“Do you? I’m not so charitable!”
“Well, she’s such a pea-goose!” Cressy explained. “One can’t blame her for being foolish, or, I suppose, for being so jealous. One ought rather to feel compassion for her—or at least try to!—because she is bound to suffer a great deal of anguish.”
This view of the matter was not shared by Lady Denville, who, when she read the paragraph, was put into a flame. She went pink with anger, her eyes flashing magnificently. She turned them upon Kit, demanding in a trembling voice: “How dared they? Who is responsible for this abominable piece of vulgarity!”
“Cressy believes that it was her mother-in-law. I feel as you do, Mama, but our only course is to ignore it.”
“That woman!” exclaimed her ladyship. “I might have guessed as much! Do you see what she had the effrontery to call me? The Dowager Countess! Dowager—!”
He was taken aback. “Well, yes, but—”
“And I know why!” raged her ladyship. “She is a jealous, spiteful toad, and she knows that Stavely offered for me once, and still has a tendre for me! It would afford me very great pleasure to set her mind at rest! Very great pleasure! I’ll have her know that if I had no fancy for Stavely when he was young, and passably good-looking, I have less now! She is very welcome to a husband who will offer a carte blanche to some lightskirt the instant he becomes bored with her charms!”
Somewhat alarmed by this unusual venom, Kit made a quite unavailing attempt to soothe her. She interrupted him, requesting him not to put her out of all patience; and swept away, the offending newspaper clenched in her hand, to knock imperatively on the door of Lady Stavely’s bedchamber. Since nothing annoyed the Dowager more than to receive visitors before she chose to emerge from her seclusion, Kit waited for the inevitable disaster. It did not befall. The two ladies remained closeted together for a full hour, deriving great benefit from a free exchange of opinions on the character of Albinia Stavely. The only discordant note was struck by Lady Stavely, who bluntly informed her lovely hostess that however little she might relish the notion, she was Dowager Countess, and would be well-advised to accustom herself to this title.
“Which I cannot do, Kit!” Lady Denville said later, and in tragic accents. “No one can say that I haven’t borne up under a great deal of adversity, but this stroke is too much!”
The effect of the paragraph upon his maternal relations Kit dealt with summarily and conclusively. He told his aunt, who said that she had seen from the first how it was, that if his mother had dreamt that such an absurd construction would be placed on a visit from her favourite godchild she would never have invited her to Ravenhurst; and when his uncle, in a dudgeon, started to read him a lecture on the impropriety of allowing the news of his approaching nuptials to reach his relatives through the medium of the press, he put a swift end to any further recriminations by saying, in a voice of cold and quelling civility: “You may rest assured, sir, that when I contemplate matrimony I shall do myself the honour of informing you of the impending announcement.”
Ambrose, whose evil genius prompted him to quiz his cousin, was disposed of without finesse; and when Kit was able to exchange a private word with Cressy he told her not to waste a thought on an unpleasant, but evanescent annoyance. “I fancy we shall hear no more about it,” he said.
12
He was permitted to dwell in this hopeful belief for rather less than twenty-four hours. Upon the following afternoon, driven indoors by a shower of rain, he was playing billiards with Cressy when Norton entered the room, and asked him in an expressionless voice if he might have a word with him.
“Yes, what is it?” Kit replied.
Norton coughed, and directed a meaning look at him. Unfortunately, Kit was watching Cressy, critically surveying the balls on the table, her cue in her hand. Their disposition was not promising. “What a very unhandsome way to leave them!” she complained. “I don’t see what’s to be done.”
“Try a cannon off the cushion!” he recommended. A second cough made him say, rather impatiently: “Well, Norton? What do you want?”
“If I might have a word with your lordship?” Norton repeated.
Kit glanced frowningly at him. “Presently: you are interrupting the game.”
“I beg your lordship’s pardon!” said Norton, his meaning look becoming almost a glare. “A Person has called to see your lordship.”
“Very well. Tell him I am at present engaged, and ask him to state his business!”
Cressy, who had raised her eyes from the table to look at the butler, said: “Do go, Denville! I’ll concede this game to you gracefully and happily, having already been beaten all hollow!” She smiled at Norton. “I collect the business is urgent?”
“Well, yes, miss!” replied Norton gratefully.
By this time, Kit, his attention fairly caught, had realized that Norton was trying to convey an unspoken message to him. Since he had been assured by Fimber that the butler had no suspicion that he was not his noble master, he was puzzled to know why he was trying to warn him. He thrust his cue into the rack, made his apologies to Cressy, and preceded Norton out of the room. “Well? Who is it?” he asked, as soon as the butler had shut the door behind him. “What’s his business with me?”
“As to that, my lord, I shouldn’t care to say: the Individual being unwilling to divulge it to me.” He met Kit’s questioning look woodenly, but added a sinister rider. “I should perhaps mention, my lord, that the Individual in question is not of the male sex.”
Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Kit betray his feelings. He asked curtly: “Her name?”
“She calls herself Alperton, my lord,” responded Norton, at once disclaiming responsibility and revealing to the initiated the social status of the visitor. “Mrs Alperton—not a young female, my lord.” His gaze, became fixed on some object over Kit’s shoulder as he made his next tactfully worded disclosure. “I thought it best to show her into the Blue saloon, my lord, Sir Bonamy and Mr Cliffe being in the library, as is their custom at this hour, and her not being willing to accept my assurance that you were not at home to visitors, but declaring to me her intention of remaining here until it should be convenient to you to receive her.”
It was now apparent to Kit that when he entered the Blue saloon he would be facing guns of unknown but almost certainly heavy calibre. His first alarming suspicion that some Cyprian whom Evelyn had taken under his protection had had the effrontery to present herself at Ravenhurst had been banished by the information that Mrs Alperton was not a young female; and relief at the knowledge that he would not be confronted by a female quite so intimately acquainted with Evelyn made it possible for him to nod, and to say coolly: “Very well, I’ll see her there.”
Norton bowed. “Yes, my lord. Would you wish me to tell the postboy to wait?”
“Postboy?”
“A job-chaise, my lord, and one pair of horses.”
“Oh! Send him round to the stables: they’ll look after him there.”
Norton bowed again, and led the way across the hall, and down a wide passage to the door leading into the Blue saloon. He held it open, and Kit walked into the room, his face schooled to an impassivity he was far from feeling.
His visitor was seated on a small sofa. She greeted him with a basilisk stare, and said, with terrible irony: “Well, there! And so you was at home, after all, my lord!”