up behind, and said over the top of the lowered hood: “I’m not a-going to keep me sneezer out o’your affairs, guv’nor. Be you ee-loping?”

“Of course I’m not — Good God, so I am!” said his lordship, much struck.

“Because if you be,” pursued Jason, “and if you don’t wish no one to know nothing about it, that young gentry-mort didn’t ought to be a-settin’ up there beside you like she is.”

“By Jove, he’s in the right of it!” exclaimed the Viscount, reining in suddenly. “We shall have half the countryside blabbing that they saw you driving off with me! There’s nothing for it: you’ll have to sit on the floorboards, and keep yourself hidden under the rug, Hero.”

Her experience of life not having engendered in Hero any expectation of having either her dignity or her comfort much regarded, she made no objection to this proposal, but curled up at the Viscount’s feet, and allowed him to cast the rug over her. Since his method of driving was of the style known as neck-or-nothing, she was considerably jolted, but she made no complaint, merely clasping her arms round the Viscount’s top-boots, and pressing her cheek against the side of his knee. In this fashion they covered the next few miles. The Viscount pulled up beyond the second tollgate, giving it as his opinion that they were now reasonably safe from any chance encounter with persons who might recognize them.

“I don’t mind staying where I am, if you think it would be better for me to do so, Sherry,” Hero assured him.

“Yes, but you’re giving me cramp in my left leg,” said the single-minded Viscount. “Get up, brat, and for the lord’s sake smooth your hair! You look the most complete romp!”

Miss Wantage did her best to comply with this direction, but without any marked degree of success. Fortunately, the exigencies of the particular mode of hairdressing affected by his lordship obliged him to carry a comb upon his person. He produced this, dragged it through the soft, tangled curls, tied the hood strings under Hero’s chin, and, after a critical survey, said that it would answer well enough. Miss Wantage smiled trustfully up at him, and the Viscount made a discovery. “You look just like a kitten!”

She laughed. “No, do I, Sherry?”

“Yes, you do. I think it’s your silly little nose,” said the Viscount, flicking it with a careless forefinger. “That, or the trick you have of staring at a fellow with your eyes wide open. I think I shall call you Kitten. It suits you better than Hero, which I always thought a nonsensical name for a girl.”

“Oh, it is the greatest affliction to me!” she exclaimed. “You can have no notion, Sherry! I would much rather you should call me Kitten.”

“Very well, that’s settled,” said Sherry, giving his horses the office to start again. “What we have to do now is to decide what the devil I’m to do with you when I get you to London.”

“You said you would buy me some new clothes,” Hero reminded him, not without a touch of anxiety.

“I’ll do that, of course, but the thing that’s worrying me a trifle is where you are to sleep tonight,” confessed Sherry. “We shan’t have time to be married today, you know.”

“No, not if we are to go shopping,” agreed Hero. “I could come home with you, couldn’t I?”

“No, certainly not! Wouldn’t do at all!” responded Sherry decidedly. “Besides, I haven’t a home. I mean, I live in a lodging off St James’s Street, and it’s not a situation that would suit you. What’s more, there’s no room for you. I suppose I could take you to Sheringham House, but I shouldn’t think you’d be very comfortable there, with only old Varley and his wife in charge of the place, and everything under holland covers.”

“Oh no! Please don’t take me there!” begged Hero, quite daunted by such a prospect.

Jason, who had been listening with the greatest interest to the conversation, interposed at this point to give it as his opinion that nothing could be more prejudicial to the smooth conduct of the elopement than for Varley, who he described as a tattling old chub who could be counted on to whiddle the whole scrap, to get wind of the lay. The Viscount, who, in common with every other young blood, was fond of interlarding his conversation with cant terms, found no difficulty in understanding this dark warning. On the whole he agreed with it, but he said with some severity that these strictures on an old family retainer had their origin in Varley’s discovery of an attempted theft of his watch-and-chain, some months previously.

“And that puts me in mind of something I forgot!” he exclaimed, turning his head over his shoulder. “Dashed if I wasn’t in such a pucker when I left home that it went clean out of my head! I don’t know what you stole while we were there, but you can’t have been two days in the place without biting something. Hand it over!”

“Keep your glims on the road, guv’nor, keep your glims on the road!” Jason besought him. “I never mills any ken of yours! I’ll cap downright I never did, nor I never will!”

“Jason!” said his lordship, in minatory accents.

The Tiger gave a sniff. “I forked a couple of meggs from the tallow-faced old cull,” he admitted sulkily. “He never tipped me a Jack, he didn’t.”

“Do you mean you filched a couple of guineas from my uncle?” demanded Sherry.

“Well, how was I to know you didn’t want him forked?” asked Jason. “You never said nothing to me about it, guv’nor, nor I didn’t think he was a friend o’yourn!”

“Oh, well, if that’s all, there’s no harm done!” said Sherry cheerfully. “Not but what it was probably my money, if we only knew.”

“Does he always steal things, Sherry?” whispered Hero, round-eyed.

“Oh, yes, always! He can’t help it, you know.”

“But is it not very awkward?”

“No, it doesn’t worry me,” Sherry replied simply, “never takes anything of mine. It used to be a devilish nuisance when he would keep on forking my friends — he had my cousin Ferdy’s watch five times before I broke him of it — but he don’t do that now, and in any event most people know that if they lose anything when they’ve been with me they have only to tell me about it. Always hands over the booty if I ask him for it. That reminds me! Hi, Jason! Don’t you dare steal anything from this lady! Mind, now! I’ll turn you off without a character if she misses so much as a handkerchief.”

“You wouldn’t never, guv’nor!” gasped the Tiger, horrified.

“Well, no,” admitted Sherry. “I dare say I wouldn’t. But I’d break every bone in your body, so don’t you forget it!”

This merciful mitigation of the threat appeared to relieve the Tiger’s mind. He heaved a sigh, and very handsomely offered to allow himself to be nibbled to death by ducks if he should so far forget himself as to take even a pin from his prospective mistress.

The Viscount, accepting this assurance, told Miss Wantage that she might rest at ease. “Matter of fact, I don’t suppose he would think of robbing you,” he confided. “Still, we may as well be on the safe side. Queer little fellow! Do anything in the world for me, and damme if I know why!”

“How old is he?” inquired Hero.

“Haven’t a notion, my dear. Don’t think he has either. Shouldn’t think he can be more than eighteen or nineteen, though.”

“He’s so very small!”

“Oh, there’s nothing in that! Trained for a jockey at one time, till they kicked him out of the stables for thieving. You know, I’ve been thinking, Kitten, and it’s my belief I’d best take you to Grillon’s.”

“Had you, Sherry? Where is that?”

“Albemarle Street. It’s a hotel. Devilish flat and respectable, but that can’t be helped.”

“Will you stay with me there?” Hero asked, a little nervously.

“Good God, no! That would mean the devil to pay! We shall have enough to do as it is, concocting some kind of a tale to account for a chit of your age jauntering about without a chaperon, or an abigail. Yes, by George, and you haven’t any trunks either! We ought to have brought a cloak-bag, and a few bandboxes. Grillon’s will never take you in without! Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“That’s just like you, Sherry,” observed Miss Wantage patiently. “You never would pay the least heed to anything I said, and then you blamed me when things went awry! Always! You know very well I asked you to let me pack a portmanteau. Now what shall we do?”

“Well, it can’t be helped. And I never said a word of blame, not one!”

“No, but you were just about to,” replied Hero, with a mischievous look. “I know you, Sherry!”

He grinned. “Little cat! I’ll tell you what we shall do. We’ll drive straight to my lodging; send my man, Bootle, out to buy your trunks; take a hackney to Bond Street; purchase what you stand in need of for the night; take everything back to my lodging; pack ’em up; and drive off to Grillon’s with ’em. I shall say you’re my sister — no, that won’t do: ten to one, they know I haven’t got a sister! I’ll say you’re my cousin. Going back to school in Bath. Come up from Kent — that’s true enough! — spending the night in London — I promised I’d meet you — abigail broke her leg getting out of the chaise — taken to hospital — no female relative in town — what am I to do? Nothing for it, of course! Take you to a respectable hotel! Couldn’t be better!”

Miss Wantage having no fault to find with this scheme, the rest of the journey was pleasantly beguiled by elaborating the Viscount’s ingenious story, filling in a few details, and laughing heartily over the approaching discomfiture of their respective relations. When the metropolis was reached, a slight squabble arose between them through Miss Wantage’s urgent desire to look about her, and the Viscount’s determination that she should keep her hood drawn well forward to hide her face. This soon blew over, however, and nothing could have been sunnier than Miss Wantage’s mood when she presently jumped down from the curricle outside the Viscount’s lodging.

His lordship’s valet, Bootle, was of necessity a long-suffering and phlegmatic personage, but the sudden arrival of his master, with a shabby young lady on his arm, palpably shook his iron calm. By the time he had grasped that he beheld his future mistress, he had schooled his countenance into an expression of one inured to calamity, and expectant of any outrage. When he learned that he was to sally forth immediately, to procure such baggage as was suited to a lady of quality, his feelings were only betrayed by the faintness of the voice in which he uttered the words: “Very good, my lord!”

But when the Viscount had swept Miss Wantage out again, he so far forgot himself as to confide to the interested proprietor of the lodgings that if Fate had not decreed that he should have a swollen jaw upon the day fixed for the Viscount’s return to his ancestral home, and if the Viscount had been less obliging in granting him a holiday to have the offending tooth drawn, a chain of circumstances, which he foresaw could only end in disaster, would never have been set up. The proprietor, a literal-minded gentleman, said that he had never seen Mr Bootle nor anyone else, for that matter, managing to check any of his lordship’s starts. He apostrophized his lordship as a regular dash, turf or turnpike, a vulgarism which offended Bootle so much that he went off to execute the Viscount’s commission without vouchsafing another word to his crony.

The Viscount, meanwhile, conveyed Miss Wantage to a certain mantua-maker’s establishment in Bond Street, where he was not unknown. Here, after a few moments’ brief and startlingly frank colloquy with the astonished proprietress, he handed Miss Wantage over, to be fitted out as became her station. Nothing occurred to disturb the harmony of these proceedings, except a slight contretemps arising out of Miss Wantage’s burning desire for a very dashing confection of sea-green gauze, with silver ribbons, and the Viscount’s flat refusal to permit her to wear any garment so outrageously unsuited to a young lady supposedly on her way to a select seminary in Bath. This trifling quarrel was adjusted by the mantua-maker, who, foreseeing a valuable customer in the future Lady Sheringham, spared no pains to exercise all the tact at her command. She suggested that his lordship should buy a demure (and extremely expensive) gown for Miss Wantage to wear in the immediate future, at the same time laying by, for a later occasion, the sea-green gauze which had so taken Miss’s fancy. The Viscount agreed to this, and was at once obliged to call Miss Wantage to order for hugging him in public.

By the time these purchases, with a few other of a more intimate nature, had been made; a hat to match the muslin dress chosen at a milliner’s shop farther down the street; a pair of lavender kid gloves procured; such items as brushes, combs, and Joppa soap added to the list of necessities; and a faithful promise made to Miss Wantage that she should visit this entrancing thoroughfare again upon the morrow to make further purchases, dusk was falling. The betrothed couple returned to the Viscount’s lodgings, Miss Wantage in a state of inarticulate bliss, and her cavalier divided between amusement at her pleasure in her first new gown, and a strong inclination for his dinner. Bootle having proved himself worthy of his trust, nothing further remained to do but to pack the various purchases in two neat trunks, and to summon another hackney to convey them to Grillon’s Hotel.

Seated in this homely vehicle, Miss Wantage slipped a small, gloved hand into Sherry’s, and said in a quivering voice: “ Thank you, Sherry! Oh, I wish I could tell you — ! You see, no one has ever given me anything before!”

“Poor little soul!” said his lordship, patting her in a friendly way. “There, don’t cry! You may have anything you like now, you know. Anything except that shocking hat with the purple feathers, that is! Mind, you’re not to buy that tomorrow, Kitten! I shall have it taken straight back, if you do!”

“No, Sherry, I promise I won’t,” said Miss Wantage submissively.

Chapter Four

UPON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, NOT VERY much after ten o’clock, two young gentlemen sat at breakfast together in the front parlour of a house in Stratton Street. The apartment, which was the lodging of Mr Gilbert Ringwood, bore all the signs of being a bachelor abode, the furniture being old-fashioned, and designed rather for comfort than for elegance. A mahogany sideboard supported an array of bottles, rummers, tankards, and punchbowls; a pair of foils was propped up in one corner of the room; several riding-whips hung on the wall, amongst a collection of sporting prints and engravings; three snuff jars, a box of cigars, and a marble clock adorned the mantelpiece; and the imposing mirror hung above it had tucked into its rather loose frame various cards of invitation, and two advertisements: one of a forthcoming event at the Royal Cockpit, and the other of a sparring contest to be held under the auspices of Mr John Jackson at the Fives-Court, Westminster. Further testimony to the sporting proclivities of the owner of this apartment was provided by a pile of Weekly Dispatches, and a copy of the Racing Calendar, which reposed on the writing-desk by the window.

In the centre of the room stood an oblong table, spread with a white cloth, and laid with such dishes as might be supposed likely to tempt the appetites of Mr Ringwood and his boon-companion, the Honourable Ferdinand Fakenham. These, however, were poor. Neither gentleman had been able to fancy the soused herrings, or the buttered eggs, and had done no more than toy with a few slices from the sirloin, and swallow the merest mouthful of a fine York ham. Rejecting the chocolate which had been made for them in a silver pot, they washed down such morsels as they selected for consumption with ale poured from a large brown jug into sizeable tankards.

Mr Ringwood, who, as was proper, sat at the head of the board, was nattily attired in a coat of superfine cloth with pearl buttons; a pair of exquisite Unmentionables; and Hessian boots of startling cut and gloss; but Mr Fakenham, from the circumstance of having slept in his coat, was at present arrayed in one of Mr Ringwood’s dressing-gowns. This was a resplendent garment of brocaded silk, whose rich purple sheen accorded extremely ill with the pallor of Mr Fakenham’s amiable, if slightly vacuous, countenance.

It had not been from any fixed design that the Honourable Ferdinand had spent the night on the sofa in his friend’s lodging. An evening whiled away at the Castle Tavern, Holborn, had engendered in him an affection for Mr Ringwood that led him to accompany this gentleman back to Stratton Street, in preference to directing his erratic footsteps in the direction of the parental home in Cavendish Square. Whether from a natural disinclination to proceed farther on his way, or from a hazy belief that he had reached his proper destination, he had entered the house, arm in arm with his friend, ambled towards the sofa, and stretched himself out upon it, wishing Mr Ringwood — for he was the soul of politeness — a very good night. Mr Ringwood, always a thoughtful host, had spread a carriage rug over his willowy form, and had sent in his man to remove his boots. As an afterthought, he had himself taken a nightcap in to his guest, and had fitted it tenderly on to his head.

Since neither gentleman was of a loquacious disposition, and both were suffering in some slight degree from the aftermath of a convivial evening, few words were exchanged over the breakfast table. Mr Ringwood brooded gloomily over the racing news in the morning’s paper, and Mr Fakenham sat with his clouded gaze fixed on nothing in particular. The sound of a vehicle approaching at a smart pace up the street awoke no interest in either mind, but when it drew up outside the house, and a brisk knocking almost immediately fell upon the door, Mr Fakenham palpably winced, and Mr Ringwood closed his eyes with the air of one suffering exquisite discomfort. He opened them again a moment later, for an impatient footstep sounded in the passage, and the door burst open to admit Lord Sheringham, who came briskly in with all the objectionable appearance of one who had not only gone sober to bed, but had also risen betimes.

“Gil, I want a word with you!” he announced, tossing his hat and gloves on to a chair. “Hallo, Ferdy!”

“It’s Sherry,” Mr Fakenham somewhat unnecessarily informed his host.

“Yes, it’s Sherry,” agreed Mr Ringwood, staring fixedly at the Viscount. “Thought you was in the country.”

“So did I,” confessed Ferdy. He looked at his cousin, and, apparently feeling that something more was required of him, asked with friendly interest: “You back, Sherry?”

“Well, good God, you can see I am, can’t you?” retorted his lordship. “What the deuce are you doing here at this hour, and in that devilish dressing-gown?”

“Spent the evening at the Daffy Club,” explained Ferdy simply.

“Oh, castaway again, were you? Damme if ever I saw such a fellow!” said Sherry, hunting on the sideboard for a clean tankard, and pouring himself out a liberal libation of ale. He drew up a chair, pushing various trifles which reposed on it on to the floor, and sat down. “Gil, you’re a knowing one: I want your help!”

Mr Ringwood was so much moved by this unexpected tribute that he blushed, and dropped the Morning Chronicle. “Anything in my power, Sherry! Know you’ve only to give it a name!” he said. A disturbing thought occurred to him; he added mistrustfully: “As long as it isn’t to carry a message to George!”

“Carry a message to George?” repeated Sherry. “Why the deuce should I want a message carried to George?”

“Well, if it isn’t, it don’t matter. For I won’t do it, Sherry, and it’s no use asking me to.”

Mr Fakenham shook his head portentously. “Taken one of his pets,” he said. “Came smash up to me in Boodles yesterday, asking where you was. If I’d had my wits about me I’d have said you’d gone off to Leicestershire. Deuced sorry, Sherry! Never at my best before noon!”

“Oh hang George!” said Sherry. “He needn’t think he’s going to blow a hole through me, because he ain’t.”

“Seemed very set on it,” said Mr Fakenham doubtfully.

“Tell him to take a damper! That’s not what I came about. Gil, where does a fellow get hold of a special licence?”

The effect of this question was to cast his lordship’s two cronies into stunned silence. Mr Fakenham’s rather prominent eyes goggled alarmingly at his cousin; Mr Ringwood’s jaw visibly dropped.

“ Now what’s the matter?” demanded Sherry. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a special licence! Of course you have!”

Mr Ringwood swallowed once or twice. “You don’t mean a marriage licence, do you, Sherry?”

“Yes, I do. What else should I mean? Thing you have to have if you want to get married in a hurry.”

“Sherry, she’s never accepted you?” gasped Mr Ringwood, his brain tottering.

“She?” said the Viscount, frowning at him. “Oh, the Incomparable! Oh, lord, no! Wouldn’t look at me! It’s not she.”

“Good God!” said Mr Ringwood, relaxing. “I wish you will not burst in on a fellow with a shock like that, Sherry, dear old boy! Gave me such a turn — ! Who wants this special licence?”

“I do. Don’t I keep on telling you so? Seems to me you must have shot the cat about as badly as Ferdy last night!”

Mr Ringwood stared at him, and then, as though mutely seeking guidance, at Mr Fakenham.

“But you said she wouldn’t look at you!” said Mr Fakenham. “Heard you distinctly. If she won’t look at you, no sense in a special licence. No sense in it either way. Banns: that’s what you want.”

“No, I don’t,” replied Sherry. “Banns won’t do for me at all. I must have a licence.”

