She was holding out her hands to him, and he caught them in his, carrying first one and then the other to his lips with what Abby, observing her niece’s fervour with disapprobation, recognized as practised grace. “You thought I was my uncle? Now, I begin to suspect that it is you rather than Miss Wendover who must be out of frame!” he said caressingly. “Indeed I am not my uncle!” He gave her hands a slight squeeze before releasing them, and moving forward to drop on his knee beside the sofa. “Dear Miss Wendover, what has been amiss? I can see that you are sadly pulled, and my suspicion is that you have been trotting too hard!”
The demure laughter in his voice robbed his words of offence. Selina all too obviously succumbed to the charm of a personable and audacious young man, scolding him for his impertinence, in the manner of an indulgent aunt, and favouring him with an account of her late indisposition.
Abby was thus afforded an opportunity to study him at her leisure. She thought that it was easy to see why he had made so swift a conquest of Fanny: he was handsome, and he was possessed of ease and address, his manners being distinguished by a nice mixture of deference and assurance. Only in the slightly aquiline cast of his features could she detect any resemblance to his uncle: in all other respects no two men could have been more dissimilar. His height was not above the average, but, in contrast to Miles Calverleigh’s long, loosely-knit limbs, his figure was particularly good; he did not, like Miles, look as if he had shrugged himself into his coat: rather, the coat appeared to have been moulded to his form; the ears of his collars were as stiff as starch could make them; his neckcloths were never carelessly knotted, but always beautifully arranged, whether in the simple style of the Napoleon, or the more intricate folds of the Mathematical; and he showed exquisite taste in his choice of waistcoats. Such old-fashioned persons as Mr Faversham might stigmatize him as a tippy, a dandy, a bandbox creature, but their instinctive dislike of the younger generation of dashing blades on the strut earned them too far: Stacy Calverleigh was a smart, but not quite a dandy, for he affected few of the extravagances of fashion. His shirt-points might be a little too high, his coats a trifle too much padded at the shoulder and nipped in at the waist, but he never overloaded his person with jewellery, or revolted plain men by helping himself to snuff with a silver shovel.
His profile, as he knelt beside the sofa, was turned towards Abby, and she was obliged to acknowledge that it was a singularly handsome profile. Then, when Fanny seized the opportunity offered by a pause in Selina’s garrulity to present him to her other aunt, and he turned his head to look up at Abby, she thought him less handsome, but without quite knowing why.
He jumped up, exclaiming, with a boyishness which, to her critical ears, had a false ring: “Oh! This is a moment to which I’ve been looking forward—and yet dreading! Your very humble servant, ma’am!”
“Dreading?” said Abby, lifting her brows. “Were you led to suppose I was a gorgon?”
“Ah, no, far from it! A most beloved aunt!”
His ready smile curled his lips as he spoke, but Abby, looking in vain for a trace of the charm which awoke instant response in her when the elder Calverleigh smiled, realized that it did not reach his eyes. She thought they held a calculating look, and suspected him of watching her closely to discover whether he was making a good or a bad impression on her.
She said lightly: “That doesn’t seem to be a reason for your dread, sir.”
“No, and it’s moonshine!” Fanny said. “How can you talk such nonsense, Stacy?”
“It isn’t nonsense. Miss Abigail loves you, and must think me unworthy of you—oh, an impudent jackstraw even to dream of aspiring to your hand!” He smiled again, and said simply: “I think it too, ma’am. No one knows better than I how unworthy I am.”
A sentimental sigh and an inarticulate murmur from Selina showed that this frank avowal had moved her profoundly. Upon Abby it had a different effect. “Trying to take the wind out of my eye, Mr Calverleigh?” she said.
If he was disconcerted he did not betray it, but answered immediately: “No, but, perhaps—the words out of your mouth?”
Privately, she gave him credit for considerable adroitness, but all she said was: “You are mistaken: I am not so uncivil.”
“And it isn’t true!” Fanny declared passionately. “I won’t permit anyone to say such a thing—not even you, Abby!”
“Well, I haven’t said it, my dear, nor am I likely to, so there is really no need for you to fly up into the boughs! Tell me, Mr Calverleigh, have you made the acquaintance of your uncle yet?”
“My uncle?” he repeated. He glanced at Fanny, a question in his eyes. “But what is this? You said, when I came in, that you thought I was my uncle! The only uncle I possess—if I do still possess him—lives at the other end of the world!”
“No, he doesn’t,” replied Fanny. “I mean, he doesn’t do so now! He brought Lavinia Grayshott’s brother home from Calcutta, and he is here, at the York House!”
“Good God!” he said blankly.
“He is not at all like you, but very agreeable, isn’t he, Aunt Selina?”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Selina. “He is quite an oddity—so informal, but I daresay that comes of having lived for so long in India, which does not sound to me at all the sort of place anyone would wish to live in, but that, after all, was not his fault, poor man, and he is perfectly gentlemanly!”
“I’m glad to know that at least!” Stacy said ruefully. “I never met him in my life, but I heartily wish him otherwhere, for I fear he may destroy what little credit I may have with you! Alas, the round tale is that he is the black sheep in my family!”
“Oh, I fancy you have met him!” said Abby, showing hackle. “He has no recollection of having done so, I own, but thinks he might have seen you when you were, as he phrased it, a grubby brat!”
He shot a quick look at her, but said, smiling again: “Ah, very likely! I can’t be blamed for having forgotten the circumstance, can I ? I wonder what has brought him back to England ?’’
“But I told you!” Fanny reminded him. “He brought poor Mr Oliver Grayshott home! And such good care did he take of him that Mrs Grayshott feels she cannot be sufficiently obliged to him! As for Ol’—as for Mr Grayshott, he says he is a trump, and won’t listen to a word in his disparagement!”
“Worse and worse!” he declared, with a comical grimace. “A male attendant, in fact! A faint—a very faint—hope that he might have made his fortune in India withers at the outset!”
“Much might be forgiven in the prodigal son who returned to the fold with well-lined pockets, might it not?” said Abby, bestowing upon him a smile as false as she believed his own to be.
“Oh, everything!” he assured her gaily. “That’s the way of the world, ma’am!”
“Very wrong—most improper!” interpolated Selina, trying, not very successfully, to assemble her inchoate ideas into comprehensible words. “I mean—I mean, money ought not, and cannot re-establish character! And to expect a man who had been cast off in a perfectly inhuman way (for so it seems to me, and I don’t care what anyone says!) to come home to—to shower guineas on his most unnatural relations, is—is monstrous! Or, at any rate,” she temporized, “absurd!”
“Bravo, Selina!” exclaimed Abby.
Faintly blushing under this applause, Selina said: “Well, so it seems to me, though it had nothing to do with you, Mr Calverleigh, so you must not be thinking that I mean to censure you,and in any event poor Mr Miles Calverleigh hasn’t made his fortune—at least, he doesn’t look as if he had, because he wears the shabbiest clothes! On the other hand, he is putting up at York House, and that, you know, is by no means dagger-cheap,as some dear friends of ours, who are staying there, tell me.”