Miss Challoner’s ever lively sense of humour was aroused by this, and she slightly disconcerted Mr. Comyn by chuckling. She explained apologetically that after the events of the past week considerations of propriety seemed absurd. He pressed her hand, saying with feeling: “I believe you have suffered, ma’am. To a delicately nurtured female Lord Vidal’s habits and manners must have caused infinite alarm and disgust.”
Her steady grey eyes met his unwaveringly. “Neither, sir, I do assure you. I don’t desire to pose as a wronged and misused creature. I brought it all on myself, and his lordship behaved to me with more consideration than perhaps I deserved.”
He seemed to be at a loss. “Is that so, ma’am? I had supposed, I confess, that you had suffered incivility — even brutality — at his hands. Consideration for others would hardly appear to be one of his lordship’s virtues.”
She smiled reminiscently. “I think he could be very kind,” she said, half to herself. “I am indebted to him for several marks of thoughtfulness.” Her smile grew, though her eyes were misty. “You would scarcely credit it in one so ruthless, sir, but his lordship, though excessively angry with me at the time, was moved to provide me with a basin on board his yacht. I was never more glad of anything in my life.”
Mr. Comyn was shocked. “It must have been vastly disagreeable to you, ma’am, to be — ah — unwell and without a female companion.”
“It was quite the most disagreeable part of the whole adventure,” agreed Miss Challoner. She added candidly: “I was vilely sick, and really I believe I should have died had his lordship not forced brandy down my throat in the nick of time.”
“The situation,” said Mr. Comyn austerely, “seems to have been sordid in the extreme.”
Miss Challoner perceived that she had offended his sensibilities, and relapsed into a disheartened silence. She began to understand that Mr. Comyn, for all his prosaic bearing, cherished a love for the romantic, which Lord Vidal, a very figure of romance, quite lacked.
The journey occupied three days, and neither the gentleman nor the lady enjoyed it. Miss Challoner, of necessity the spokesman at every halt on the route, found herself comparing this flight with her previous journey to Paris, when the best rooms at all the inns were prepared for her, and she had nothing to do but obey my lord’s commands. Mr. Comyn, in his turn, could not but feel that his companion behaved with a matter-of-factness quite out of keeping with the circumstances. She seemed more concerned with the ordering of meals at the inns, and the airing of sheets which she declared to be damp, than with the unconventional daring of the whole expedition. A natural female agitation would have given his chivalry more scope, but Miss Challoner remained maddeningly calm, and, far from betraying weakness or nervous fears, assumed the direction of the journey. The only betrayal of uneasiness which she permitted herself was her continual plea to travel faster. Mr. Comyn, who did not at all care to be bumped and jolted over bad roads, and who thought, moreover, that such a feverish pace made their progress appear like an undignified flight, several times remonstrated with her. But when he condemned the speed as dangerous, Miss Challoner laughed, and told him that if he had ever travelled with the Marquis he would not consider himself to be moving fast now.
This remark, and various others which had all to do with his lordship, at last induced Mr. Comyn to observe, not without a touch of asperity, that Miss Challoner did not seem to have disliked her late abduction so much as he had supposed. “I confess, ma’am,” he said, “that I had imagined you desperate in the power of one whose merciless violence is, alas, too well know. Apparently I was mistaken, and from your present conversation I am led to assume that his lordship behaved with a respect and amiability astonishing in one of his reputation.”
Her eyes twinkled a little. “Respect and amiability ...” she repeated. “N-no, sir. His lordship was peremptory, overbearing, excessively quick-tempered, and imperious.”
“And yet, ma’am, not repugnant to you.”
“No. Not repugnant to me,” she said quietly.
“Forgive me,” said Mr. Comyn, “but I think you cherish a warmer feeling for Lord Vidal than I was aware of.”
She looked gravely at him. “I thought, from something you said to me, that you had guessed I was not — indifferent to him.”
“I did not know, ma’am, that it had gone so deep. If it is so indeed, I do not immediately perceive why you were so urgent to be quit of him.”
“He does not care for me, sir,” said Miss Challoner simply. “Nor am I of his world. Conceive the very natural dismay that must visit his parents were he to ally himself with me. Fathers have been known to disinherit their sons for such offences.”
Mr. Comyn was greatly moved. “Madam, the nobility of your nature is such that I can only say, I honour you.”
“Nonsense!” said Miss Challoner sharply.
Chapter XIV
Miss Marling partook of chocolate very late on the morning after the ball at the Hôtel Saint-Vire. It was after eleven when she awoke, and she did not look as though the long sleep had at all refreshed her. Her abigail noticed how woebegone was the little face under the night-cap of point-lace, and drew her own conclusions. Miss Marling was pettish over the choice of a morning wrapper, and complained that her chocolate was too sweet. She demanded to know whether any note had been left for her, or if anyone had called to see her, and on being told that she had neither a note nor a visitor, she pushed her chocolate away, and said she could not drink the stuff, it was so vile.
She was still in bed trying to make up her mind whether or no to write to Mr. Comyn, when a message was brought to her that the Marquis of Vidal was below, and wanted to see her immediately.
She was so disappointed that the visitor was not Mr. Comyn, as she had at first been sure it must be, that tears rose to her eyes, and she said in a tight, hard voice: “I can’t see him. I’m in bed, and I have the headache.”
The lackey’s footsteps retreated down the stairs, and in two minutes a far quicker step sounded, and a peremptory rap fell on the door. “Let me in, Ju; I must see you,” said Vidal’s voice.
“Oh, very well!” answered Juliana crossly.
The Marquis came in, much to the abigail’s disapproval, and signed to that damsel to leave the room. She went, sniffing loudly, and Vidal strode over to the big bed, and stood looking grimly down at Juliana. “The servants tell me Mary Challoner left the house early this morning, and is not yet returned,” he said, without preamble. “Where is she?”
“Good gracious, how should I know?” said Juliana indignantly. She hitched one of her lace-edged pillows up higher. “I dare say she has run away sooner than marry you, and I vow I don’t blame her, if you are in the habit of bursting in on ladies abed in this horrid way.”
“Oh, don’t be missish, Ju!” said his lordship, with an impatient frown. “I left her in your care.”
“Well, and what if you did? I can’t be for ever with her. She wouldn’t have me, I’ll be bound.”
Vidal looked at her rather sharply. “Oh? Have you quarrelled?”
“Pray do not imagine everyone to be like yourself and for ever being in a quarrel!” besought Miss Marling. “If people are only kind to me I’m sure I am the last person to quarrel with anyone.”
His lordship sat down on the edge of the bed. “Now come along, my girclass="underline" out with it!” he said. “What has happened between you?”