“Much cheaper to have banns,” argued Mr Fakenham. “Where’s the use in laying out your blunt on a licence? Stupid things: much better stick to banns!”

“You’re a fool, Ferdy,” said his lordship, not mincing matters. “I’m getting married today, and I can’t do that without a licence.”

“Sherry, it’s you who must have shot the cat!” exclaimed Mr Ringwood, with a touch of severity. “How can you be married today, when you say she wouldn’t look at you?”

“Lord, can’t you think of any other female than Isabella Milborne?” demanded Sherry. “I’m going to marry someone else, of course!”

Mr Ringwood blinked at him. “Someone else?” he said incredulously.

Mr Fakenham, having thought it over, pronounced: “Oh! Someone else. No reason why he shouldn’t do that, Gil.”

“I don’t say he can’t do it,” replied Mr Ringwood. “What I say is that it sounds to me like a hum. He went off to Kent to offer for Isabella, didn’t he? Very well, then! Now he walks in here and says he’s going to marry someone else. Well, what I mean is, it’s absurd! No other word for it: absurd!”

“You’re right!” said Ferdy, forcibly struck by this presentation of the case. “He’s bamming again. You shouldn’t do it, Sherry. Not at this hour of the morning!”

“Confound you both, I’m in earnest!” Sherry said, setting his tankard down with a crash which made Ferdy jump like a startled deer. “I’m going to marry a girl I’ve known all my life! Damme, I must marry someone! I shan’t have a feather to fly with if I don’t.”

“Who is she?” asked Mr Ringwood. “You’ve never offered for the Stowe girl, Sherry, dear old boy? Not the rabbity-faced one?”

“No, of course I haven’t. You don’t know her: never been to London in her life! I ran off with her yesterday.”

“But, Sherry!” expostulated Mr Ringwood, a good deal shaken. “No, really, dear boy! You can’t do that sort of thing!” —

“Well, I’ve done it,” replied the Viscount, a shade sulkily.

Mr Fakenham made a helpful suggestion. “You want Gretna Green, Sherry. Post-chaise-and-four.”

“Good God, no! It’s bad enough without that!”

“You can get married in the Fleet,” offered Mr Fakenham.

The Viscount arose in his wrath. “I tell you it isn’t that kind of an affair at all! I’m going to be married in a church, all right and tight, and I want a special licence!”

Mr Fakenham begged pardon. Mr Ringwood gave a slight cough. “Sherry, old boy — don’t want to pry into your affairs — wouldn’t offend you for the world! — You ain’t thinking of marrying the lodge-keeper’s daughter, or anything of that kind?”

“No, no! She’s a Wantage — some sort of a cousin, but they don’t own her. Father went through all his blunt, and kicked up a dust of some kind. Before my time. The point is, she’s as well born as you are. Mrs Bagshot brought her up: she’s another of her cousins. You must know the Bagshots!”

Mr Fakenham was suddenly roused to animation. “If she’s a Bagshot, Sherry, I wouldn’t marry her! Now there’s a horrible thing! Do you know that woman has brought out a third one? For anything we know she’s got a string of ’em — and each one worse than the last! Cassandra was bad enough, but have you seen the new one? Tallow-faced girl called Sophy?”

“Lord, yes, I’ve known the Bagshots all my life! Hero’s not like them, I give you my word!”

“Who?” asked Ferdy, his attention arrested.

“Hero. Girl I’m going to marry.”

Ferdy was puzzled. “What do you call her Hero for?”

“It’s her name,” replied Sherry impatiently. “I know it’s a silly name, but damme, it ain’t as silly as Eudora! Besides, I call her Kitten, so what’s the odds?”

“Sherry, where is this girl?” asked Mr Ringwood.

“She’s at Grillon’s. Couldn’t think of anywhere else to take her. Told ’em she was on her way to school, and her abigail broke her leg getting down from the chaise. Best I could think of.”

“Did she, though?” said Ferdy, interested. “Dare say she didn’t wait for the steps to be let down. I had an aunt — well, you remember her, Sherry! Old Aunt Charlotte, the one who — ”

“For God’s sake, Ferdy, will you go and put your head under the pump?” cried the exasperated Viscount. “There wasn’t any abigail!”

“But you said — ”

“He made it up out of his head,” explained Mr Ringwood kindly. “Ought to have been an abigail.”

“Yes, by Jove, and that’s another thing I shall have to arrange!” exclaimed Sherry. “’Pon my soul, there’s no end to it! Where the deuce does one find abigails, Gil?”

“She’ll find one,” Mr Ringwood said. “Bridegroom don’t have to engage the abigails. Butler and footmen, yes. Not abigails.”

His lordship shook his head. “Won’t do at all. She wouldn’t know how to go about it. I tell you, she’s the veriest chit out of the schoolroom. Not up to snuff at all.”

Mr Ringwood eyed him uneasily. “Dear old boy, you haven’t run off with a schoolgirl, have you?”

A rueful grin stole into the Viscount’s eyes. “Well, she ain’t quite seventeen yet,” he admitted.

“Sherry, there’ll be the devil of a dust kicked up!”

“No, there won’t. That old cat of a Bagshot woman don’t care a rap for the poor little soul. If it hadn’t been for me, she’d have packed her off to be a governess at some rubbishing school in Bath. Hero! Chit who used to go bird’s-nesting with me! I couldn’t have that, damme if I could! Besides, if I must marry someone, I’d as lief marry Hero as anyone.”

This heresy was too much for his cousin, who uttered in shocked accents: “Isabella!”

“Oh, well, yes, of course!” said Sherry hastily. “But I can’t marry her, so it might as well be Hero. But that’s neither here nor there. Where do I get a special licence, Gil?”

Mr Ringwood shook his head. “Damned if I know, Sherry!” he confessed.

The Viscount appeared much dashed by this reply. Fortunately, the door opened at that moment, and Mr Ringwood’s man came in with the Honourable Ferdinand’s coat, which he laid reverently across a chair back.

“Chilham will know!” said Mr Ringwood triumphantly. “Extraordinary fellow, Chilham! Knows everything! Chilham, where may his lordship get a special licence?”

The valet betrayed not the smallest sign of surprise at this question, but bowed, and replied in refined accents: “I believe, sir, that the correct procedure will be for his lordship to apply to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“But I don’t know the fellow!” protested his lordship, looking very much alarmed.

The valet executed another of his prim bows. “I apprehend, my lord, that acquaintanceship with his grace need not be a requisite preliminary to the procuring of a licence from him.”

“I’ll tell you what, Sherry,” said his cousin, with a good deal of decision, “I wouldn’t go near him, if I were you.”

“Should his lordship prefer it, I fancy, sir, that any bishop will answer his purpose as well,” said Chilham. “Will there be anything further, sir?”

Mr Ringwood waved him away, just as a violent knocking sounded on the street-door. “No, nothing! If that’s anyone wanting to see me, I’m not at home!”

“Very good, sir. I will endeavour to intercept the gentleman,” said Chilham, and withdrew.

His efforts at interception were not crowned with success. Sounds of an altercation penetrated to the parlour, to be followed an instant later by the eruption into the room of a startlingly handsome young man, dressed in riding-breeches and top-boots, and a long-tailed blue coat, with a Belcher handkerchief carelessly knotted round his throat, and his luxuriant black locks in a state of disorder which allowed one ringlet to tumble across his brow. His fiery dark eyes swept the room, and singled out the Viscount. “I knew it!” he said, in a throbbing voice. “I saw your phaeton!”

“Did you?” said Sherry indifferently. “If Jason’s forked your purse again, there’s no need to get in such a taking. I’ll tell him to hand it over.”

“Don’t try to trifle with me, Sherry!” the newcomer said warningly. “Don’t try it, I say! I know where you have been! You have taken a damned advantage of me, by God!”

“No, he hasn’t,” said Mr Ringwood. “Now, sit down, George, for God’s sake, and don’t put yourself in a pucker over nothing! I never saw such a fellow!”

“Nothing to be in a pucker about,” said Mr Fakenham, adding his helpful mite. “Sherry’s going to be married.”

“ What?” gasped Lord Wrotham, turning a ghastly colour, and rolling his eyes towards the Viscount.

“No, no, not to Isabella!” Mr Ringwood assured him, touched by the sight of such agony. “Really, Ferdy, how can you? Sherry’s going to marry another female.”

Lord Wrotham staggered to a chair, and sank into it. Anxious to make amends, Mr Fakenham poured out some ale, and pushed the tankard towards him. He took a pull, and sighed deeply. “My God, I thought — Sherry, I have wronged you!”

“Well, I don’t mind,” said the Viscount handsomely. “Got too much else to think about. Besides, you’re always doing it.”

“Sherry,” said Wrotham, fixing him with a hungry gaze, “I insulted you! If you want satisfaction, I will give it to you.”

“If you think it would afford me satisfaction to stand up for you to blow a hole through my chest, you’re mightily mistaken, George!” said Sherry frankly. “I’ll tell you what: if you don’t stop trying to pick quarrels with your best friends, you won’t have any left to you!”

“I think I am going mad!” said Wrotham, with a groan, and dropping his head in his hands. “I thought you was gone into Kent to steal a march on me with the Incomparable!” He raised his head again, and directed one of his fiery stares at Mr Fakenham. “It was you who told me so!” he cried accusingly. “Now, upon my soul, Ferdy — ”

“All a mistake!” said Ferdy feebly. “Never at my best before noon!”

“Well, as a matter of fact, that’s what I did do,” said Sherry, with a candour bordering, in the opinion of his friends, on the foolhardy. “Only she wouldn’t have me.”

“She refused you!” Wrotham cried, his haggard countenance suddenly radiant.

“That’s what I’m telling you. It’s my belief she’s got better game in view than either of us, George. If she can bring him up to scratch, she’ll have Severn, you mark my words!”

“Sherry!” thundered the distraught lover, springing to his feet and clenching his fists, “one word of disparagement of the loveliest, the most divine, the most perfect woman, and I call you out to answer for it!”

“Well, you won’t get me out,” responded the Viscount.

“Am I to call you a coward?” demanded Wrotham.

“No, no, George, don’t do that!” begged Ferdy, much alarmed. “Can’t call poor Sherry a coward because he don’t want to go out with you! Be reasonable, old fellow!”

“Oh, lord, let him call me what he likes!” said the Viscount, quite disgusted. “If I weren’t going to be married today, damned if I wouldn’t draw your claret, George! It’s time someone let a little of that hot blood of yours!”

“What’s more,” said Mr Ringwood severely. “Sherry never said a word you could take amiss. Suppose she does mean to marry Severn? What of it? No harm in that, is there? Dare say she’s taken a fancy to be a duchess. Anyone might!”

“I will not believe that she could be so worldly!” Wrotham said, striding over to the window, and staring out into the street.

His long-suffering friends, relieved to see that his rage had, for the moment, abated, returned to the consideration of the problem confronting Sherry. Their discussion presently attracted Lord Wrotham’s attention, and he came away from the window, and quite mildly asked the Viscount to explain how he came to be marrying a totally unknown damsel. Sherry very obligingly favoured him with a brief resume of his elopement; and Lord Wrotham, convinced at last that he had relinquished all pretensions to the hand of the Incomparable Isabella, warmly shook him by the hand, and offered him his felicitations.

“Yes, that’s all very well,” said Mr Ringwood, “but it don’t help us to find a likely bishop for this special licence.”

“It’ll have to be a Fleet marriage, Sherry,” said Mr Fakenham mournfully.

“No,” said Mr Ringwood. “Won’t do at all. Not legal.”

At this point, Lord Wrotham shocked the company into silence by saying that he was acquainted with a bishop. He explained this extraordinary lapse by adding apologetically that his mother had been as thick as thieves with the fellow any time these past ten years; and, being still under the revulsion of feeling brought about by the realization that the Viscount was no longer one of his rivals, offered to introduce him to this cleric.

The Viscount at once closed with the offer, and proceeded to enlist the services of Mr Ringwood. Mr Ringwood, learning that his task was to escort his friend’s bride on a tour of the milliners’ and mantua-makers’ shops which graced the town, and to dissuade her from purchasing garments unsuited to her station, goggled at the Viscount in dismay. His expostulations went quite unheeded. The Viscount assured him that he would deal famously with Miss Wantage; and, after appointing a rendezvous with Lord Wrotham, bore him off in his phaeton to Grillon’s Hotel.

Chapter Five

MISS WANTAGE, IN SPITE OF HER NATURAL TERROR at being left without support in such a formidable place as Grillon’s Hotel, had passed a peaceful night, the unaccustomed excitement of the previous day having made her tired enough to sink into a sleep from which not all the strange noises of a London street had the power to rouse her. The Viscount had very kindly stayed to partake of dinner in her company before leaving the hotel for his own lodging; and since he had promised to visit her betimes next morning she was able to part from him with tolerable composure. But the high-bred stares of several dowagers sojourning in the hotel, coupled with the overt curiosity of the chambermaid who waited on her, made her feel very ill-at-ease, and it took all the comfort afforded by the knowledge of being dressed in a modish new gown to sustain her spirits until the arrival, at eleven o’clock, of the Viscount, with the shrinking Mr Ringwood in tow.

Being blessed with the friendliest of natures, Miss Wantage accepted Mr Ringwood with perfect complaisance. Upon being told that Gil would take care of her while his lordship was otherwise engaged, she smiled confidingly at him, and said: “Oh yes! Thank you! How kind it is in you! Will you take me to buy a hat for the wedding, please? Sherry made me buy this one I have on, because he told everyone I was going to school in Bath, but I will not wear it for my wedding!”

“Well, you need not,” replied Sherry. “But mind, Kitten, you are not to choose what Gil don’t like!”

“Oh no, indeed I won’t.”

The horrified Mr Ringwood made an inarticulate noise in his throat. It was not attended to. Sherry instructed him to be firm with Miss Wantage, and — in an under-voice — for God’s sake not to let her buy a hat more suited to a chere-amie than to a lady of Quality! Mr Ringwood, no lady’s man, was understood to say that really — no, really! — he knew nothing about such matters, but the Viscount summarily disposed of this objection and returned to the vexed question of abigails. Miss Wantage seemed surprised, but gratified, to learn that she was to have an abigail, but since she had no notion how to set about acquiring one, she was unable to help his lordship. Mr Ringwood then had the brilliant idea of laying the matter before Chilham. This found instant favour with Sherry, who said that he would drive straight back to Stratton Street as soon as he had paid Miss Wantage’s reckoning.

“And that reminds me!” he said suddenly. “Where the deuce are we going to stay?”

“Stay?” repeated Mr Ringwood. “Dash it, Gil, we shall have to put up somewhere until I decide where we are to live!”

“But — Are you meaning to stay in town, Sherry?” asked Mr Ringwood, with ideas of honeymoons chasing one another through his head.

“Of course we’re going to stay in town! Where the devil else should we stay? But I won’t stay at this place, and so I tell you! Of all the stuffy — Besides, we couldn’t stay here. They think Kitten’s on her way to school.”

“Well, you’ve got a house, dear old boy — very fine house! Best part of the town — excellent address — Why not go there?”

“I suppose it will come to that in the end,” agreed Sherry, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “But I can’t take possession of it before I’ve told my mother I want it. We shall have to put up at an hotel in the meantime. Only thing is, which hotel?”

“There’s Limmer’s,” suggested Mr Ringwood doubtfully.

“Limmer’s!” ejaculated the Viscount. “With all the Pets of the Fancy for the chit to hobnob with! As well take her to the Castle Tavern!”

Mr Ringwood, much confused, begged pardon, and once more searched his brain. He bethought him of Ellis’s; and after the Viscount had spurned this hostelry with a loathing engendered by his having once dined there with his mother, rejected a suggestion that Graham’s was said to be comfortable, and, on the somewhat obscure grounds of having an aunt who used to stay here, refused to enter the portals of Symon’s, it was decided that the young couple should take up their temporary abode at Fenton’s in St James’s Street.

“Well, now that we’ve settled that, I’d best be off to go with George to visit this curst Bishop of his,” said his lordship. He added, not without a touch of disapproval: “Queer start, that: George being acquainted with a Bishop. Shouldn’t have thought it of him.”

“No, I shouldn’t either,” agreed Mr Ringwood. “Of course you do get ’em in the family sometimes. Thing that might happen to anyone.”

“Yes, but you don’t know ’em,” Sherry pointed out. “Besides, he didn’t say this one was a relation of his. Very odd fellow, George.”

“You know what I think about George, Sherry?” Mr Ringwood said, as one who had given much consideration to the subject. “It’s a pity he’s such a devil of a fellow with the pistols. Makes it deuced awkward, sometimes, being a friend of his, because there’s no knowing when he’ll take one of his pets, and then nothing will do for him but to call one out. At least, I don’t mean that, precisely, because it stands to reason no one’s going to go out with George, unless they can’t help themselves, but the thing is he ain’t happy. Pity!”

“Oh, I don’t know!” said Sherry. “He was never as bad until the Incomparable came to town. Don’t pay much heed to him, myself. How long will it take me to fork this Bishop of his for that licence, do you suppose? I mean, where are we to meet?”

Mr Ringwood having no ideas to advance on the probable length of time this delicate operation would need, it was decided, after a good deal of argument, that as soon as Miss Wantage had accomplished her shopping, she should be escorted to the Viscount’s lodging, where he engaged himself to meet her. The party then broke up, Sherry going off to pick up Lord Wrotham, who had returned home to change his Belcher handkerchief for a neckcloth more in keeping with the exalted company he was to seek; and Mr Ringwood sallying forth with Miss Wantage in the direction of Bond Street.

Any idea he might have cherished of being able within an hour or two to relinquish his charge into her betrothed’s keeping was put an end to by the discovery, when they repaired to the Viscount’s lodging shortly after noon, that his lordship proposed to meet his Hero only at the Church door. He had left a hastily scribbled note for Mr Ringwood, informing that everything was in a way to being fixed right and tight; and that he relied upon his friend to bring the bride to St George’s, Hanover Square, not a moment later than half past two o’clock.

Mr Ringwood, who was by this time on very friendly terms with the most unexacting young lady he had so far encountered, communicated the contents of the note to her, and said: “Well, what would you care to do now, I wonder?”

“I could wait here,” offered Miss Wantage, in a tone which indicated that she would consider such a course pretty flat.

“No, that won’t do,” Mr Ringwood said, frowning. “I think I had best take you to eat a little luncheon. After that — ” He paused, eyeing her speculatively.

Miss Wantage returned his gaze with one of pleasurable expectation. “I know what you’d like!” he said. “You’d like to see the wild beasts at the Royal Exchange!”

Nothing could have appealed more strongly to Miss Wantage’s youthful taste, so as soon as she had changed the chipstraw hat for an Angouleme bonnet of white threadnet trimmed with lace, she sallied forth once more with Mr Ringwood, tripping beside him with all the assurance of one who knew herself to be dressed in the pink of fashion. The Angouleme bonnet most becomingly framed her face; she had taken great pains to comb her curls into modish ringlets; and if the figured muslin gown was less dashing than a certain pomona green silk which Mr Ringwood had assured her, in some agitation, Sherry wouldn’t like at all, no fault could be found with her little blue kid shoes, or her expensive gloves and reticule, or with the sophisticated sunshade which she carried to the imminent danger of the passers by.

