“It’s you that’s going to be robbed, sir!” said Challow, deeply disapproving.
“Not I! I’m buying this horse on my brother’s behalf—and serve him right!” said Kit.
He set forth a little later to walk to Mount Street, nattily attired in the correct town-dress of a gentleman of fashion. His coat of dark blue superfine was the very latest made for Evelyn by Weston, and never yet worn by its owner; his stockinette pantaloons were knitted in the newest and most delicate dove-colour; his cambric shirt was modishly austere, with no ruffle, but three plain buttons; his waistcoat combined opulence with discretion; and his hat, set at an angle on his glowing locks, had a tall and tapering crown, smoothly brushed, and very different from the low, shaggy beaver to which Fimber had taken such instant exception. Only his Hessian boots were his own. Within ten minutes of forcing his feet into Evelyn’s shoes Kit had straitly commanded Fimber to retrieve from his baggage his own foot-wear. Fimber, obstinately prejudiced against Kit’s Viennese valet, had eyed his Hessians with contempt, but there was really no fault to be found either in their cut, or in their unsullied brilliance. Starched shirt points of moderate height, a Mathematical Tie, dogskin gloves, an elegant fob, and a malacca cane completed Mr Fancot’s attire, and caused his mama to declare that he was precise to a pin. Thus fortified, he set forth with tolerable composure to keep his appointment with Miss Stavely.
Halfway up John Street this composure was shaken by an encounter with a total stranger, who demanded indignantly what he meant by giving him the cut direct He extricated himself from this situation by pleading a brown study; but as he had no clue to the stranger’s identity, nor any knowledge of the latest on-dits to which this Pink of the Ton made oblique references, the ensuing conversation severely taxed his ingenuity. It culminated in a pressing invitation to him to join a gathering of Evelyn’s cronies at Limmer’s Hotel that evening. He declined this, on the score of having promised to escort his mother to a ton-party; and parted from his insouciant new acquaintance imbued with a resolve to seek refuge at Ravenhurst without any loss of time.
It had been forcibly borne in upon him that a prolonged sojourn in the Metropolis would not only be extremely wearing, but would infallibly lead to his undoing.
He was admitted to Lord Stavely’s house by the butler, who came as near to bestowing a conspiratorial wink upon him as his sense of propriety permitted, and was conducted to a parlour, at the back of the house. Here Miss Stavely awaited him, becomingly attired in a morning dress of jaconet muslin, made up to the throat, its sleeves tightly buttoned at the wrists, and its hem embellished with a broad, embroidered flounce. As he bent ceremonially over her hand, the butler, surveying the scene with a fatherly and sentimental eye, heaved an audible sigh of great sensibility, and withdrew, softly closing the door behind him.
There had been constraint in Miss Stavely’s manner, but the butler’s sigh brought the ready twinkle into her eyes, and she said involuntarily: “Oh, dear! Poor Dursley is convinced that he is assisting in a romantical affair! Don’t be dismayed! The thing is that he, and all the upper servants, have, most unfortunately, taken it upon themselves to champion what they imagine to be my cause!”
“Unfortunately?” he said.
“Why, yes! I should be a monster if I were not very much touched by their loyalty, but I wish with all my heart they could be persuaded to accept Albinia as my successor! You can’t conceive how awkward they make it for both of us! Do what I will, they persist in coming to me for orders, even of referring her orders to me! I do most sincerely feel for her: her situation is insupportable!”
“What of yours?” he asked. “Is that not insupportable?”
“Yes,” she acknowledged, with a wry smile. “You know that! It was—is!—my reason for—for entertaining your proposal, my lord.”
“That’s frank, at all events!” he remarked.
Her eyes responded to the smile in his. “We were agreed, were we not, that only candour on both our parts could make our projected alliance tolerable to either of us? Your reason for wishing to be married is your very understandable desire to become independent of your uncle; mine is—is what I feel to be an urgent need to remove myself from this house—from any of my father’s houses!”
“Having made the acquaintance of your mother-in-law—having furthered my acquaintance with her,” Kit said, smoothly correcting himself, “I perfectly comprehend your feeling—and sympathize with you!”
“No, no, don’t misunderstand me!” she said quickly. “You should rather sympathize with Albinia! It must be hard indeed for her to come into a household which has been managed for years by a daughter-in-law so little removed from her in age. Then, too, I have been in some sort my father’s companion since my mother’s death, and—and it is difficult to break such a relationship. Albinia feels—inevitably—that she is obliged to share Papa with me.”
“And you?”
“Yes,” she said frankly. “I feel the same—perhaps more bitterly, which—which quite shocks me, because I had never dreamt I could be so horridly ill-natured! Between the two of us poor Papa is rendered miserably uncomfortable! I detest Albinia as much as she detests me, and—to make a clean breast of it!—I find I can’t bear playing second fiddle where I have been accustomed to being the mistress of the house!” She added, with an effort at playfulness: “You should take warning, Denville! I have lately learnt to know myself much better than ever I did before, and have come to the dismal conclusion that I am an overbearing female, determined to rule the roast!”
He smiled at her. “I’m not afraid of you. But tell me this!—if I should ask it of you, would you find it irksome to share a home with my mother?”
She stared at him, and then exclaimed, as enlightenment dawned on her: “Was that the stipulation you spoke of? Good God, how could you be so absurd? Did you think that I should require you to thrust her out of her home? What a toad you must think me! My dearest, most adorable Godmama! Let me tell you, my lord, that my hope is that she will receive me into your household with as much kindness as she has always shown me!”
“Thank you!” he said warmly. “But I must tell you that she straitly forbade me even to suggest such an arrangement to you. She says it never answers. Indeed, she informed me that she had always regarded it as a most fortunate circumstance that her own mother and father-in-law were dead before she married my father!”
Her eyes danced. She said appreciatively: “I can almost hear her saying it—perfectly seriously, I make no doubt! Do, pray, assure her that I should not so regard her death!”
“I shan’t dare to disclose that I mentioned the matter to you. She promised me a severe scold if I did so!”
“No wonder you should be in a quake!” she agreed. “One always dreads the ordeal of which one has no experience!”
He laughed. “Now, how do you know I have not that experience, Miss Stavely?”
“I don’t think my understanding superior,” she replied, “but I have cut my eye-teeth!” She looked curiously at him. “May I know why I have sunk to be Miss Stavely again? You called me Cressy when you proposed to me—but perhaps you have forgotten?”
“By no means!” he said promptly. “Merely, your habit of addressing me as my lord led me to fear that I had gone beyond the line.”
“What a whisker!” she remarked. “I recall that Grandmama told me last night that you had a ready tongue.”
“I wish I could think that she meant it as a compliment!”
“With Grandmama one can never be quite certain, but she did say that she had been agreeably surprised in you!”