“Undoubtedly you must!” said Philip. “If only to see to it that the butler doesn’t water the wine, or the cook spoil the ham!”
“Exactly so! Not that there’s much fear of old Burley’s watering the wine: he’s a strict abstainer! Still, I do see that it wouldn’t be the thing for me to stay away from m’mother’s dress-party.”
“No,” agreed Kate. “How uncomfortable it would be for her not to have you there to be the host!”
“Just what she says, ma’am! But the deuce of it is that once she gets me to London it’s all Lombard Street to an eggshell I shall find myself regularly in for it! I can tell you this: I’m fond of Dolly, but I shall be glad when we’ve got her safely buckled!”
All this time he had been riding beside the curricle, but a cart was seen approaching, and he was forced to fall back. As he continued to rattle on, in his insouciant style, and Philip’s eyes had naturally to be fixed on the road ahead, the burden of maintaining conversation fell on Kate, who slewed round into a most uncomfortable position, and was heartily glad when it was again possible for him to ride alongside the curricle. “I say, dear boy, what happened to that groom of yours?” he asked, suddenly struck by the groom’s absence.
“He—er—is suffering from an indisposition,” replied Philip, directing a quelling look at his tactless friend.
“Suffering from a—Oh—ah! Just so!” said Mr Templecombe hastily. “What I wanted to say to you is that I’d be glad of a word with you before I go. Tell you what! You take Miss Malvern back to Staplewood, and come and eat your mutton with me! No need to change your dress! I want to ask your advice.”
“I’m sorry, Gurney: I believe I must not,” said Philip, looking anything but pleased.
“Humbug, dear boy! Her ladyship don’t want you, and you’ll excuse him, won’t you, Miss Malvern?”
“Of course I will,” replied Kate, with a cordiality that earned her a fiery, sideways glance from Philip. She said, in a lowered voice: “Please go! I must have time to think, and—and you must know there will be no opportunity for you to be private with me this evening!”
Apparently he did know this, for after hesitating for a moment he said curtly: “Very well, Gurney: I’ll come.”
“Capital!” said Mr Templecombe, undismayed by this ungracious acceptance. “I’ll be off then: must warn my people to lay an extra cover! “Servant, Miss Malvern! Shall hope to see you again when I come back!”
The gates of Staplewood were within sight; Mr Templecombe waved his hat in farewell, and cantered off. Kate said reproachfully: “How could you be so uncivil?”
“Easily! I felt uncivil!”
“But you can’t be uncivil to people only because you feel uncivil!” Kate said austerely. ,
“I can, if it’s to Gurney. He don’t give a button! We’ve been friends all our lives—even went to school together!”
Since Kate knew, from her military experience, that young gentlemen who were fast friends greeted one another in general by opprobrious names, and never seemed to think it necessary to waste civility on a chosen intimate, she had long since abandoned any attempt to fathom masculine peculiarities, and now said no more, merely smiling to herself as she tried to picture the inevitable results, if any two females behaved to each other in a similar style.
Mr Philip Broome, having negotiated the entrance to Staplewood in impeccable style, glanced down at her, and instantly demanded: “What makes you smile, Kate?”
“Oh, merely that gentlemen are always uncivil to their friends, and polite to those whom they dislike!”
“Well, naturally!” he said, making her giggle.
“I won’t ask you to explain,” she said. “Even if you could do so—which I take leave to doubt—I shouldn’t understand!”
“I should have thought it must be obvious! However, I don’t mean to waste the few minutes left to us in trying to explain what is quite unimportant. Kate, my darling, will you marry me?”
“I—I rather think I will,” she replied, “but you must give me time to consider! I know it sounds missish to say so, but you have taken me by surprise, and—and though I would try to be a good wife to you I can’t feel that I ought to accept your offer!”
“One thing at least you can tell me!” he said forcefully. “Do you feel you could love me? I mean—on, deuce take it I—do you love me? I don’t wish to sound like a coxcomb, but—”
“Oh, Philip, how can you be so absurd?” said Kate, stung into betraying herself. “Of course I love you!”
“That,” he said, whipping up his horses, “is all I want to know! Tomorrow, my darling, when you have considered, we will discuss when it will be most convenient for us to settle on a suitable date for the wedding! Yes, I know you are wondering how to break the news to Minerva, but you need not: I’ll do that—and instantly remove you from her sphere of influence! O my God! there’s the stable-clock striking six already! Why did you urge me to dine with Gurney? Shall I come in with you? Minerva is likely to be out of reason cross, you know!”
“Perhaps she will be, but not nearly as cross as she would be if you were to accompany me!” replied Kate, preparing to alight from the curricle. “She dislikes you quite as much as you dislike her, Philip! I mean to come to points with her, and nothing could more surely bring us to dagger-drawing than your presence, believe me!”
“You are full of pluck, Kate!” he said admiringly. “But if your courage fails you at the last moment, don’t hesitate to tell me! I shall fully sympathize!”
She smiled, and took the hand he was holding out to her, to facilitate her descent from the curricle. Once on the ground, she looked up at him, with shyly twinkling eyes. “I promise you it won’t. I don’t mean to tell her that you have been so obliging as to make me an offer, of course!” She pulled her hand out of his tightening clasp as she spoke, and went swiftly up the steps to the principal entrance to the house.
It stood open, as it always did in summertime, during the daylight hours, and the inner door, leading from the lobby into the hall, was on the latch. She let herself softly in, without, however, much hope of being able to run upstairs unobserved. Lady Broome insisted that one or other of the footmen should keep a watch on the door, and be at hand to bow her, or any visitor, in, and to relieve the gentlemen of their hats and coats. But on this occasion no one came into the hall, and Kate, who had more than half expected Pennymore to meet her, charged with a reproachful message from her aunt, thankfully darted up the stairs, to fling off her crumpled walking-dress, and,to hurry into the evening-gown she trusted Ellen would have laid out in readiness. She thought, fleetingly, that it was odd that neither of the footmen had been lying in wait for her; but she was not prepared to be greeted by the news, conveyed to her by Ellen, in awe-stricken accents, that the household was in an uproar, because my lady had fainted clean away an hour after Miss had left the house, and had been carried up to her bed in a state of total collapse.
“And they say, miss—Mrs Thorne, and Betty, and Martha—that her ladyship has never fainted in her life before, and Betty says as her aunty was just the same, never having a day’s illness until she was struck down with a palsy-stroke, and never rose from her bed again!”
Without attaching much weight to this story, Kate was surprised, for it had not seemed to her that Lady Broome was on the brink of a palsy-stroke, although, looking back, she remembered thinking that her aunt was out of sorts when she had sent her on a useless errand. She said, in a disappointingly matter-of-fact way: “Nonsense, Ellen! I expect she has contracted this horrid influenza, which is rife in the village. Quickly, now! Help me into my dress! I’m shockingly late already!”