They were a trifle late in arriving at the Church, owing to Mr Ringwood’s having made an unfortunate reference during the course of the afternoon to the Pantheon Bazaar. Miss Wantage had immediately demanded to be taken to this mart, and had enjoyed herself hugely there, dragging Mr Ringwood from shop to shop, and alarming him very much by developing a sudden desire to become the possessor of a canary in a gilded cage, which happened to catch her eye. Mr Ringwood was as wax in her hands, but he had a very fair notion of what his friend’s feelings would be on being met at the Church door by a bride carrying a bird in a cage, and he said desperately that Sherry wouldn’t like it. He had very little hope of being attended to, but to his surprise he found that these simple words acted like a talisman on his volatile companion. So although the hackney which conveyed them from the Bazaar to Hanover Square might be rather full of packages and bandboxes, at least it contained no livestock, a circumstance upon which Mr Ringwood considered he had reason to congratulate himself.

Not only Sherry was awaiting them in the Church porch, but the Honourable Ferdy Fakenham as well, whom he had brought along to support him on this momentous occasion. Both gentlemen were very nattily attired in blue coats, pale pantaloons, gleaming Hessians, uncomfortably high shirt collars, and exquisitely arranged cravats, the Honourable Ferdy sporting, besides (for he was a very Tulip of Fashion), a long ebony cane, lavender gloves, and a most elegant buttonhole of clove pinks. It was Ferdy who had procured a nosegay for the bride to carry, and the bow with which he presented it to her had made him famous in Polite Circles.

“Hallo, Kitten, that’s a devilish fetching bonnet!” said the Viscount, by way of greeting. “But what the deuce made you late? You had best pay off the hack, Gil: no saying how long we shall be here.”

“No, Sherry. Keep the hack!” said Mr Ringwood firmly.

“Why? If we want a hack, we can call up another, can’t we?”

“The thing is, Sherry, there are one or two packages in it,” explained Mr Ringwood, a little guiltily.

The Viscount stared at him, and then took a look inside the vehicle. “One or two packages!” he exclaimed. “Good God! What the deuce possessed you to bring a lot of bandboxes to a wedding?”

“Oh, Sherry, they are things I bought at the Pantheon Bazaar!” said Miss Wantage. “And we had not time to take them to your lodging, and I am very sorry if you do not like it, but I didn’t buy the canary which I wanted!”

“My God!” said the Viscount, realizing his narrow escape.

“Told her you wouldn’t like a canary,” explained Mr Ringwood, with a deprecatory cough.

“I should think you might well!” replied his lordship. “Oh, well, it can’t be helped: the hack had best wait for us! Lord, if I hadn’t forgotten to present you, Ferdy! It’s Ferdy Fakenham, Kitten. He’s some sort of a cousin of mine, so you may as well call him Ferdy, like the rest of us. You’re bound to see a lot of him. George Wrotham would have come along too, but we couldn’t bring him up to scratch. Sent you his compliments, and wished us both happy, or some such flummery.”

“Couldn’t face a wedding,” Ferdy said, shaking his head. “Comes too near the bone. Shook him badly, poor old boy, the mere sight of the licence! Gone off in the dumps again.”

Mr Ringwood fetched a sigh, but the Viscount was disinclined to dwell upon Lord Wrotham’s troubles, and proposed that they should stop dawdling about for all the fools of London to gape at, step into the Church, and settle the business. They all went in, therefore, and the business was, in fact, soon settled, without any other hitch than the discovery by the bridegroom, midway through the ceremony, that he had forgotten to purchase a ring. He rolled a frantically inquiring eye upon his cousin Ferdy, who merely gazed at him with dropped jaw, and the eyes of a startled fawn; and then, rendered resourceful through alarm, tugged off the signet ring on his own finger, and handed it over to the waiting cleric. It was much too large for Hero’s finger, but the glowing look she cast up at him seemed to indicate that she did not in the least resent his lack of foresight. It fell to Mr Ringwood’s lot to give the bride away, which he did with a somewhat self-conscious blush. Everyone signed the register; the Honourable Ferdy saluted the bride’s cheek with rare grace; Mr Ringwood kissed her hand; and the bridegroom confided in a relieved aside to his supporters that he thought they had brushed through it pretty well.

Once outside the Church again, the Viscount handed his wife into the hackney, and turned to consult his friends on the best way in which to spend the evening. Mr Ringwood stared at him very hard, and even Ferdy, who was not much given to the processes of reasoned thought, goggled a little at a suggestion that they should all foregather at Fenton’s for an early dinner, pay a visit to the theatre, and wind up an eventful day by partaking of a snug little supper at the Piazza.

“But, Sherry, dear boy! Lady Sheringham — wedding night — won’t want a party!” stammered Ferdy.

“Fudge! What the devil should we do, pray? Can’t spend the whole evening looking at one another!” said the Viscount. “Kitten, you’d like to go to the play with us, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes, do let us!” cried Hero at once. “I would like it of all things!”

“I knew you would. And you would like Gil and Ferdy to go along with us too, I dare say?”

“Yes,” agreed Hero, smiling warmly upon these gentlemen.

“Then that’s settled,” said the Viscount, getting into the hackney. “Fenton’s Hotel, coachman! Don’t be late, Gil!”

The vehicle drove off, leaving the Honourable Ferdy and Mr Ringwood to look fixedly at each other.

“Know what I think, Gil?” Ferdy asked portentously.

“No,” replied Mr Ringwood. “Damned if I know what I think!”

“Just what I was going to say!” said Ferdy. “Damned if I know what I think!”

Pleased to find themselves in such harmonious agreement, they linked arms in a friendly fashion, and proceeded down the road in the direction of Conduit Street.

“Dear little soul, you know,” presently remarked Mr Ringwood. “Seems to think the devil of a lot of Sherry.”

The slight uneasiness in his voice penetrated to Ferdy’s intelligence. He stopped suddenly and said: “I’ll tell you what, Gil!”

“Well, what?” asked Mr Ringwood.

Ferdy considered the matter. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Better look in at Limmer’s, since we’re so close, and have a third of daffy!”

The bridal couple, meanwhile, were rattling over the cobbles in the direction of St James’s Street. The groom put his arm round the bride’s waist and said: “Devilish sorry I forgot the ring, Kitten! Buy you one tomorrow.”

“I like this one,” Hero said, looking down at it. “I like to have it because it is your very own.”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t keep it long! In fact, you’ll very likely lose it before the night’s out.”

“Oh no! I shall hold my finger crooked, so that it can’t drop off. Sherry, when your cousin said ‘Lady Sheringham’ — did he mean me?”

“Of course he did. Though to tell you the truth, it sounded very odd to me too,” admitted his lordship.

Hero turned wide eyes upon him. “Sherry, I know I am Lady Sheringham, but it doesn’t seem possible! I have the horridest feeling that I shall suddenly wake up and find that it has been all a dream!”

“I know what you mean,” nodded his lordship, “though when I think of all the things I’ve had to do today it seems to me more like a nightmare.” He encountered a dismayed look, and said hastily: “No, no, not being married! I didn’t mean that! I dare say I shall like that very tolerably once I’ve grown used to it. But that Bishop of George’s! Do you know I had to swear an oath, or whatever they call it, that you had the consent of your guardians, Kitten?”

“But, Sherry, I haven’t!”

“No, I know that, but you wouldn’t have had me let a trifling circumstance like that stop me, would you? Besides, there’s no harm done: your precious Cousin Jane ain’t going to kick up a dust, you mark my words! She’ll be thankful to be so well rid of you, I dare say.”

Hero agreed to it, but a little doubtfully. The Viscount said in a bracing tone that what they both needed was a bottle of something to set them up.

They arrived presently at Fenton’s Hotel, to find that Bootle was already installed there, and had not only unpacked his master’s trunks, but had loftily instructed a chambermaid to perform the same office for my lady. As much to preserve his own dignity as Hero’s, he let drop, in the most casual way possible, the information that her ladyship’s maid had been smitten with the jaundice, leaving her mistress temporarily unattended. His grand manners, the slightly contemptuous glance he cast round the best suite of apartments in the hotel, and the nicety of taste which led him to rearrange the ornaments on the mantelpiece of the sitting-room which separated my lord’s from my lady’s bedchamber, quite overawed the chambermaid and the boots, and inspired them with a belief in the propriety of Lord and Lady Sheringham which only the appearance upon the scene of this erratic couple would dispel.

His lordship’s first act, on his arrival, was to ring for a waiter to bring up a bottle of burgundy, and another of ratafia; his second was to produce from one pocket a small package, which he handed over to his bride, saying as he did so: “Almost slipped my mind! There’s a wedding gift for you, brat: frippery things, but I’ll buy you better ones, once the blunt’s my own.”

“ Oh!” gasped Hero, gazing in incredulous delight at her first pair of diamond earrings. “Anthony, Anthony!”

“Good God, Kitten, they’re only trifles,” he expostulated, as she cast herself on his chest. “My dear girl, do have a care to my neckcloth! You’ve no notion how long it took me to get it to set just so!”

“Oh, I am so sorry, but how could I help it? Sherry, will you pierce my ears for me at once, so that I may wear them tonight?”

This, however, the Viscount did not feel himself competent to do. Hero’s face fell so ludicrously that he suggested that the ear-rings might very well be tied on with a piece of silk for the time being. She cheered up immediately, and by the time the waiter came back with the required refreshment, had achieved a result which her husband assured her would defy any but the narrowest scrutiny. They then toasted one another, and the Viscount was moved to declare that he was dashed if he didn’t believe that he had done a very good day’s work.

Later, when she appeared before him in the sea-green gauze, he stared at her in great surprise, and said: By Jove, he had never thought she could look so well! Encouraged by this tribute, Hero showed him a cloak of green sarsnet trimmed with swansdown, which she had purchased that morning, and upon his expressing his unqualified approval of this garment, confided, a little nervously, that she feared he might, when he came to see the bill, think it a trifle dear. The Viscount waved aside such mundane considerations; and they then went downstairs in perfect amity to receive their dinner guests.

It was evident from the expressions on their countenances that Mr Ringwood and the Honourable Ferdy thought that their friend’s bride did him credit. Each of these gentlemen had brought with him a wedding gift, the result of an earnest discussion which had taken place between them over two glasses of daffy at Limmer’s Hotel. The Honourable Ferdy had selected a charming bracelet for the bride; Mr Ringwood had chosen an ormolu clock, which he thought might come in useful. Hero accepted both offerings with unaffected delight, clasping the bracelet round her arm immediately, and promising the clock an honourable position on her drawing-room mantelpiece. This put the Viscount in mind of the chief problem at present besetting him, and as they all took their seats round the table in the dining-room, he again raised the question of his future establishment.

Mr Ringwood was firm in holding to it that the family mansion in Grosvenor Square was a good address, a circumstance by which he seemed to set great store; but Ferdy, while concurring in this pronouncement, gave it as his opinion that Sherry would have to throw all the existing furniture out into the road before embarking on the task of making the house fit to live in.

“Yes, by God, so I should!” exclaimed Sherry. “Most of the stuff has been there ever since Queen Anne, and I dare say longer, if we only knew. Oh, well! Hero will like choosing some new furnishings, so it don’t really signify.”

The Honourable Ferdy, who had been pondering at intervals all day how his cousin’s wife came by such a peculiar name, now introduced a new note into the conversation by saying suddenly: “Can’t make it out at all! You’re sure you’ve got that right, Sherry?”

“Got what right?”

“Hero,” said Ferdy frowning. “Look at it which way you like, it don’t make sense. For one thing, a hero ain’t a female, and for another it ain’t a name. At least,” he added cautiously, “it ain’t one I’ve ever heard of. Ten to one you’ve made one of your muffs, Sherry.”

“Oh no, I truly am called Hero!” the lady assured him. “It’s out of Shakespeare.”

“Oh, out of Shakespeare, is it?” said Ferdy. “That accounts for my not having heard it before!”

“You’re out of Shakespeare too,” said Hero, helping herself liberally from a dish of green peas.

“I am?” Ferdy exclaimed, much struck.

“Yes, in the Tempest, I think.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all!” Ferdy said, looking round at his friends. “She says I’m out of Shakespeare! Must tell my father that. Shouldn’t think he knows.”

“Yes, and now I come to think of it, Sherry’s out of Shakespeare too,” said Hero, smiling warmly upon her spouse.

“No, I’m not,” replied the Viscount, refusing to be dragged into these deep waters. “Named after my grandfather.”

“Well, perhaps he was out of Shakespeare, and that would account for it.”

“He might have been,” said Ferdy fair-mindedly, “but I shouldn’t think he was. Mind you, I never knew the old gentleman myself, but from what I’ve heard about him I don’t think he ever had anything to do with Shakespeare.”

“Very bad ton, my grandfather,” remarked the Viscount dispassionately. “Regular loose screw. None of the Verelsts ever had anything to do with Shakespeare.”

“Well, dare say you must know best, Sherry, but only think of Anthony and Cleopatra!” argued Hero.

“Anthony and who?” asked Ferdy anxiously.

“Cleopatra. You must know Cleopatra! She was a Queen of Egypt. At least, I think it was Egypt.”

“Never been to Egypt,” said Ferdy. “Accounts for it. But I know a fellow who was in Egypt once. Said it was a sad, rubbishing sort of a place. Wouldn’t suit me at all.”

Hero giggled. “Silly! Cleopatra is hundreds and hundreds of years old!”

“Hundreds of years old?” said Ferdy, astonished.

“Good God, you know what she means!” interpolated the Viscount.

Mr Ringwood nodded. “She’s a mummy,” he said. “They have ’em in Egypt.” He felt that this piece of erudition called for some explanation, and added: “Read about ’em somewhere.”

“Yes, but the one I mean is in Shakespeare,” said Hero. “I expect it’s the same one, because he was for ever writing plays about real people.”

A horrible suspicion crossed Ferdy’s mind. He stared fixedly at her, and said: “You ain’t a bluestocking, are you?”

“Of course she’s not a bluestocking!” cried the Viscount, bristling in defence of his bride. “The thing is she’s only just out of the schoolroom. She can’t help but have her head crammed with all that stuff!”

“Anyone can see she’s not a bluestocking,” said Mr Ringwood severely. “Besides, you oughtn’t to say things like that, Ferdy. Very bad ton!”

Mr Fakenham begged pardon in some confusion, and said that he was devilish glad. A fresh bogey at once raised its head, and he demanded, in accents of extreme foreboding, whether the evening’s entertainment was to consist of Shakespeare. Upon being reassured, he was able to relax again and to continue eating his dinner in tolerable composure.

The play to which the Viscount carried his guests was not of a nature to tax even the Honourable Ferdy’s understanding. It was a merry, and not always very polite, comedy which all three young gentlemen pronounced to be very tolerable, and which cast Hero into a trance of ecstasy which would not allow her to withdraw her rapt gaze from the stage for an instant. She did not quite comprehend some of the witticisms which appeared heartily to amuse her companions, and at one point she threw Mr Ringwood into acute discomfort by asking enlightenment of him. Fortunately, the Viscount overheard her, and rescued his friend from his dilemma by saying briefly that she wouldn’t understand even if she were told.

During the interval it was soon made evident that the Viscount’s box was attracting a good deal of attention from other parts of the house. His lordship, detecting various acquaintances amongst the audience, waved and bowed; and after a few minutes a knock fell on the door of the box and a fashionable-looking gentleman entered, glancing curiously at Hero from under rather drooping eyelids, and saying in a languid tone: “So you are come back again, my dear Sherry! And without a word! I begin to think I must have offended you.”

“Hallo, Monty!” responded Sherry, getting up from his chair. “What a fellow you are for funning! No offence at all! I’m devilish glad to see you here tonight — want to present you to my wife! Hero, this is Sir Montagu Revesby — particular friend of mine!”

Hero felt a little shy of this elegant stranger, who looked to be some years older than Sherry. The slightly supercilious air that hung about him, and the irony of his smile, made her uncomfortable, but she was naturally prepared to like any friend of Sherry’s, and she held out her hand at once.

Sir Montagu took it in his, but his brows had flown up in quick surprise, and he directed a half laughing, half startled glance at Sherry. “Is it so indeed!” he said. “You are quite sure it is not you who are funning, my dear boy?”

Sherry laughed. “No, no, we were married today! Ask Gil if we were not!”

“But this is most unexpected!” Sir Montagu said. “You must allow me to offer you my felicitations, Sherry.” His cold eyes ran over Hero; his smile broadened. “Ah — my deepest felicitations, Sherry! And so you were married today? Dear me, yes! How very interesting! But why did you not send me a card for the wedding?”

Mr Ringwood unexpectedly decided to bear his part in this interchange. He said rather shortly: “Private ceremony. St George’s Hanover Square. Lady Sheringham desired it so. Don’t care for a fuss.”

“In deep mourning,” corroborated Ferdy, feeling that a little embroidery was needed.

“No, not in mourning,” said Mr Ringwood, annoyed. “Wouldn’t be here if she was. Family reasons.”

“Nonsense!” said Sherry, rejecting this kindly intervention. “To tell you the truth, Monty, we made a runaway match of it.”

“Save trouble,” murmured Ferdy, faint but pursuing.

“I understand perfectly,” bowed Sir Montagu. “I must think myself fortunate to have been amongst the first to make Lady Sheringham’s acquaintance. For I do not think — ?”

“No, she’s never been to town before,” replied Sherry. “She’s a cousin of the Bagshots: known her all my life.”

“Indeed?” Sir Montagu’s eyebrows seemed to indicate that he found this surprising. “Well, that is very delightful, to be sure. But I fancy the curtain is about to go up on the second act. I must not be lingering here.”

“Join us at the Piazza for supper, Monty!” Sherry suggested.

Sir Montagu thanked him, but was obliged to excuse himself, since he was engaged with some friends. He bowed once more over Hero’s hand, promised himself the pleasure of waiting upon her formally at no very distant date, and took his leave.

He had no sooner left the box than Ferdy was moved to express himself unequivocally. “Shouldn’t have invited him,” he said. “He’s a Bad Man.”

Hero turned a wide, questioning gaze upon him. Sherry said: “Oh, fiddle! Nothing amiss with Monty! You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ferdy!”

“Bit of a commoner,” said Mr Ringwood dispassionately. “Always thought so.”

“Nonsense!”

“Thinks he’s at home to a peg,” said Mr Fakenham. “Well, he ain’t. What’s more, I don’t like him. Gil don’t like him either.”

“Well, he can be devilish good company,” retorted the Viscount.

“He don’t keep devilish good company,” Mr Ringwood said stolidly.

“Good God, you may meet him everywhere!” exclaimed Sherry.

“Point is, we don’t want to meet him everywhere,” said Ferdy. “You know what Duke says?”

“Your brother Marmaduke is a bigger fool than you are,” responded the Viscount.

“No, dash it, Sherry!” expostulated Mr Ringwood. “That’s coming it a trifle too strong! Nothing the matter with Duke! Very knowing fellow!”

“He says,” pursued Ferdy inexorably, “that Monty’s an ivory-turner. I don’t say he’s right, but that’s what he says.”

As this pronouncement could only be understood to mean that the Honourable Marmaduke Fakenham considered Sir Montagu to be employed in decoying hapless innocents into gaming hells, it was not surprising that the Viscount should flush hotly, and refute such a slander with more vehemence than civility. Mr Ringwood, seeing how anxiously Hero’s puzzled eyes travelled from Ferdy’s face to Sherry’s, trod heavily upon Ferdy’s foot, and refrained, with considerable self-restraint, from reminding Sherry that his own initiation into the disastrously deep play obtaining at such discreet establishments as Warkworth’s, and Wooler’s, had been made under the auspices of Sir Montagu. Luckily, the curtain rose just then on the second act, and although Ferdy and Sherry were both perfectly prepared to continue their acrimonious discussion, they were obliged, on account of the representations made to them by persons in the neighbouring boxes, to postpone it until the play had run its course. By that time they had naturally forgotten all about it; and as no further rift had occurred to mar the harmony of the evening the whole party went off happily to eat supper at the Piazza, Hero being conveyed there in a sedan chair and the three gentlemen walking along beside it.

This circumstance put Mr Ringwood in mind of something which he had been meaning to say to Sherry all day; and as soon as the supper had been chosen, and the wine broached, he fixed him with a serious gaze, and said: “Been thinking, Sherry. Carriage for Lady Sherry. Can’t keep driving her about in hacks. Not the thing.”

“No, not the thing at all,” Sherry agreed. “I’m glad you put me in mind of that. Come to think of it, we ought to decide just what she’ll need.”

“Must have a carriage,” Mr Ringwood said. “Landaulet.”

Mr Fakenham, who had been narrowly inspecting a dish of curried crab through his quizzing-glass, looked up at this, and said positively: “Barouche. All the crack nowadays! Can’t have Sherry’s wife driving about town in a landaulet like a dowd.”

“Oh, no!” agreed Hero. “I am going to be all the crack. I have quite made up my mind about that. Sherry said I might cut a dash, and I think I should like to very much.”

“Spoken like a right one!” grinned Sherry. “Of course she can’t have a landaulet! Dash it, that’s what my mother uses! A barouche, with a pair of match-bays: slap up to the echo!”

“Best look in at Tatt’s tomorrow,” nodded Ferdy. “Nothing in your stables fit for a lady, dear old boy.”

Mr Ringwood, who had produced a visiting card from his pocket, made a note on it. “Tatt’s,” he said. “Coachman and footman. Page boy. Abigail.”

“Chilham is attending to that,” said the Viscount. “Says he knows just such a one as will suit.”

“Riding horse,” said Ferdy.

“She don’t ride.”

“Yes, I do!” Hero interrupted. “At least, I have often ridden the old pony, and you know you put me up on your hunter when I was only twelve, Sherry!”

“Well, you aren’t going to sit there saying you rode him, are you?” demanded Sherry. “Never saw a horse get rid of anyone faster in my life!”

“You shouldn’t have put her up on one of your wild horses, Sherry,” said Mr Ringwood disapprovingly. He made another note on his card. “She’d best have a nice little mare. Mare. Lady’s saddle.”

“Yes, and a riding-habit,” said Hero. “And also I should like to have a carriage like that one we saw this morning, Gil, and drive it myself.”

“Phaeton,” said Mr Ringwood, writing it down.

“And Sherry will teach me how to drive it,” said Hero happily.

Sherry’s friends spoke as one man. “No!”

“Why not?”

“Because he can’t drive,” replied Mr Ringwood, not mincing matters.

“Sherry can drive! He drives better than anyone!”

Ferdy shook his head. “You’re thinking of someone else. Not Sherry. Wouldn’t have him in the FHC. Wouldn’t look at him. No precision. Gil’s your man. Drives to an inch: regular nonpareil!”

Mr Ringwood blushed at this tribute, and was understood to murmur that he would be happy to teach Lady Sherry anything that lay within his power. Hero thanked him, but it was evident that her faith in Sherry’s skill was unshaken. Sherry, who had merely grinned at his friends’ strictures, said with unwonted modesty that she had best let Gil take her in hand. His style of driving, although he would back himself to take the shine out of most of the men on the road, was not, he owned, quite suited to a lady. He engaged himself, however, to find her a really sweet-going horse, unless — with a challenging look at Mr Ringwood — he was not thought to be judge of horseflesh?

Mr Ringwood hastened to assure him that he had perfect confidence in his ability to choose proper highbred ’uns; and since every provision for Hero’s future well-being seemed now to have been made, put away his visiting card and began to address himself to his supper.

Chapter Six

THE VISCOUNT’S FIRST ACTION ON THE FOLLOWING morning was to sally forth to pay a call on his uncle, the Honourable Prosper Verelst. This gentleman occupied a set of chambers in Albany, and since it was one of his idiosyncrasies never to stir forth from his abode until after noon, his nephew was sure of finding him at home. He found him, in fact, partaking of a late breakfast, his valet being under orders to let no one in. The Viscount overcame this hindrance by putting the valet bodily out of his way, and walked in on his uncle without ceremony.

The Honourable Prosper was by far too corpulent a man to be anything but easy-going, and beyond fetching a groan at sight of his nephew, he evinced no sign of the annoyance he felt at being disturbed at such an hour. Merely he waved Sherry to a chair and went on with his breakfast.

“I wish you will tell that fool of a man of yours not to try to keep me out, sir,” complained the Viscount, laying his hat and cane down.

“But I want him to keep you out,” responded Prosper placidly. “I like you, Sherry, but I’m damned if I’ll be fidgeted by your starts at this time of day.”

“Well, he ain’t going to keep me out,” said Sherry. “Not but what I shan’t want to see so much of you now. Come to tell you I was married yesterday.”

If he had expected his uncle to betray surprise, he was destined to be disappointed. Prosper turned a lack-lustre blue eye upon him, and said: “Oh, you were, were you? Made a fool of yourself, I suppose?”

“No such thing! I’ve married Hero Wantage!” said Sherry indignantly.

“Never heard of her,” said Prosper, pouring himself out some more coffee. “Not but what I’m glad. You can take charge of your own affairs now. They’ve been worrying me excessively.”

“Worrying you excessively!” ejaculated Sherry. “Well, if that don’t beat all! Much you’ve done to take care of ’em! You’ve left it all to that platter-faced sharp, my uncle Horace, and if he hasn’t feathered his nest I know nothing of the matter!”

Prosper added a lavish amount of cream to his coffee. “Yes, I should think you’re right, Sherry,” he said. “I always did think so, and very worrying it was, I can tell you.”

“Well, why the devil didn’t you do something to stop it?” demanded Sherry, pardonably irritated.

“Because I’m too lazy,” replied his uncle, with the utmost frankness. “If you were my size, you’d know better than to ask me a damned stupid question like that. What’s more, I never could abide that fellow Paulett, and if I’m not to go off in an apoplexy there’s only one thing for it, and that’s to keep away from him. Saving your presence, nevvy, I don’t like any of your mother’s relatives, while as for Valeria herself — well, that’s neither here nor there! Why do you have to come pestering me at this hour just because you’ve got yourself tied-up, boy?”

“Because you’ve got to wind up the Trust,” replied Sherry. He produced a document from his pocket and laid it on the table. “There’s my marriage lines, or whatever you call ’em. I’ll write to my mother myself, but it’s you who must deal with the lawyers.”

Prosper sighed, but attempted no remonstrance. “Well, I don’t mind seeing old Ditchling,” he said. “What are you going to do, Sherry? Do you want your mother to retire to the Dower House? She won’t like that.”

“No,” said Sherry, who had already given this matter a little thought. “Country life don’t suit me, and I’d as soon she stayed at Sheringham Place to keep her eye on things as not. Mind you, I’d give something to kick Uncle Horace out, but I suppose it can’t be done. Not without my mother having the vapours, and I don’t want that. But I’m going to hold the purse strings, and although I don’t mind feeding him and housing him, I’m damned if I’ll pay for his little pleasures any longer!”

“Well, it’s not my affair,” said Prosper, “but if I were in your shoes I’d be rid of him.”

“You wouldn’t. You’re too lazy. Besides, I don’t want to put my mother into one of her takings, and that’s what would happen, if I kicked Uncle Horace out, as sure as check! Ten to one she’d come up to town to live, and that wouldn’t suit me at all.”

“No, my God!” agreed Prosper, impressed by this common sense point of view.

“As for the town house, I haven’t made up my mind about that,” continued Sherry. “I’m bound to say it ain’t much in my line, but I’m taking Hero to have a look at it today, and if she wants to live there she shall.”

“She will,” said Prosper cynically. “Trust any woman to jump at the chance of living in a draughty great mansion in the best part of town!”

He was wrong. When the Viscount took his bride to the shrouded house in Grosvenor Square, some of her vivacity left her. Whether it was the astonished disapproval of the retainer who led them from room to room, or whether it was the depressing effect of the Holland covers which draped most of the chairs and sofas, not even she knew; but a damper was certainly cast over her spirits. She clung tightly to Sherry’s arm, and stole wide, scared glances about her at all the sombre oil paintings in heavily gilded frames, at the huge mirrors, massive chandeliers, draped curtains, and formal furniture. She was conscious of feeling small and defenceless, and she was quite unable to picture herself as mistress of all this outmoded grandeur.

Sherry, naturally, was in no way oppressed by the house, but he knew from experience that an army of servants was needed to keep it up, and he had all a young man’s horror of finding himself saddled with so much responsibility. Moreover, he thought the furniture outrageously dowdy, and he had a vague premonition that if he obeyed his instinct, and made a clean sweep of everything in the house, he would raise a storm of protest that would be very unpleasant, however unavailing. By the time he and Hero had inspected the saloons, the bed-chambers, and were being inexorably led in the direction of the servants’ quarters, he had made up his mind. “You know, Kitten,” he said, “I don’t think you’ll like to live here.”

“No,” Hero replied thankfully. “But — but I will live here if you wish me to, Sherry.”

“Well, I don’t,” he said. “Never could stand the place myself, and Ferdy’s quite right about the furniture. What we need is a much smaller house, if you ask me. Later on, when you’re older — more up to snuff, you know — I dare say we may decide to live here, but we needn’t worry about that now. Damme, the place feels like a tomb! Come, let’s go!”

Hero accompanied him readily out into the square again, but asked, as he handed her up into the phaeton, whether they were to continue living at Fenton’s Hotel. Sherry, on whom the sobriety of this hostelry was already beginning to tell, said that not only would nothing prevail upon him to take up a permanent abode there, but that if he did not contrive to get clear soon he would not answer for the consequences.

“Well, I must say I am glad you don’t wish to stay,” said Hero, disposing her skirts elegantly, and unfurling her sunshade. “They stare at one so! It puts me quite out of countenance. How shall we set about finding an eligible house?”

“Lord, I don’t know!” replied Sherry. “We’ll tell Stoke to manage the whole for us. He’s the family’s man of business, you know. Come to think of it, I ought to inform him that he has me to deal with now, and not my uncles. Should you care to drive with me into the City? May as well be off to see the old fellow at once, and get the business settled.”

As Hero was perfectly ready to drive with him to the City, or, in fact, to any other locality he might take a fancy to visit, it was not long before Mr Philip Stoke was startled by the announcement, made to him by his clerk, that Lord and Lady Sheringham were in the outer office, and desired speech with him. Mr Stoke was quite taken aback, for although he was aware that the Viscount was a harum-scarum young man who would be more than likely to come impetuously in search of him, instead of summoning him to his lodging, he could not conceive of any circumstance unusual enough to have induced his lordship’s Mama to have accompanied him on his quest. He hurried out at once to beg his lordship to come into the private office, and was still more startled to find himself confronting a very youthful lady, whom his noble client carelessly announced to be his wife. Suppressing an involuntary gasp, he bowed deeply, and begged his lordship to come into the private office. Here he set a chair for Hero, at the same time assuring the Viscount that he would have been happy to have waited on him at his lodging had he but known that his services were required.

“No, there’s no time to be wasted,” replied Sherry. “Besides,” added Hero, “I have never been into the City before, and only fancy! I have now seen St Paul’s!”

Before the bewildered Mr Stoke could think of a reply to this artless confidence, the Viscount had divulged the object of his visit. “The thing is, I want you to procure a house for us to live in,” he said. “We’re putting up at Fenton’s, and I don’t like it above half.” Mr Stoke glanced from him to Hero. He was well accustomed to his lordship’s starts, but this one seemed uncommonly odd. He could not recall having seen any announcement of the Viscount’s nuptials in the Gazette, and he was perfectly sure that when he had had occasion to wait on the Honourable Prosper Verelst, not ten days previously, nothing whatever had been said of a wedding.

Sherry, reading the puzzlement in his face, said: “We were married yesterday. Matter of fact, we made a runaway match of it, but all quite above board, you know. And that means that that damned Trust comes to an end. You won’t have to deal with my uncles any longer.”

Mr Stoke met his eye. “May I say, my lord, that I shall be glad?”

“Mighty pretty of you,” grinned Sherry.

Mr Stoke regarded the tips of his fingers. “I believe I have repeatedly informed Mr Verelst that the sums of money drawn by Mr Paulett for the maintenance of Sheringham Place and Sheringham House have appeared to me to be in excess of what could be considered necessary. I fancy your lordship is aware of this.”

“Lord, yes, you told me of it an age since! I shall leave all that business — the estate, you know — in your hands, Stoke,” he promised.

Mr Stoke permitted himself to smile primly. “I fancy I may assure your lordship that Mr Paulett will not out-jockey me,” he said.

“No, I’ll wager he won’t! But never mind that now! The first thing is to find a house.”

“But has your lordship forgotten that there is already a house belonging to you in Grosvenor Square?”

“No, that’s just it: we don’t like it. Just been to take a look at the place, and of all the curst gloomy holes I ever was in — why, it’s worse than Brooks’s! What we want is a snug little house where we can be comfortable.”

“Do I understand your lordship to be desirous of disposing of Sheringham House?” asked Mr Stoke, very much shocked.

“No need to do that,” replied Sherry, in a large-minded way. “Dare say we may take it into our heads to remove there one day, and in the meantime there’s my mother to be thought of. Got to have somewhere to stay when she comes to town, after all.”

Mr Stoke, who was of the opinion that the dowager’s handsome jointure was more than sufficient to enable her to buy a house of her own, looked as disapproving as he dared, and said: “Your lordship can scarcely have considered the expense of maintaining a fourth establishment.”

“Dash it, I’ve only got two places! Oh, you’re thinking of that little hunting-box you procured for me in Leicestershire, are you? I don’t count that.”

“Oh!” said Mr Stoke rather faintly.

“I’m a rich man, aren’t I?” demanded Sherry, stretching his long legs out before him.

“Your lordship is a very rich man, but — ”

“Of course I am! And that reminds me, we must settle a few of my debts. Stupid sort of a business, but I may as well be beforehand with the world, at any rate to start with.”

“That, my lord, was what I had in mind,” said Mr Stoke. “Your lordship was good enough to entrust me with the task of ascertaining the extent of your lordship’s obligations, and I fear that the sum — ”

“Badly dipped, am I? Oh, well, you’d best sell me out of the Funds, and be done with it! No need to pull a long face: it’s my money, damn it all! But first I must have a house I can live in.”

Mr Stoke knew his lordship too well to argue with him when it was plain, from the obstinate look round his mouth, that he had made up his mind. The best he could hope for was to be able to persuade Sherry into hiring instead of buying a house, and with this end in view he began to discuss the size of the proposed establishment, its locality, and the most expeditious way of acquiring it. Hero soon lost interest in the conversation, and left her chair to go and look out of the window into the busy street. When the Viscount at last rose to go she was employed in drawing faces on the dusty window-panes.

“If ever I saw such a troublesome chit!” exclaimed Sherry. “Now look at your glove! What’s more, I dare say Stoke don’t like to have his windows looking like that.”

Mr Stoke, watching in some amusement her ladyship’s conscience-stricken scrutiny of one dirty fingertip, said that he thought her window sketches brightened the room, and earned a grateful smile. The Viscount then swept his bride off to make a preliminary tour of the best furniture warehouses, and his man of business, having escorted them to their phaeton, returned to his office and sat for quite some time gazing at the faces on his window, and pondering what would be the end of his client’s most extraordinary marriage.

The bridal couple spent the rest of the day in the delightful occupation of choosing furniture. They wandered about several warehouses, attended by solicitous salesmen; and after squabbling lightheartedly over the rival merits of Hepplewhite and Sheraton, and loudly condemning each other’s taste in hangings, they laid the foundations of their future home by purchasing a set of gilded chairs covered with straw-coloured satin, a wine-cooler, a tambour top writing table, a crystal lustre, and a shaving stand, which happened to be just what Sherry had been wanting for months past.

Such an exhausting day naturally put the writing of a letter to the Dowager Lady Sheringham out of count, and by way of whiling away the evening Sherry escorted his bride to Vauxhall Gardens. Here they danced, supped in one of the booths on wafer-thin slices of ham, and rack-punch, and watched a display of fireworks. Hero enjoyed every moment of it, and since she made no objection to Sherry’s quizzing the prettiest women present, and was happy to dance or to stroll about with him, whichever he preferred, he was able to gratify her by declaring that he had always known they should deal famously together.

On the following day Mr Stoke waited on them with a list of the houses at present available in the fashionable part of town. He had also drawn up an advertisement of the marriage for insertion in the Morning Post. The Viscount gave his gracious permission to have it forwarded immediately; and the entire party then set forth in a hackney to visit the first of the houses on Mr Stoke’s list. This was condemned at once on the score of being too large; a second, in Curzon Street, had a very ugly fireplace in the drawing-room, which gave Hero an ineradicable distaste for it; a third was discovered to be situated only two doors from the residence of a family of whom the Viscount spoke with concentrated loathing; and a fourth had such a mean staircase that it would have been superfluous to have penetrated farther than the narrow hall. By this time, the Viscount was becoming bored with such domestic matters, and he began to talk of leaving Hero and Mr Stoke to finish the business between them. However, he consented to accompany them to one more house, which was situated in Half Moon Street; and by the greatest good fortune this proved to be exactly what he had had in mind all along. Hero was equally enthusiastic over it, and although Mr Stoke, with his patron’s dignity to consider, pointed out that the drawing-room was not handsome, and the bedchambers inadequate, his objections were overruled. Hero was already planning the decoration of the drawing-room; settling with Sherry that he should have the back dining-room for his library and the front room on the second floor for his bedchamber; and allotting to herself the room behind the drawing-room for her own bedchamber. To Mr Stoke’s reminder that she would require a dressing-room, she replied innocently that she had never had one, and could not conceive what she should do with one. Naturally, neither she nor Sherry saw the smallest necessity for penetrating either to the attics or to the kitchen premises in the basement: they supposed them to be like any other attics or kitchens, and in any event they could all be safely left to Bootle to arrange. Of far more importance was the redecoration of the reception-rooms and the hall. Sherry did indeed bethink himself of the staff that would be necessary for the comfortable maintenance of the house, but beyond saying that he didn’t want a butler like old Romsey, who would water the wine, and had no notion how many abigails were usually employed in an establishment of this size, he had no views to advance. He said that they would leave it to Stoke. Mr Stoke, who had foreseen that this would be the end of it, then inaugurated a discussion of the matter, during the course of which, Sherry, who had not attended to a word, wandered off to take another look at the dining-room, for the helpful purpose of deciding where his wine-cooler should stand. Hero was left with Mr Stoke, and at once shocked and enchanted him by confiding that she had no notion how many servants she ought to employ, but hoped he would not think it necessary for her to have too many. “For I dare say I shan’t know how to go on at all. At least, just at first I shall not, though I expect I shall soon get into the way of it.”

Finally, it was decided that a cook, a butler, two abigails, and a pageboy or footman should, in addition to his lordship’s man, her ladyship’s personal maid, a coachman, two grooms, and the Tiger, be sufficient to ensure the young couple a moderate degree of comfort. Mr Stoke engaged himself to interview all menials applying for the various posts, and to hire those he considered the most desirable. He then took his leave of his patrons and went away in an extremely thoughtful mood.

Nothing now remained except to choose the requisite number of carpets, chests, beds, tables, and chairs for the house. The Viscount, who had had enough of warehouses, conceived the happy notion of enlisting the services of his cousin Ferdy, to whose charge he consigned Hero, while he himself went off to Tattersall’s with Mr Ringwood.

Ferdy, much gratified by the confidence reposed in his taste and judgment, professed himself to be very willing to place both at Hero’s service, for not only was he always ready to gallant a personable female, but his knowledge of all matters of ton was extensive and extremely nice. He knew just what elegant knick-knacks a lady of fashion should have in her drawing-room, had no hesitation in deciding upon a wallpaper to set off the straw-coloured chairs, and was able unerringly to guide Hero’s taste in the choice of carpets and hangings. As it occurred to neither of them to consider the Viscount’s purse, Ferdy’s genius was allowed full rein, and the proprietors of the several warehouses they visited showed a flattering, not to say obsequious, attention to such an open-handed pair.

The Viscount, meanwhile, having, under Mr Ringwood’s auspices, purchased a very pretty mare for his Hero to ride, two high-stepping bays to draw her barouche, and a light-mouthed grey to run between the shafts of her phaeton, lingered only to add a neatish bay, described by the auctioneer as ‘complete to a shade’, to his own stables before dragging Mr Ringwood off to a coach-builder’s in St James’s Street. Here they had no difficulty in selecting a smart barouche with a yellow body; and a light phaeton. They were just about to leave the premises to go in search of a set of silver-mounted harness when an elegant travelling chariot caught the Viscount’s eye, and he at once decided to buy that too, since not only would it be quite out of the question for Hero to travel post — his mother, he knew, never did so — but he himself liked nothing better than to tool a coach-and-four, and would no doubt derive no small degree of pleasure from possessing a coach of his own. As the purchasing of this vehicle made it necessary for him to return to Tattersall’s to negotiate for a team to draw it, it was evident that the Viscount was spending money quite as lavishly as his bride.

When Hero learned that she was now the owner of no fewer than three carriages and eight horses, she turned quite pink, and after struggling for a few moments to express herself suitably, stammered out: “Oh, Sherry, it is just like K-King Cophetua and the beggar-maid!”

“Who the devil was he?” demanded Sherry.

“Well, I don’t precisely remember, but he married a beggar-maid, and gave her everything she wanted.”

“Sounds to me like a hum,” said her sceptical husband. “Besides, what’s the fellow got to do with us?”

“Only that you made me think of him,” said Hero, smiling mistily up at him.

“Nonsense!” said Sherry, revolted. “Never heard such a silly notion in my life! If you don’t take care, Kitten, you’ll have people saying you’re bookish.”

Hero promised to guard against earning this stigma; and after fortifying himself with some very tolerable burgundy from the hotel’s cellars, Sherry sat down to write a somewhat belated letter to his parent.

After a second day’s intensive shopping with Ferdy, there really seemed to be nothing left to buy for the house in Half Moon Street, except such dull necessities as kitchen furnishings and linen, and as Hero was getting tired of choosing furniture she greeted with acclaim Sherry’s suggestion that the rest should be entrusted to Mr Stoke to provide. “And I’ll tell you what, Kitten,” he added. “I’ve had a devilish good idea. We’ll be off to Leicestershire until the house is ready for us to step into. I’ve got a snug little hunting-box there: just the very thing for us!”

“Leicestershire, dear old boy?” exclaimed Mr Ringwood, who happened to be present. “What the deuce should take you there at this time of year?”

“Time I ran an eye over my young stock,” said Sherry. He met his friend’s eye, and said: “Well, dash it. why shouldn’t we go to Leicestershire? The house won’t be ready for weeks, from what I can see of it, and I’ll be damned if I’ll kick my heels in this place much longer! What’s more, I’ve got a strong notion we shall have my mother posting up to London. Seems to me a good moment to go into the country.”

Hero turned pale at the thought of having to confront the Viscount’s enraged parent, and faltered: “Anthony! Do you indeed think she will come to town?”

“There isn’t a doubt of it,” replied Sherry tersely.

Hero clasped her hands tightly together. “And do you think — Cousin Jane as well?”

“Shouldn’t be at all surprised. It never rains but it pours. Dare say she’ll bring my uncle Horace along with her too.”

“Would it — would it be very poor-spirited of us to run away?” asked Hero anxiously.

“I don’t care a fig for that,” replied Sherry. “It’ll be deuced unpleasant if we stay! Thing to do is to give ’em all time to get used to the notion of us being married. By the time we come back to town I dare say they won’t be having the vapours any longer.”

Mr Ringwood, who had been sitting apparently lost in thought, suddenly said: “Brighton.”

“Too late in the season: we should never find a tolerable lodging,” replied Sherry. “Besides, I was down there in May, and it didn’t agree with me.”

“Lady Sherry would like it better than Leicestershire.”

“No, she wouldn’t. I’m going to teach her to ride.”

“Oh, are you, Sherry? Then do let us go to Leicestershire!” cried Hero.

“Lady Sherry,” said Mr Ringwood obstinately, “would like the balls at the Castle Inn. Like to be presented to the Regent, too. Believe he’s still down there.”

“Yes, and a pretty time I should have of it, looking after her!” retorted Sherry scornfully. “You know very well she’s no more fitted to keep the line amongst the set of fellows she’d meet there than a half fledged chicken!”

“Very true,” said Mr Ringwood, nodding wisely. “Better go to Leicestershire. Tell you what: give it out you’ve gone on your honeymoon.”

“That’s a devilish good notion, Gil!” approved the Viscount. “You’d better come along with us!”

This suggestion took Mr Ringwood aback, but as it was heartily endorsed by Hero, and as settling-day at Tattersall’s had left him without any expectation of being able to meet the more pressing of his obligations in the immediate future, he gratefully accepted the invitation. The reflection that the Dowager Lady Sheringham, with whom he was only too well acquainted, might conceivably take it into her head to summon him to her presence to account for his having aided and abetted her son in his clandestine marriage, also weighed with him, but this circumstance he prudently kept to himself, trusting that his friend, Mr Fakenham, when the inevitable summons came to him, would not put two and two together, and accuse him of ratting. Experience of Mr Fakenham’s processes of thought seemed to make it reasonably certain that this mathematical exercise lay rather beyond his powers.

Chapter Seven

THE VISCOUNT HAD NOT BEEN MISTAKEN IN thinking that the letter announcing his marriage to Hero Wantage would have the effect of bringing his Mama hotfoot to London. The news of Hero’s mysterious disappearance had naturally reached her some days before the arrival of Sherry’s missive: she had, in fact, sustained a morning call from Mrs Bagshot, who had enumerated all the kindnesses she had for years shown her ungrateful young relative, and had confided in the bored matron’s ear the intelligence that she had always expected the wretched girl to disgrace her. It occurred to neither lady to connect Hero’s flight with the recent visit of the Viscount to his home. Not unnaturally, it did not occur to Miss Milborne either. Miss Milborne said roundly that she was sure she did not blame poor little Hero, and only trusted that she had sought refuge with some member of her family who might treat her with more consideration than had ever been shown her in the Bagshot household.

When the Viscount’s letter arrived, its effect was stunning. Unable at first to believe the evidence of her eyes, his mother had sat staring at it as one in a trance. As the dreadful tidings penetrated to her intelligence, she gave vent to a shriek which made her brother, who was in the act of mending a pen, cut his finger with his pocket-knife. “Read that!” uttered the shattered lady, holding out the letter with a trembling hand. “Read that!”

To say that Mr Paulett was put out by the news of his nephew’s marriage would be grossly to understate his reactions. He had not believed that Sherry would tie himself up in the bonds of matrimony to any other than Miss Milborne, and was almost inclined to think the letter a hoax, designed merely to alarm him. A second perusal of the objectionable letter, however, put this hope to flight. There was, he did not pause to consider why, a ring of the authentic about St George’s, Hanover Square, and more than a ring of the authentic in the information that the family lawyer would shortly be communicating with himself. Mr Paulett saw the end in sight, and gave a groan. A gleam of hope shot through his despondency; he said: “Hero Wantage? She is a minor — it may yet be put a stop to! She had not the consent of her guardian!”

The dowager rose tottering from her couch. “Desire them to send the carriage round to the door immediately!” she said. “Heaven knows I do not expect the least show of good feeling from Jane Bagshot, whom I dare say contrived the whole miserable business, designing woman that she is! but I will leave no stone unturned to rescue my son from so ruinous an entanglement, and I will drive round to call upon her this instant!”

The same post which had brought the Viscount’s letter to his mother had also brought one, a much briefer one, to Mrs Bagshot. The Viscount had enjoyed writing it, and had read it aloud to Hero before fixing the wafer to it.

Dear Madam, [it ran] it is my duty to inform you that your cousin, Miss Wantage, has done me the honour to accept my hand in marriage. Should you be wishful of addressing your felicitations to her, a letter to The Viscountess Sheringham, care of Fenton’s Hotel, will find her. Believe me, etc., Sheringham.

Mrs Bagshot, reading with starting eyes this curt note, suffered all the rage and the chagrin the Viscount had desired her to feel when he gleefully penned it. She declared at once that the marriage was illegal, and should be instantly set aside; she said that she had always known Hero to be a minx and a baggage; she said that if Cassy had only made more regular use of the Denmark Lotion she had procured for her to eradicate the spots on her face this would never have happened. Cassy then fell into a fit of hysterics which brought her father into the room to inquire testily what the devil was amiss. Leaving Cassy to her sisters’ ministrations, Mrs Bagshot thrust the Viscount’s note into her husband’s hands, and commanded him to do something about it at once! Mr Bagshot, having calmly affixed his spectacles over his ears, read the note with maddening deliberation, and then desired his wife to inform him what she expected him to do about it.

Mrs Bagshot told him. He heard her out in patient silence, and, when she paused for breath, enunciated one word: “Rubbish!”

She glared at him, quite taken aback. Perceiving that she was momentarily bereft of speech, Mr Bagshot said: “Pray, why should you desire to have so advantageous a marriage set aside? I wish you will put yourself to the trouble of considering a little before flying into these odd humours, my dear. To be sure, I do not understand why young Sheringham must needs elope with Hero, for there can have been not the least reason for him to fear that you would not give your consent to the match.”

“I?” gasped Mrs Bagshot. “I consent to the penniless beggar’s marrying Sheringham? I would die rather!”

Her husband looked her over coolly. “Indeed! Then no doubt Sheringham knew what he was about when he carried her off in this improper fashion.”

“I shall have it put a stop to!”

“You will do no such thing,” he replied. “Unless you wish to appear a greater fool than I take you for, you will accept this highly flattering alliance with the appearance at least of complaisance.” He added dryly: “I imagine you are not desirous of giving the world cause to say that you are jealous because his lordship would not throw his handkerchief in Cassy’s direction. For my part, I am happy to think that Hero, who I have always considered to be a nice little thing, has had the good fortune to become so creditably established.”

These words of calm good sense did not fail of their effect. By the time the Dowager Lady Sheringham’s landaulet was at the door, Mrs Bagshot had had time to think the matter over. Nothing would serve to abate the strong sense of chagrin that possessed her, but she was intelligent enough to realize that to attempt to overset the marriage would only serve to make her look extremely foolish. The dowager, therefore, found Mrs Bagshot unresponsive. Mrs Bagshot was certainly much shocked, but although she was lavish in her expressions of sympathy for her dearest Lady Sheringham, she made it quite plain that she had no intention of interfering in the marriage. When Lady Sheringham said that she had quite counted on having that sweet Isabella for her daughter-in-law, the thought crossed her mind that however infuriating it might be to find one’s despised poor relation suddenly a great way above one in the social scale, it would not have afforded her the smallest gratification to have seen the Viscount married to Miss Milborne.

As for the Incomparable Isabella herself, the news came to her as an undeniable and not very welcome shock. Sherry was the first of her suitors to have found consolation elsewhere, and she would have been more than human had she not experienced a strong sensation of pique. However, she had a good deal of pride, and was a good-natured girl, and she told Lady Sheringham that she had always known Sherry to be uncommonly fond of Hero, and she was sure she wished them both very happy.

This dignified way of receiving the news met with Mrs Milborne’s shrewd approval. “Very prettily done of you, indeed, my love!” she said, as soon as the dowager had left them. “But it is a shocking thing, to be sure! To marry a wretched little nobody like Hero Wantage, without a penny to her name, when the whole town has known him to have been at your feet this age past!”

“You are forgetting, Mama, that he offered for me, and I refused him.”

“To be sure you did. I wish you had not been so vehement in your refusal, I must own, my love. It cannot add to your consequence to have him running off straight away to wed another. I dare say he did it from mortification, and I only hope he may not live to rue the day. All things considered, my dear, I think we will return to London. And it will be a good scheme for you to send Hero your felicitations.”

“I have the intention of doing so, Mama.”

“Viscountess Sheringham!” said Mrs Milborne, in a disgruntled tone. “Well, I am sure I did not think to see that chit married before you, my love, with all the splendid chances you have had!”

The dowager, meanwhile, had taken the momentous decision of travelling to London, with what purpose she would have been unable to state with any clarity. She said in a vague but impressive way that Anthony must at least listen to the words of his Mother, though upon what grounds she based this conviction no one could imagine. She commanded her brother to escort and support her on her pilgrimage, and set forth in an enormous travelling chariot, attended by her abigail, a coachman, a footman, and outriders, and preceded by a similar (but less magnificent) vehicle, containing her trunks, and as many servants as she considered necessary to ensure her comfort in the house in Grosvenor Square for a few days. This put her in mind of a fresh injury, and she told her brother that she had little doubt that her undutiful son would throw her into the street, and install his wretched bride in the house his sainted Papa had brought her home to twenty-four years ago. Mr Paulett, appreciating at least the spirit of this, forbore to remind her that the late Viscount had, in fact, brought her home to Sheringham Place.

But when the afflicted lady reached town, and dispatched a peremptory note to Fenton’s Hotel, a civil message was conveyed to her that my Lord Sheringham had gone out of town with his lady. The clerk of Fenton’s Hotel obligingly added the information that his lordship could be found at Melton Mowbray.

Herein the Viscount had made a grave mistake. Had he but remained in London, had he but shown a dutiful penitence, had his bride but placed herself in her mother-in-law’s hands, craving forgiveness and instruction, that lady might have been brought to realize all the advantages of the marriage, and would have needed little persuasion to sponsor her son’s wife into the Polite World. But nothing could have alienated her more than Sherry’s craven retreat, which she had no hesitation in ascribing to Hero’s influence. That her own conduct over the past ten years might have had something to do with it, she naturally did not consider. She sent first for Prosper Verelst, and upon learning from him that he had had nothing to do with the elopement, but that Gilbert Ringwood and young Ferdy Fakenham knew all about it, she sent for Mr Ringwood. She parted on very cool terms with her brother-in-law, that gentleman having had the temerity to say that he thought Sherry’s bride a pretty little creature, and — with a roll of his eye in the direction of Mr Paulett — that he was devilish glad to see the boy assume control of his affairs.

Upon learning that Mr Ringwood too was out of town, the dowager lost no time in sending a summons to Mr Ferdy Fakenham. But as she made the mistake of stating her reason for wishing to see him, she defeated her own ends, Mr Fakenham, with rare presence of mind, instructing his servants to inform her that he was out of town, cancelling all his engagements, and retreating, like a hare startled from its form, to join the bridal couple (and his friend Mr Ringwood) in Leicestershire.

Baulked of even such minor prey as Ferdy, the dowager lost what little common sense she possessed, and proceeded to make known her wrongs. They lost nothing in the telling, nor was the injured Mr Paulette slow to add his mite to the whole. The town began to hum with the story of Sherry’s amazing marriage, and the most coldly correct of Almack’s patronesses, Mrs Drummond Burrell, remarked casually to one of her fellow-patronesses, Lady Jersey, that no voucher of admission to that most exclusive of clubs could, of course, be granted to young Lady Sheringham.

“Good gracious, why not?” asked Lady Jersey lightly.

“I have been in Grosvenor Square, visiting Valeria Sheringham.”

“Oh, that tedious creature!”

Mrs Burrell smiled lightly. “Very true, but in this instance I believe her to have been shamefully used. That wild young man, Sheringham, has made a shocking mesalliance. To make matters the more insupportable, he seems actually to have eloped with the young female.”

Lady Jersey, who was drinking morning chocolate with her friend, selected an angel cake from the dish before her, and bit into it. “Yes, I believe he did elope with her,” she admitted. Her mischievous smile dawned. “But Prosper Verelst assures me that Sherry otherwise behaved towards the girl with the greatest propriety! Only figure to yourself! — Sherry considering the proprieties!”

“I shall not allow Mr Verelst to be a judge. Valeria has told me the whole. The girl is the veriest Nobody — actually a governess, or some such thing!”

“ No such thing! She is one of the Wantages, and I am sure nothing could be more respectable. It is by no means a brilliant match, but only such a goose as Valeria Sheringham would make so great a piece of work over it.”

Her hostess turned a calm, cold gaze upon her. “Pray, my love, have you met the young person?”

“No, but I have been with Maria Sefton, and she has met her, and what is more, she says she is quite unexceptionable — very young, of course; hardly out of the schoolroom, but unquestionably a lady! You must know that she has been under the guardianship of Mrs Bagshot — the same who is for ever thrusting her shockingly plain daughters into the arms of all our eligible bachelors!”

“I do not find it a recommendation. Where, pray, did Lady Sefton encounter her?”

“Oh, down at Melton Mowbray! You must know that the Seftons have been staying with Assheton Smith, at Quorndon House. Maria tells me that they were driving out there when they came upon Sherry and his bride. She tells me it was quite pretty to see Sherry — he was teaching her to ride, it seems — taking such pains over the child.”

“I imagine he might, since he married her.”

“Certainly, but I confess I am agog with curiosity to discover why he married her, since we know him to have been a pretender to Miss Milborne’s hand not a fortnight ago!”

“It is very true. Lady Sheringham told me that he had actually offered for the Milborne girl, and had been rejected. He married the Nobody from pique. There can be no other explanation.”

“Did she tell you that? Upon my word, she is a great fool, then, to be spreading such a story about! I declare it gives me a feeling of strong compassion for the poor little bride, and I shall certainly give her .vouchers for Almack’s, if Maria Sefton has not already done so!”

“Of course, if you are to take the girl up, there is no more to be said,” shrugged Mrs Burrell.

Lady Jersey gave a trill of laughter. “What, in granting her vouchers for the club? How absurd!”

“I wish you may not be taken in.”

“If I am, I shall be in Maria Sefton’s company, and I am sure I do not desire to be in better.”

“Both Lord and Lady Sefton’s good nature is too well-known to occasion remark. I believe it leads them to bestow their favours indiscriminately rather frequently. Valeria Sheringham assures me the girl is quite farouche, no ton, no accomplishments, her looks no more than passable, her fortune non-existent.”

“It will be time enough to deny her the right to come to Almack’s if we find that for once in her life Valeria Sheringham has been speaking the truth.”

“Valeria does not advise us to relax our rules in her favour.”

Lady Jersey’s eyes sparkled. “What, did she say so? Of all the spiteful creatures! No, that is the outside of enough, my dear, and makes me perfectly determined to give the girl a chance to prove herself!”

Mrs Burrell was silent for a moment. She said presently: “You are very right. We shall see how she conducts herself. It is plain, however, that Sheringham is ashamed to show her in town.”

“Nonsense!” replied Lady Jersey. “Prosper Verelst says they have gone upon their honeymoon.”

“Into Leicestershire?” said Mrs Burrell, raising her brows.

“So it seems. The truth is, of course, that Sherry has gone off because he doesn’t care to run the gauntlet of Valeria’s vapours. He would have done better to have stayed, but it is all of a piece! He is a charming young man, I grant, but the most selfish and careless imaginable. I am sorry for his poor little wife.”

Chapter Eight

HERO WOULD HAVE BEEN ASTONISHED, AND, INDEED, indignant, had she been aware that she was the object of Lady Jersey’s sympathy. For she had never been so happy in her life. Sherry had been quite right in thinking that his hunting-box at Melton Mowbray would be just the thing for her. She was delighted with it; and the happy-go-lucky way of life pursued by Sherry when sojourning there could not but appeal to a young lady who had been irked all her own short life by shibboleths and restrictions.

The hunting-box, which was not large, was kept by a married couple who, from having had things very much their own way under their casual master, at first looked upon Hero with suspicious hostility. But as she showed no disposition to interfere in the management of the house, and never dreamed of levelling criticisms where they would certainly be resented, it was not long before Goring and his wife accepted her in much the same spirit as they accepted Mr Ringwood, or any other of the Viscount’s cronies.

It might have been supposed that a very few days spent at Melton Mowbray at the fag-end of the summer would have sufficed to have sent his lordship hotfoot back to town, but thanks to the amusement afforded him by teaching his wife to ride her mare creditably; taking her to Six Hills, and showing her the pick of the best coverts; initiating her into the mysteries of hazard, faro, deep basset, and several other games of chance; playing picquet with Mr Ringwood; trying out his young stock; and attending a cockfight held in the district, he contrived to while away the time very tolerably. Before these simple pursuits had palled upon him, a diversion was created by the arrival in the district of Lord Wrotham, who had come down on a visit to his encumbered estates. Since these were situated only a few miles from Melton, he naturally spent a good deal of his time with his friends, and was delighted to discover in Hero a sympathetic listener. It was not long before he had confided to her his hopeless passion for the Incomparable Isabella, and although an unthinking reference to the complaint which had necessitated the Beauty’s withdrawal from the Polite World seriously endangered, for a few moments, this promising new friendship, the rift was speedily healed by Hero’s assurance that the rash had by no means disfigured Isabella. George rode with Hero to Wartnaby Stone-pits, and, being a very keen rider to hounds, was able to forget his troubles in describing some classic runs to Hero, passing strictures on Assheton Smith, who hunted his own hounds, and often drew his coverts so quickly that he drew over his fox, besides failing sometimes to lift his hounds, which, if you wanted runs in Leicestershire, said George, you must do. Hero, fired with the spirit of emulation after listening to George’s heroic tales, attempted to jump what George called a regular stitcher, and came to grief. Fortunately she was only bruised by her tumble, but the mare strained a tendon, and Sherry, who had been a helpless spectator of the enterprise, no sooner ascertained that his bride was unhurt than he soundly boxed her ears, and swore he would never bring her out with him again. His two friends, though deprecating this violence, endorsed his strictures, having by this time fallen very much into the way of treating Hero as though she had been one of their own young sisters.

When Mr Fakenham joined the party, his presence was felt to be an advantage, as he was able to make a fourth at whist. Some convivial evenings were spent at the hunting-box, under the auspices of a hostess who, however little she might know of the uses of Polite Society, was learning to admiration how to become excessively popular with a party of young bloods. Formality very soon went by the board; she became Kitten to them all; and so accustomed did they grow to her presence at their sessions that they often forgot that she was in the room at all. But they usually remembered her before the party became too convivial for propriety, and then the Viscount would send her up to bed, informing her frankly that they were getting a trifle boosey. Upon one occasion, when he omitted to perform this ritual, she horrified Mr Ringwood by casting a knowledgeable eye over Mr Fakenham, and saying innocently: “Must I go now? I think Ferdy is quite disguised, don’t you?”

The Viscount shouted with laughter, but Mr Ringwood not only begged his hostess never to use such vulgar language, but later made representations to Sherry that they really must all of them be careful what they said in front of her.

A letter from Isabella, written from London, and conveying her felicitations to her dearest Hero, had the effect of breaking up the party. George was no sooner apprised of the Beauty’s return to the haunts of men than he left the greater part of the business which had brought him into the country undone, and posted back to town with the fiercely expressed intention of thrusting a spoke in his Grace of Severn’s wheel. Ferdy and Mr Ringwood took their departure a few days later, and the hunting-box felt sadly empty. The young couple received a morning call from kind Lord and Lady Sefton, during the course of which her ladyship promised Hero the entré to Almack’s when she should take up her residence in London. Sherry informed his wife that this connaissance was the greatest piece of good luck that could have befallen her, since (although he himself might find such company a trifle flat) there was no doubt that the approval of Lady Sefton would be of the greatest value to a lady making her debut in fashionable circles.

“Ten to one,” said Sherry carelessly, “she will have them all leaving their cards in Half Moon Street — Lady Jersey, Lady Cowper, Countess Lieven, Princess Esterhazy, and all their set, you know — and then you will be fixed all right and tight.”

By the time Mr Stoke wrote to apprise him that his new house stood ready to receive him, Sherry had had enough of the country, and not even the annoying intelligence, conveyed to him in a brief scrawl from his uncle Prosper, that his mother was still to be found in Grosvenor Square, availed to keep him longer away from the metropolis. He was under the obligation, too, of returning his watch to the Honourable Ferdy, this young gentleman having written to him from London that since this handsome timepiece was missing from his effects he would be glad if his cousin would recover it from his damned Tiger. Why Ferdy’s watch should exercise such a fascination over Jason no one knew. The Viscount was extremely incensed over his backsliding, and was not in the least mollified by Jason’s tearful explanation that to have the watch within his reach for days together was more than flesh and blood could stand. Matters would have gone ill indeed for Jason had not Hero intervened on his behalf. She had the happy thought of promising to bestow a timepiece upon him as a Christmas gift if he would but refrain, in the interim, from stealing Ferdy’s.

“Or anything else!” said Sherry sternly.

Jason sniffed, wiped his nose on his coat sleeve, and promised to behave impeccably. He further pronounced his guv’nor’s lady to be bang-up, which piece of elegant language Sherry assured her, masked a compliment of no mean order.

When the Sheringhams were set down at dusk one evening in Half Moon Street, they found that Mr Stoke had done his work well. Nothing could have been more charming or more tasteful than the disposition of the furniture in the little house. Hero was enchanted and ran from room to room, exclaiming how well the writing table looked, how pretty was the wallpaper in the drawing-room, how glad she was she had chosen the blue brocade instead of the green, and did not Sherry think that Ferdy had selected precisely the right furniture for his library? Both Ferdy and Mr Ringwood had called in Half Moon Street earlier in the day, Ferdy to leave a bouquet of flowers with the butler, and Mr Ringwood a canary in a gilded cage. Hero was so touched by this piece of thoughtfulness that she sat down at the tambour-top writing table before she had even removed her hat, and dashed off her first note, on the very elegant, gilt-edged paper provided by the competent Mr Stoke, and had it carried round immediately to Stratton Street by the pageboy.

No such agreeable surprise awaited the master of the house. The imposing kneehole desk in the room which his wife insisted on calling his library bore a collection of staggering bills. The Viscount was a trifle startled, not so much by his own expenditure as by Hero’s. He could not for the life of him see how she could have contrived to squander such sums merely upon furniture, but he handsomely made up his mind to level no reproach at her. Sundry accounts presented by milliners and mantua-makers made him whistle thoughtfully, but his previous experiences of such establishments precluded his feeling any extraordinary astonishment at the cost of a simple gown, or of a wisp of net and feathers fashioned into the semblance of a hat. He stuffed all the bills into a drawer, resolving to hand them over presently to his man of business for settlement. Anyone having an intimate knowledge of the Viscount’s career would have recognized at once that the sobering influence of marriage was already making itself felt, since a month ago he would have consigned them to the fire.

The young couple dined tête-a-tête at the fashionable late hour of eight o’clock on their first evening in their new home, sitting opposite one another in their smart dining-room, and waited on by a butler whose spare frame and pallid countenance seemed to indicate that he was of a suitably abstemious character. The dinner, which consisted of a broiled fowl with mushrooms, preceded by a dressed lobster and a delicacy of cockscombs served in a wine sauce, and followed by a pupton of pears, in the old style, and a trifle, was excellently cooked, and earned the Viscount’s praise. Hero, who had already been obliged to receive a stately visit from the superior being who presided over the kitchen, said in a very housewifely way that she was glad they had decided to take away the old fireplace from the kitchen, and to install a closed stove in its place.

The Viscount rather spoiled the effect of this utterance by grinning across the table at her, and demanding what the devil she knew about kitchen stoves. Hero twinkled merrily back at him, and replied: “Well, not very much, but Mrs Groombridge says that they are excellent contrivances, and there is a great saving of coal.”

“Well, that’s something, at all events,” said Sherry, putting up his glass to inspect the bottle the butler was exhibiting at his elbow. “No, not that. Bring up a bottle of sparkling champagne. You’ll like that, Kitten.” As the Viscount liked his wine to be very dry, Hero had to school her features to an expression of appreciation she was some way from feeling. That made his lordship laugh, but he told her that he could not permit her to be everlastingly maudling her inside with such stuff as ratafia, and bade her drink it up like a good girl. “A glass of wine with you, my lady!” he said, raising his glass. “Damme, we must drink to our first home, so we must!”

Under his instruction, Hero very correctly left him at the end of dinner, and withdrew to the drawing-room abovestairs, while he drank his port in solitary state. Since this was dull work, he soon joined her, dropping into one of the straw-coloured chairs, and stretching out his long legs towards the grate, where a small fire had been kindled, and saying, with a yawn, that there was a deal to be said for a fellow’s getting married after all.

“At least,” he added, “there would be, if you hadn’t bought such an uncomfortable set of chairs! What the deuce was Ferdy about to countenance it?”

“Oh, don’t you remember, Sherry? We bought these together, on that first day, when you went with me to choose our furniture.”

“Good God, I must have been foxed!”

“Well, perhaps you are sitting in the wrong one,” said Hero. “I wish you will try this one instead: indeed, it is very comfortable!”

The Viscount made no objection to changing places with her, and as he pronounced this second chair to be tolerably easy, she was perfectly satisfied.

Before the Viscount had had time to find an evening spent at his own fireside very flat, a knock sounded on the street door, and in a few minutes Sir Montagu Revesby’s card was brought up to Sherry. He commanded Groombridge to beg this late caller to step upstairs, and himself went out on to the landing to welcome him.

Sir Montagu came in, full of graceful apologies for intruding upon her ladyship so soon after her arrival in town. He had been imperfectly informed: would have left his card at the house that morning: trusted she would forgive such informality: he had come only to discover if Sherry liked to accompany him to a little meeting of a few friends in a house nearby.

“Brockenhurst begged I would prevail upon you to join us, if you should have returned to London, my dear Sherry, but I fear” — with a bow, and one of his ironic smiles in Hero’s direction — “I have come on a fruitless errand.”

“Oh, lord, no, nothing of the sort!” Sherry said. “You won’t mind my leaving you, will you, Kitten?”

Mindful of his warning that once they were settled in London they would not interfere with each other’s pursuits, Hero swallowed her disappointment, and assured him that she was on the point of retiring to bed.

“That’s right,” said his lordship. “I knew you would be tired after the journey.” He picked up one of her hands, dropped a kiss on her wrist, and took himself off with Sir Montagu.

Hero lifted her wrist to her cheek, and held it there for some moments after he had gone. She felt a strong inclination to cry, and concluded that she must indeed be tired, since she knew very well that she had nothing whatsoever to cry about, but, on the contrary, everything in the world to make her happy. On this elevating thought she retired to her bedchamber, and talked in a very cheerful way to her abigail while she was undressed and put to bed.

Sherry, who did not return to the house until the small hours, put in no appearance at the breakfast table. When he did emerge from his bedchamber, it was past eleven o’clock, and not only was he clad in a dressing-gown, but he still looked remarkably heavy-eyed. He said simply that they had had a pretty batch of it at Brockenhurst’s, and also that he was dipped a little at hazard. Altogether, Hero did not think that it would be wise to remind him that they had planned to wait upon his mother at noon. He retired again to his room, irritably demanding why the devil Bootle had not brought up the water for his shave; and Hero was just deciding that it would be pleasant to go for an airing in Hyde Park in her barouche, when the first of her morning callers knocked on the door.

It was Mrs Bagshot, bringing her two elder daughters in her train. She came sailing into the drawing-room, almost before Groombridge had had time to announce her, paused in the middle of the floor, and, after throwing an appraising glance round, uttered the one word: “Well!”

Hero rose from her chair in some confusion, and came forward, blushing faintly, and stammering: “C-cousin J-Jane! C-Cassy! Eudora! How do you do?”

“I wonder you can look me in the face!” said Mrs Bagshot. Her eyes ran over Hero’s high-necked gown of worked French muslin, with its double flounce and rows of tucks. “Upon my word!” she said. “I dare say you have never worn such a dress in your life!”

This was an unfortunate observation, since it gave Hero the opportunity to retort: “You must know that I have not, cousin!”

“Whatever have you done to your hair?” demanded Cassandra. “You look so strange! I should — scarcely have known you.”

“It is the very latest fashion,” replied Hero. “My maid did it.”

Mrs Bagshot gave a short laugh. “Fine feathers make fine birds! I see that you have set yourself up in the very latest mode. I suppose we shall have you setting up your carriage, and renting your box at the opera, in imitation of your betters. When I consider — However, I did not come to quarrel with you, and heaven knows I am thankful to see you creditably established, even though you may have had to accept an offer made to you in a fit of pique to do it. I am sure it would not surprise me to find that you are now too grand to recognize the humble cousins who gave you a home when you were left destitute upon the world.”

“No,” said Hero seriously. “Indeed, I am not so ungrateful! And I would be glad to try to find husbands for my cousins, if I could, only Sherry says — ” She broke off short, colouring to the roots of her hair, the most comical expression of dismay on her face.

“And pray what may your husband say?” demanded Mrs Bagshot in menacing accents.

“I’ve forgotten!” said Hero desperately.

“I abhor prevarication,” remarked Eudora. “I am sure you need not fear to repeat what he said, for it does not matter a fig to us what such a rackety young man may say!”

Stung by this criticism of her idol, Hero retorted without hesitation: “Well, he said he wouldn’t have you in the house, because he doesn’t like you!”

Mrs Bagshot turned quite purple, and struggled in vain for words. Before she could find any at all adequate to the situation, Hero had said penitently: “Oh, I beg your pardon! But Eudora should not have said that about Sherry! Do, pray, sit down, Cousin Jane, and — and let me ring for Groombridge to bring some fruit, and a glass of wine!”

Mrs Bagshot coldly refused this offer of refreshment, but she condescended to seat herself on the sofa, remarking as she did so that she was sorry to see that her exalted position had not led Hero to mend her manners. Her daughters wandered about the room, inspecting the furniture, criticizing the colour of the hangings, and wondering how Hero could bear to have a canary deafening her with its odious noise. Hero replied to their strictures and exclamations with what patience she could muster, and tried to counter Mrs Bagshot’s extremely searching questions with dignity and civility.

She was succeeding very well when the door opened to admit Sherry, who came in all unawares, saying: “Here’s a damned thing, Kitten! That fool of a man of mine has lost my — ”

What Bootle had lost they were not destined to learn, for Sherry, perceiving the morning callers, broke off in midsentence, ejaculated: “My God!” in accents of horror, and retired precipitately.

Hero made a desperate attempt to keep her countenance, failed, and went into a peal of laughter. Her affronted relative rose majestically, and, addressing her daughters, said in a terrible voice: “Come, my loves! It is plain that we are not welcome in your cousin’s house.”

“Oh, pray do not take a pet, Cousin Jane!” begged Hero. “It — it is just that poor Sherry is not feeling quite the thing today! He will be sorry presently, I dare say.”

Mrs Bagshot, however, was adamant, and was in the act of delivering herself of a severe valedictory speech when a welcome diversion was caused by Groombridge’s announcing Lord Wrotham.

George came in with his usual impetuosity, and with the inevitable lock of raven hair straying across his romantic brow. He grasped his hostesses’s hand warmly, saying: “I heard you was come up from the country! How do you do? You look to be in famous shape! What a capital little place you have here! It is just the thing, Kitten!”

“Oh, George, I am so glad to see you!” Hero said. “Oh, do you — are you acquainted with Lord Wrotham, Cousin Jane?”

Mrs Bagshot bowed, but lost no time in shepherding her daughters out of the room. She was naturally unable to suppose that any man could look upon these damsels without experiencing a start of admiration, and although his lordship had the undoubted advantage of being a peer of the realm it was well known that his pockets were (in vulgar parlance) pretty well to let. She scolded Hero, who escorted her downstairs to the front door, on the impropriety of encouraging familiarity from so unstable a young man, and expressed the pious hope that the oddity of her manners would not be her ruin.

Having seen her relative off the premises, Hero sped upstairs again, and danced into the drawing-room, exclaiming: “Oh, George, I was never so glad to see anyone! She was scolding me dreadfully when you walked in upon us, and I thought she would never go! I don’t know where Sherry has hidden himself: only fancy! — he came in here, not having the least notion my cousins were with me, and he cried out My God! and ran out of the room! It was the drollest thing! Did you come to find him?”

“No, no — though I shall be happy to see him, of course! I came to pay my respects, and to leave my card, and to discover if you would care to watch a balloon ascension at three o’clock?”

Hero was naturally delighted with this proposal, and said that there was nothing she would like better. “How kind it is in you to be thinking of me, George! Indeed, I thank you very much!”

“No such thing! I assure you — Well, I thought perhaps you might not have witnessed the spectacle. It is an odd circumstance that Miss Milborne has not either. She has a great fancy to see it, only, as it chances, Mrs Milborne is engaged with some friends, and so the whole project must come to nothing, unless — ” a disarmingly ingenuous smile swept across his face — “Oh, hang it, Kitten, the long and the short of it is that if you would but offer to take her up in your carriage, I think Miss Milborne would like it excessively! If you could but persuade Sherry to make one of the party, nothing could be more snug!”

“George, you are the most complete hand!” Hero told him, borrowing from Sherry’s vocabulary. “I have a good mind to bring my cousin Cassy instead of Miss Milborne. How confounded you would look!”

“I swear you are the best of good fellows!” George exclaimed. “Well, no! I don’t mean that! What am I saying? I declare I am so up in the world today — or I shall be, if only you will send a note round to Green Street, to beg Miss Milborne to bear you company!”

“Well, I will,” promised Hero, sitting down on the sofa, and patting the place beside her invitingly. “But what has occurred to put you in such spirits? Isabella has not — oh, George, she has not accepted you?”

“No,” he said, the sparkle dying out of his expressive eyes. “No, not that, but — Look, Kitten!”

He thrust a hand into his pocket as he spoke, and drew out a small package. This he reverently unwrapped, disclosing a dejected pink rose, which was fast reaching the stage of decomposition.

Hero opened her eyes very wide as she stared at this relic, and then, glancing inquiringly up at George, said in an awed tone: “Did she give it to you, George?”

He nodded, his emotions for the moment making it impossible for him to speak. When he had cleared his throat, he said: “She was wearing a posy of them, pinned to her dress, last night. This one fell into her lap, and Severn — ” he ground his teeth at the recollection — “Severn had the temerity to demand it of her! As though he had but to ask, and she must submit to his wishes! I was within an ace of calling him to account, I can tell you! I must have done so, had not Miss Milborne given him such a set-down as — Kitten, she held it out to me, and said with the kindest smile, the most speaking expression in those glorious eyes, that I should have her rose, if I cared to take it! If I cared to! I slept with it beneath my pillow, and I shall carry it next my heart until I die!” He looked imploringly at Hero, and said with an effort: “She could not have done so had she not felt a preference — could she?”

“Oh no, indeed she could not!” Hero cried. “It must be certain! It is the most touching thing I ever heard! Oh, Sherry, is that you? Do, pray, come in, and see what Isabella has bestowed upon dear George!”

“Hallo, George!” said the Viscount, strolling across the room. “My God, Kitten, what a scrape you put me into just now!”

She gave an involuntary giggle. “I know. And if you could but have seen your own face! But never mind that now! Only look!”

The Viscount eyed the rose disparagingly. “Where’s the sense in keeping that?” he asked. “It’s dead. I see nothing at all wonderful in it.”

“But, Sherry, you do not understand! Isabella gave it to George last night!”

“Did she, by God?” said Sherry incorrigibly. “Lord, what a flirt the girl is!”

Lord Wrotham sprang to his feet, quick rage kindling in his breast. Hero, well accustomed by this time to his starts, shrieked: “George, if you call Sherry out, I won’t invite Isabella to go with us!”

His lordship paused, clenching his fists. “Sherry!” he said menacingly, “unsay those words!”

“Damned if I will!” responded Sherry. “You can’t call me out in my own house. Devilish bad ton! Besides, of course the Incomparable is a flirt! Nothing in that! I’d lay a monkey she did it to make Severn jealous. Don’t tell me he wasn’t there! You can’t humbug me, my boy!”

“If I thought that — !” said George, thrusting back the lock of hair from his brow.

“She would not be so cruel!” said Hero indignantly. “Don’t heed him, George!”

“If I thought it,” George said, “if I believed that she was trifling with me so heartlessly, I would — I would grind the rose under my heel!”

“No need to make a damned mess on our new carpet,” said Sherry. “Throw it out of the window!”

“Sherry, I don’t know how you can be so unfeeling!” Hero said reproachfully.

“Well, dash it, what is he to do with it?” asked Sherry. “A fellow can’t carry a lot of withered rose leaves about in his pocket! Just look at the thing already!”

George appeared to be a little daunted by this point of view. “I suppose it will fall to pieces,” he said disconsolately.

“No, no, there is not the least need!” Hero assured him. “You must press it between the leaves of a book, and then it will keep its shape. Sherry, George desires us to go with him to witness a balloon ascension! We are to take Isabella along with us, if she cares to come. You will like to go, will you not?”

“What, to watch a curst balloon go up?” exclaimed Sherry. “No, I wouldn’t!”

“But, Sherry, if you will not accompany us I do not know how we are to contrive!”

“Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll make such a cake of myself! If George wants to look like a Johnny Raw he may do so, but he ain’t going to drag me into it!”

Hero was about to argue the point when she suddenly recollected that Sherry too had been one of the Incomparable’s suitors. She thought that perhaps he was trying to mask a natural disinclination to spend a whole afternoon in the company of the unattainable, and tactfully forbore to press him any further. She suggested to George that they should invite Mr Fakenham to make a fourth in their party. George agreed to this, but when he had had a moment in which to think it over he remembered that Ferdy also formed one of Miss Milborne’s court, and he said that he fancied balloons were not much in Ferdy’s line, and would instead bring his friend, Algernon Gumley, to share in the treat. The Viscount let out a most unseemly crack of laughter at this, but refused to explain why. George informed Hero, a trifle stiffly, that she would find Mr Gumley a very good humoured fellow, and took himself off, carefully carrying his rose with him.

Hero sat down at the writing-table to compose a suitable note to Isabella. Sherry said: “What a fellow George is! Dead roses and balloon ascensions! You wouldn’t think it, but he used to be as game a man as you would meet in a twelve-month before he clapped eyes on Isabella. I’ll swear she means to have Severn, too — if she can get him! They’re laying bets against it at the clubs, you know.”

“Oh, Sherry!” Hero said, turning round to look at him. “She could not be so heartless as to bestow a flower upon him if her affections were not seriously engaged!”

“Much you know about it!” he responded. “Why, she’s the most heartless girl I ever met in my life! Look at the way she treated me!”

“Yes,” Hero said, hanging down her head a little. “She was very unkind to you, of course. I am sorry I teased you to go with us this afternoon. I forgot that it must give you pain.”

“Give me pain?” repeated Sherry. “Oh — ah! Exactly! Slipped my mind for the moment. Do you mean to be writing letters for ever, or are we to drive round to Grosvenor Square?”

Hero assured him that she would be ready to set forth with him in a quarter of an hour, so he went off to send a message to the stables, while she finished her note, and despatched it by the hand of her page.

The visit to the dowager was not a success. She was discovered reclining on a sofa, with the blinds half lowered and Hervey’s Meditations Among the Tombs significantly open on her knee. She greeted her daughter-in-law with a visible shudder, and embraced her son with all the tenderness of one conveying speechless sympathy for a victim of fate. A suggestion put forward by Sherry that she might present Hero at Court brought on all her most alarming symptoms. She held out no hope of her health’s permitting her to visit the house in Half Moon Street; and a blunt request from Sherry for the family emeralds apparently brought up a series of the most affecting memories, which obliged her to have recourse to her vinaigrette, and to dab at the corners of her perfectly dry eyes.

“But you never wear ’em, ma’am!” Sherry protested. “Dash it, you were always used to say green was not your colour, and you teased my father into giving you the diamond set in their stead! Besides, you know very well they belong to me — have done, ever since my father died!”

“Alas, that you should have so little sensibility!” quavered his parent. “The jewels which your dear pap clasped about my throat when we were first married — ”

“No, he didn’t,” interrupted Sherry. “My grandfather was alive then, and, what’s more, my father had the devil of a work to induce my grandmother to give ’em up when the old man died! Yes, and you went into one of your miffs, ma’am, and said she had no right to ’em! Remember it as it was yesterday.”

Perceiving that the widow showed every sign of sinking into a swoon, Hero hastily said that indeed she did not wish to have the emeralds until her mama-in-law was dead. But this turned out to have been an unfortunate remark, as it gave the widow an opportunity of saying that she had no doubt her son and his wife were eagerly awaiting that day. She added that it could not be far distant, and this so much annoyed Sherry that he became quite obstinate about the emeralds, and said that if they were not delivered at his house within a week he should instruct old Ditchling to collect them.

“Perhaps,” said the dowager, her colour much heightened, “you would also wish me to send your wife the pearl set and the diamond studs?”

“Yes, by Jupiter, I would!” declared Sherry. “I’m glad you put me in mind of them: they’re just the things for Hero!”

“Oh, Sherry, don’t, please!” whispered Hero.

“Nonsense! The pearls are always handed over to the brides in my family: nothing new in that!” said Sherry briskly. “Come along! If you are to go on this expedition with George, it is time we took our leave!”

The dowager was so overcome by the reflection that she had tumbled into a pit of her own digging that she could barely master her voice sufficiently to bid her visitors farewell. Hero curtsied, as though she had still been a little girl in the schoolroom; the Viscount dropped a chaste salute upon the trembling hand held out to him; and they both withdrew with feelings of great relief at having, as Sherry put it, “brushed through the ordeal tolerably well.”

A civil note from Isabella, accepting Hero’s obliging invitation, was reposing upon the spindle-legged table in the passage which served the house in Half Moon Street as a front hall, and at three o’clock George arrived, with his friend, Mr Gumley. One glance at this gentleman sufficed to enlighten Hero as to the cause of Sherry’s rude laughter: he had plainly been chosen for his lack of address, and palpable terror of the female sex. He was a plain young man, and although George assured Hero, in an under-voice, that when he overcame his shyness he could be perfectly conversable, he stammered so much that whenever he made a remark, which was not often, it was even more painful for his listeners than for himself. However, he appeared to derive deep, if silent, satisfaction from the spectacle he had been brought to witness, and managed to tell Hero, when they finally parted company, that he had enjoyed himself excessively.

Hero, although she was naturally interested in the first balloon she had ever seen, did not spend an afternoon of unmixed enjoyment. For this the behaviour of Miss Milborne was to blame. Nothing could have been more affectionate than Miss Milborne’s manner towards her hostess, and nothing more wayward than her behaviour towards her maddened lover. Hero was unable to acquit her of coquetry, and was indeed quite shocked to see how she would blow first hot and then cold upon the unfortunate Lord Wrotham. Whether she regretted having given him as much encouragement as lay in a rose dropped from her corsage, or whether she resented the introduction into the party of so unprepossessing a gentleman as Mr Gumley, no one could tell, but although she relented towards him from time to time, even allowing her hand to rest in his for a moment longer than was necessary when he handed her down from the barouche, she was for the most part a little pettish in her manner, and made it plain that he could do nothing to please her. Hero, who had a warm affection for George, could not refrain once from looking at her in a very speaking way, but the Beauty seemed not to notice the reproach in her old friend’s eyes. She launched into a sprightly description of a masquerade she had attended a week earlier, and although Hero might be extremely young and unversed in the ways of spoiled beauties, she could not but recognize that Miss Milborne’s reason for introducing this topic lay in the circumstance of her having been gallanted to this party by his Grace of Severn.

It was no wonder, Hero thought, that George should look worn and stormy at the end of the expedition. She was impelled to clasp his hand between both of hers when he left her at her door, and to say shyly: “Don’t mind her, dear George! I dare say she may have had the headache.”

He flushed, muttered something inarticulate, and strode off down the street. Hero was left to reflect that perhaps her adored Sherry was not so much to be pitied as she had supposed.

Chapter Nine

DURING THE COURSE OF THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, a number of persons left cards in Half Moon Street, the ubiquitous Mr Stoke having obtained the Viscount’s leave to insert into the society column of the Morning Post a notice informing the Polite World that Lord and Lady Sheringham were residing at this address. The more elderly of the callers came because they felt it to be their duty to pay their respects to Sherry’s wife. It was hardly to be expected that matrons with hopeful young families ranging from University to nursery ages would concern themselves much over a bride of seventeen; and as there was no matron of consequence whose business it was to launch Hero into the most correct society, it was natural that such friendships as she made were with ladies of a younger and, for the most part, dashing set.

One of her earliest visitors was Mrs Hoby, a smart, lively young woman who announced herself to be a distant cousin of Hero’s, and almost overwhelmed her with protestations and attentions. She was the wife of an Irishman who, being heir to a respectable property, was at present living precariously on eight hundred a year and the expectancy. She confessed that she had not known of Hero’s existence until the announcement of her marriage had appeared in the press, but upon discovering that she had a cousin who was actually the daughter of dear Cousin Geoffrey she had lost no time in coming to visit her. One swift glance having informed her that her new-found relative was extremely young and inexperienced, she engaged herself to take her under her wing. That the protection of a flighty young woman, living upon the fringes of society, could not add to her consequence Hero was not in a position to know, and she had no hesitation in accepting an invitation to make one of an evening party at the Pantheon, once Mrs Hoby had laughed indulgently at the notion that she could not go without Sherry to escort her.

“Oh, my dear Lady Sheringham, I assure you it is quite the established mode! I do not scruple to tell you — for I perceive how strange you are to this frippery life we all lead in London! — that to be seen for ever with one’s husband in one’s train will not do at all! No, positively, it would be to conduct yourself like a dowd, and that I can see at a glance you are far from being!”

Since Sherry had told her very much the same thing, Hero was perfectly ready to accept this dictum, and to consider herself uncommonly fortunate when she learned that Sherry was willing to go with her to Almack’s Assembly Rooms.

“I fancy I had best take you there myself,” Sherry said, with the air of one having a nice regard to his obligations. “Mind you, it ain’t in my line, but the patronesses are so deuced starchy I dare say it will be more comfortable for you if I go with you, at any rate the first time. Ten to one you won’t care for it: devilish slow, I warn you!”

He raised no objection to her new friendship; he had not heard of Mrs Hoby before, but if she was one of Hero’s cousins he had no doubt of her being an acceptable acquaintance; in fact, he was glad to find that she was beginning to make friends of her own, since his own engagements prevented him from being with her as much as he had feared she might expect. These engagements seemed to take his lordship rather frequently to certain discreet establishments in Pall Mall and Pickering Place, generally in the company of Sir Montagu Revesby, whose chosen mission in life appeared to some older heads to be to introduce young men of fortune to such gaming-houses as could be expected to relieve them of their wealth in the least possible space of time. His address, his decided air of fashion, had gained him the entré into all but the most exclusive circles; and there was little doubt that he exercised a considerable degree of charm over his young friends. Monty, with his worldly wisdom, his caressing manner towards his favourites, was, they said, a regular top-sawyer, a nonpareil, a knowing ’un. The older generation of dandies who sat in Olympian aloofness in the Bow window at White’s, refusing to acknowledge salutations from the street, might lift supercilious eyebrows at Sir Montagu, but their indolent disapproval was not likely to weigh with youthful bloods bent on kicking up what larks they could, and already beginning to think men like Worcester, and Alvany, and ‘King’ Allen old stagers. The ladies, too, were not impervious to Sir Montagu’s charm, and there were few who were not secretly a little flattered if he appeared to pay them distinguishing attentions.

For he was by no means one of those who dangled at the ladies’ apron strings. Always civil, there was a light, faintly amused note in his soft voice, even when he was paying a handsome compliment, and this could not but be provocative to the fair sex, not one of whom could as yet plume herself on having added him to her list of conquests. He had certainly shown himself to be an admirer of the famous Miss Milborne’s beauty, but Miss Milborne was not quite sure that his manner towards her was entirely free from mockery. This circumstance naturally aroused the interest of one who was accustomed to receive whole-hearted homage, and whenever he presented himself before her, or appeared in a house where she was a fellow-guest, she found herself to be a great deal more conscious of his presence than she liked.

His charm failed to captivate one lady at least. Hero could not like him. She knew it to be her duty to find Sherry’s friends all that was amiable, and she made every effort to overcome her repugnance. But it was too often Revesby, as on that first evening in Half Moon Street, who took Sherry from her side. Ferdy’s strictures, too, lingered in her memory, and were reinforced by a tactful hint from her kind patroness, Lady Sefton, that it would be well to wean Sherry from the company of his âme damnée. She did not think that she could bring herself to explain to Lady Sefton that she and Sherry had agreed not to interfere in each other’s lives, for some instinct warned her that her ladyship would not approve of this tolerance. Sir Montagu came once or twice to dine in Half Moon Street, and she was a kind and considerate hostess, concealing the scarcely recognized jealousy that rose in her heart when she saw the influence this assured, smiling man exercised over the volatile Viscount. But if Sir Montagu made one of the convivial little card-parties held in Sherry’s library, Hero withdrew after dinner, in a very correct way, and did not reappear. It was only when the guests were Mr Ringwood, Ferdy and his brother Marmaduke, and Lord Wrotham, that conventionality went by the board and the hostess, as at Melton, curled herself up in a large chair and interestedly watched the play.

She herself was beginning to go to quite a number of card parties. From a sedate pool of quadrille or one of commerce, it was no great step to the headier excitements of loo, faro, and whist. Mrs Hoby was very fond of gaming, and Hero was perfectly ready to spend an evening in her smart little house off Park Lane, putting into rather inexpert practice all she had learned from Sherry. She lost more than she won, but the allowance which Sherry, under Mr Stoke’s advice, made her seemed so handsome that there could be little point in considering a few losses at cards.

Mr Ringwood had been as good as his word in teaching her how to drive her phaeton, and as she discovered an aptitude in herself for handling the ribbons it was not long before she was to be seen driving in dashing style through Hyde Park at the fashionable hour of the promenade. This was quite unexceptionable, and was applauded by the Viscount, since it brought his Hero to the notice of the Polite World, and made her appear to advantage. She sometimes took Isabella up with her, but the Beauty was a trifle nervous of being perched up behind a very high-stepping horse, and had no great confidence in her friend’s mastery over this animal. She perceived that the new Viscountess was bent on making a stir in the world, and could not help envying her her position, and her freedom from the shackles that hampered a single lady. Sometimes she felt just a little jealous of Hero’s undoubted popularity with Sherry’s friends, but she was generally able to comfort herself with the reflection that they treated her with a camaraderie which seemed to preclude the sort of devotion she herself inspired in male breasts. His Grace of Severn, who was slightly pompous, gave it as his opinion that Hero was inclined to be fast, and never accorded her more than a common bow in passing, a circumstance which Miss Milborne tried hard not to be glad of.

The visit to Almack’s was, as far as Hero was concerned, one of unmixed contentment. She thought that everyone was very kind, scarcely noticed the cold propriety of Miss Drummond Burrell’s manners, or the critical stare of Princess Esterhazy. She could not but be happy with her hand in Sherry’s arm, and if he found an evening spent where dancing and not cards was the order of the day somewhat flat, he was so well-pleased with the reception accorded his bride that he even forbore to comment unfavourably to her on the nature of the refreshments. He magnanimously stayed throughout the proceedings, bore his part in several of the dances, presented Hero to all the most influential persons present, and generally behaved in an exemplary fashion. On their way home, however, he said that he would take her to something a little more amusing than one of these assemblies, and see how she liked it. She did not think that she could like anything as well, but she was ready to go anywhere with him, and set forth three or four days later to a masquerade at Covent Garden with every expectation of enjoyment.

And indeed it was, as he had promised, a most entertaining evening, though of a very different character from the sedate assembly at Almack’s. They went masked, and found a vast rout of people of all sorts and conditions in the Opera House, making a good deal of noise, and apparently enjoying themselves hugely. Sherry had taken one of the lower boxes for the evening, and after he had danced once or twice with his wife, he led her to the box to partake of a varied supper there, washed down with iced champagne punch. While they sat over this, the Viscount, rather forgetful of his company, quizzed any woman who took his wandering fancy, levelled his eyeglass at any well-turned ankle, and laughed with his wife over several of the couples within their range of vision. Hero had no objection to any of this, even pointing out good ankles or particularly neat figures to Sherry, speculating on the identity of various persons, and interestedly learning from her incorrigible husband the signs by which she would in future be able to recognize what he gracefully termed ‘a bit of muslin’.

One of these bits of muslin, who had been watching their box for some time, presently took occasion to stroll past it, with such a provocative glance over her shoulder, such an alluring swing of her hips that no gentleman of the Viscount’s mettle could withstand the challenge. “I fancy I know that little love-bird!” he exclaimed. “I must discover if she is not Flyaway Nancy, for I’ll lay you a monkey she is, the saucy little piece!”

With this, he abruptly left Hero’s side to pursue the alluring siren through the press of persons on the floor of the vast house. Hero thought this a very good joke, and sat watching his audacious advances to the suddenly coy damsel, her eyes dancing through the slits of her mask.

All at once she found that she was no longer alone in the box, a masked stranger having entered by the simple expedient of climbing over the low partition that railed it off from the floor. She turned in surprise as an arch male voice said in her ear: “All by yourself, my dear?”

“Yes. Who are you?” asked Hero innocently.

“Another lonely soul!” responded the visitor, seating himself unasked in Sherry’s vacant chair and laying an arm along the back of hers. “Take pity on me, pretty stranger!”

Hero had at first imagined that the intruder must be someone with whom she was acquainted, but his voice was quite unknown to her, and she did not at all relish the familiarity of his manners. She said reasonably: “You cannot know whether I am pretty or not, sir, and I am perfectly certain that you have not been introduced to me. Please go away!”

He laughed at this. “Why, what a prudish little puss! Shall I make myself known to you in form? And if I do, will you tell me what name I may call you by?”

“No, I won’t,” said Hero bluntly. “And I don’t in the least desire to know yours! Go away!”

“Naughty puss to show her claws!” chided her tormentor. “Now, why can’t I please you, I wonder? I am sure I shall be pleased with you — when I see you!”

“You will not see me, and if you don’t immediately leave my box I shall!” said Hero, sitting very straight in her chair and flushing under her mask.

He slid an arm round her shoulders. “No, no, I am persuaded you won’t deny me a sight of your charms!” he said, fumbling with his free hand at the strings of her mask.

Hero gave an outraged little cry, and struggled to thrust him off. The Viscount, who was attempting much the same thing as the intrusive stranger, chanced at that moment to glance in the direction of his box. An oath escaped him; the astonished lady who had been trying very half heartedly to repulse him found herself suddenly free, and watched in some dudgeon his hasty and impetuous descent on his box. He vaulted lightly over the partition, plucked the enterprising city buck from his chair, and floored him with what he himself would have called a facer.

“Oh, thank you, Sherry!” gasped Hero. “I can’t think who he is, but he is a most odious person, and he seems to fancy that I am a bit of muslin! I am so glad you came back!”

This slight fracas had naturally attracted a good deal of attention from the nearby loungers. “Damn!” said Sherry, perceiving this. “I’m sorry, Kitten: it was all my fault! Get out of my box, if you don’t wish to be thrown out on your — on your ear!”

The city buck, having picked himself up, and had time to measure the size and style of his assailant, muttered something that might have been an apology, and slid out by way of the door, leaving a front tooth on the floor of the box. Sherry sat down in his chair again, rubbing his knuckles. “Broken my hand on his bone-box,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t pay any heed to those gaping gudgeons, Kitten! I oughtn’t to have left you. Keep on forgetting I’m a married man! He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Oh no!” responded Hero. “I think he was a trifle foxed. He only wanted to see my face, but I didn’t at all see why he should. Is that a trifle? Please, I would like some. And perhaps a little more of this nice cold drink. Was it Flyaway Nancy?”

“Kitten,” said the Viscount warmly, “you’re the best wife I ever thought to have, ’pon my soul you are! Here’s to you, brat!”

“Well, I am sure you are quite the best husband, Sherry,” said Hero, turning pink with pleasure.

“I’m not,” said his lordship, with unwonted humility. “And nine women out of ten would be swooning all over the box after what happened, and reproaching me all the way home! I’ll tell you what: I’m glad I married you. It wasn’t what I set out to do, but it answers famously. I thought it would.”

“Oh, Sherry!” sighed Hero, deeply moved.

He refilled her glass. “I couldn’t have brought the Incomparable to a Covent Garden Masquerade, that’s certain,” he observed. “Come to think of it, I suppose I ought not to have brought you either.”

“What, just because that stupid creature tried to take my mask off? What stuff, Sherry! I am enjoying myself excessively!”

“You’re a good girl,” he informed her. “Dashed if I don’t rent a box at the opera for you after all!”

This generous concession cast Hero into gratified transports, but, as ill fortune would have it, was the cause of a speedy fall from favour in her husband’s eyes. The box acquired through the kind offices of Lady Sefton, Hero lost no time in putting in an appearance at the Italian Opera. She bought a new dress for the occasion, and, the dowager having reluctantly disgorged the family jewels, wore the pearl set, which included a very pretty tiara. Having persuaded Sherry to make one of the opera party, she invited Mr Ringwood and Mrs Hoby to join them.

Nothing could have been more auspicious than the start of the evening. The Viscount was pleased to see his bride in such looks; and Hero was always happy to have him at her side. In addition to this felicity, she had all the comfort of being able to bow and wave to acquaintances in other parts of the house, for thanks to several parties, assemblies, and morning calls, she was now in a fair way towards knowing a great many of the people who made up the world of fashion. This was certainly an advantage, and she could not help contrasting her appearance tonight with the one she had made on the first night of her marriage, when she had not been able to recognize one face in the whole of the audience. She was pleased to have Mr Ringwood seated beside her, for she felt him to be quite one of her best friends; and judging from his frequent bursts of laughter, and a certain bright look in his angelic blue eyes, her cousin was contriving to keep Sherry well amused.

It was during the ballet that the unfortunate incident occurred. Absorbed in the first display of dancing she had seen, Hero sat leaning a little forward in the box, her eyes taking in every detail of what was going on behind the footlights. They did not fail to mark the pronounced attention being paid to her box by a neat little dancer with a roguish twinkle in her eyes, and a dimple that peeped beside her inviting mouth. Forgetting her surroundings, and Sherry’s stern reminders to her to guard her unwary tongue, she turned impulsively towards him, and said in the most innocent way across Mr Ringwood: “Oh, Sherry, is that your opera dancer?”

The instant the words had left her lips she could have bitten her tongue out, for Sherry not only flushed scarlet, but shot her such a kindling look as made her quake in her little satin sandals. A stifled giggle from Mrs Hoby, who put her fan to hide her face, made matters worse.

It was left to Mr Ringwood to come to the rescue. He saw his friend’s discomfiture, the bride’s dismayed expression, and he rose nobly to the occasion. “No,” he said, with beautiful simplicity. “Sherry don’t admire her dancing as much as the dark one’s, on the right.”

The Viscount was visibly lost in wonder at such ready address in one whom he had not been used to think quick-witted. Hero, still covered in confusion, slid a grateful hand into one of Mr Ringwood’s and clutched it eloquently, saying in a subdued tone: “Yes, that is what I meant, Gil!”

During the interval, when they repaired to the saloon for refreshments, the Viscount bore Mrs Hoby off without so much as glancing at his wife. Mr Ringwood procured her a glass of lemonade, and would have struggled to make a polite conversation had she not interrupted him, saying with the devastating candour which characterized her: “Gil, I don’t know how I came to say it! He is very angry with me, isn’t he?”

“No need to refine too much upon it,” said Mr Ringwood kindly. “Dare say he’ll have forgotten about it by the end of the evening. Never one to take a miff, Sherry!”

“I forgot that we were not alone,” said Hero unhappily. “My wretched tongue! If only my cousin had not been present!”

“Yes, but, Kitten!” expostulated Mr Ringwood, “you ought not to know anything about Sherry’s — well, what I mean is — ”

“I know,” said Hero. “Bit of muslin.”

Mr Ringwood choked over his lemonade. “No, I don’t! No, really, Kitten, you must not say such things!”

“Love bird,” Hero corrected herself docilely.

Mr Ringwood regarded her in considerable perturbation. “You know what it is, Kitten: if you use expressions like that in company you’ll set up the backs of people, and find yourself all to pieces. You will indeed! Sherry has no business to talk as he must in front of you!”

“It isn’t Sherry’s fault!” Hero said, firing up in defence of her free-spoken husband. “He is for ever telling me what I must not say! The thing is that I don’t perfectly remember what I may say, and what I may not. I dare say I ought not to call that dancer a fancy-piece either?”

“Upon no account in the world!” Mr Ringwood said emphatically.

“Well, I must say I think it is very hard. What may I call her, Gil?”

“Nothing at all! Ladies know nothing of such things.”

“Yes, they do. Why, it was my cousin Cassy who first told me about Sherry’s opera dancer, so that just shows how mistaken you are!”

“Well, they pretend they do not, at all events!” said Mr Ringwood desperately.

“Oh, do they? But Sherry told me himself that everyone has an opera dancer, or something of the sort, and there is nothing in it. Gil, have you — ”

“No!” said Mr Ringwood, with more haste than civility.

“Oh!” said Hero, digesting this. She raised her eyes to his face and heaved a tiny sigh. “I am not a prude, Gil.”

“No,” agreed Mr Ringwood feelingly.

“And I am not going to be missish, for my cousin says there is nothing gentlemen dislike more. But I cannot help wishing — a very little — that Sherry had not an opera dancer either.”

Mr Ringwood made an inarticulate sound in his throat and took his embarrassingly outspoken charge back to her box. Here they were joined in a few moments by the Viscount and Mrs Hoby, and as the curtain went up almost immediately, there was no opportunity for any further confidences.

The whole party left the Opera House in the Sheringhams’ barouche, Mrs Hoby maintaining a sprightly flow of small talk until she was set down at her own door. Mr Ringwood went on to Half Moon Street with the Sheringhams, and cravenly refusing an invitation to enter the house with them, parted from them on the doorstep and walked the remainder of the way to his lodging. It went to his heart to ignore the pleading tug Hero gave his sleeve, but he was of the decided opinion that he would make a very uncomfortable third in the quarrel that was obviously brewing.

The door being opened to the returning couple by the butler, Hero, after one surreptitious glance at his lordship’s ominous face, said: “I am so tired! I think I will go straight up to my room.”

“Send your abigail to bed!” returned his lordship. “I want a word with you in private.”

The agitating prospect of a word alone with a husband who was looking like a thundercloud made Hero feel quite sick with apprehension. She would have liked to have kept the abigail at her side, but as it seemed more than probable that Sherry would order the woman out of the room if he found her there when he came up, she dared not do it.

He entered without ceremony not five minutes after the door had closed behind the abigail. Hero had just locked the pearl set away in her jewel case, and without these gauds she looked much younger, in fact, so like the tiresome little girl the Viscount had bullied in his schooldays, that he straightaway forgot the dignified speech he had been preparing all the way home from the Opera House, and strode across the room to her, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her unmercifully. “You abominable little wretch, how dared you?” he demanded wrathfully. “Didn’t I tell you — didn’t I warn you to guard that damned, indiscreet tongue of yours? ‘ Oh, Sherry, is that your opera dancer? ’No, it was not my opera dancer, and you may take that with my compliments!”

Tears started to Hero’s eyes. Released, she pressed a hand to one tingling cheek, and quavered: “Oh, Sherry, don’t! I didn’t mean to say it! I forgot we were not alone!”

“If you had the smallest elegance of mind,” said his lordship furiously, “it would not have entered your head to have said it!”

“Well, but, Sherry, she did so look at you, and smile, that I could not but wonder .... But I quite see that I should not have said a word about it, and I am very sorry, and I will never do so again.”

“It will be better for you if you do not!” retorted her implacable spouse. “If I know anything of females, that cousin of yours will spread it all over town in a week — or she would if she moved in the first circles, which she don’t! And that’s another thing! I do not know how you come to have a cousin of such bad ton, but I can tell you that if you mean to be seen for ever in her company it will not do!”

Stung by the injustice of this, Hero retorted: “It was you who said that I was fortunate in having a relative in town! You said that there could not be the least objection to my visiting her!”

“I had not spent an evening in her company when I said that — if Isaid that!” replied Sherry grimly.

“It seemed to me that you were very well amused by her!” Hero flung at him. “I am sure you laughed enough at the things she was saying to you!”

“Well, I won’t have you jauntering about with her any more!” said Sherry, in a very imperious style. “Mind that!”

“I shan’t!” promptly replied Hero, losing her temper. “I shall make a friend of anyone I choose, and I shall go where I choose, and I shall do what I choose, and I shall — ”

“Will you, by God!” interrupted his lordship, descending purposefully upon her.

Hero retired strategically behind a small table. “Yes, I shall, and it is of no use to say Will I, by God! because it was you who said we would not interfere with one another, you know it was!”

The Viscount halted and stared at her suspiciously. “I said that? I’ll swear I never in my life said anything so damned silly!”

“Yes, you did! You said I should not find you the sort of husband for ever kicking up a dust over trifles! You said that as long as I was discreet — ”

“Well, you ain’t!” said his lordship, pouncing on this. “In fact, there was never anyone less discreet! And as for letting you do precisely as you choose, yes, a pretty piece of business you would make of that, my girl! With no more sense than that damned canary Gil was fool enough to give you, and no more notion of how to behave in society than Jason has!”

“I don’t steal!” hotly exclaimed his wife.

“I never said you did!”

“Yes, you did, because you said I was like Jason, and of all the odious things to say — ”

“I did not say you were like Jason! All I said was that you had no more idea — ”

“It is just the same, and it is just like you, Sherry, to say it is all my fault, when it was you who told me about bits of muslin and opera dancers!”

“How the deuce was I to know that you would blurt it out like a regular hoyden?” demanded his lordship.

“Well, you ought to have known I might very likely do so,’ Hero said candidly. “You have been acquainted with me for a long time, and I have made you as m-mad as fire with me times out of m-mind, through s-saying things I ought not. And Gil says you have no business to talk as you do in front of me, so it is just as much your fault as mine!”

“Oh!” said his lordship awfully. “So that’s it, is it? Not content with putting me to shame in public, you must needs discuss the matter with Gil! Upon my word, Hero, if that don’t beat all! I might have guessed how it would be! No doubt you asked him if he had an opera dancer too!”

“Yes, and he said — ”

“ What?” thundered the Viscount.

“He said he had not,” ended Hero simply.

The Viscount appeared to have some difficulty in getting his breath. “Hero!” he uttered at last. “Have you no sense of propriety?”

“Yes, I have!” replied Hero, her bosom swelling. “I have much more than you have, Sherry, for I do not have opera dancers, or get foxed, or — Oh, I wish you will go away! You are unkind, and unforgiving, and unreasonable, and I hate you!”

“I am obliged to you, ma’am!” said the Viscount, seeking refuge in sudden and awe-inspiring dignity. “I have not the least notion of inflicting my presence on you another instant, and I will wish you a very goodnight!”

On this grand valediction he stalked from the room, closing the door with unnecessary violence, and leaving his overwrought wife to the indulgence of a hearty bout of tears.

They met next morning at the breakfast table, both very conscious of the previous night’s quarrel. The Viscount bade Hero a punctilious good morning, and buried himself in the newspaper. Hero poured out the coffee, and slowly consumed a roll. After a slight pause, she cleared her throat of an unaccountable lump, and said: “Sherry?”

The Viscount lowered the paper. “Well?”

“Will you have a little ham?” said Hero, quite dismayed by his forbidding aspect.

“No, I thank you, I will not.”

“Or — or some more coffee?”

“No,” said the Viscount, retiring once more into the paper.

Hero fortified herself with a few sips of her own coffee. She tried again. “Sherry?”

“Well, what is it now?”

“N-nothing!” said Hero, on a distinct sob.

“For heaven’s sake,” said his lordship, “don’t start to cry!”

“Perhaps I had best g-go out of the room then, because I c-can’t help crying when you’re so dreadfully unkind to me!” offered Hero.

“I’m not unkind to you.”

“Oh, Sherry, it is so very like you to say that, when you know very well you have used me quite shockingly!” Hero said with a smile quivering on her lips. “You always did so! But you never called me ma’am in that horrid way before, and I would rather you boxed both my ears than did that, indeed I would!”

“Serve you right if I did!” said his lordship, stretching out a hand across the table. “No, really, Kitten, I’m devilish sorry I hurt you! But of all the things to have said — ! However, you won’t do it again!”

“No, truly I won’t!” Hero assured him, tucking her hand in his.

A reluctant grin stole across the Viscount’s face. “Lord, I’d have given a monkey to have seen Gil’s phiz when you asked him if he had an opera dancer!” he said.

“Do you think he may not have liked it?” Hero asked anxiously. “He is such a particular friend that I thought I might say what I pleased to him. And I did want to know, because you said that everyone had them, and — ”

“Oh, my God, the things I say!” groaned Sherry. “I wish you will forget them, brat! and as for my opera dancer, that is all over and done with now that I am a sober married man, so let us have no more talk of it!”

“I won’t say another word,” promised Hero, brightening perceptibly. “Can you not have them if you are married?”

The Viscount laughed and tossed a bill across the table. “Not if you have a wife who spends as much money on a couple of trumpery hats as that!” he replied.

“Oh, dear!” Hero said conscience-stricken. “Ought I not to have done so? Only, one is the hat I wore when we drove out to Richmond, and you particularly commended it, Sherry!”

“No, no, there’s no harm done!” Sherry said, tweaking one of her ringlets. “Extravagant little puss! Wear it again today! I’ll drive you round the Park, if you care to go with me. I want to try the paces of that pair of chestnuts I bought at Tatt’s last week.”