He advanced slowly into the middle of the room. His first thought was: Ewe-mutton! no bread-and-butter of Evelyn’s! his second, that, incredible though it seemed, Mrs Alperton was a member of a certain sisterhood of elderly females known inappropriately as Abbesses. For this uncharitable belief her attire was largely responsible. His notions of feminine apparel were vague; had he been asked to describe what his mother was wearing that day he would have been unable to do so; but it struck him forcibly that Mrs Alperton’s dashing and colourful raiment would never have been worn by a respectable, middle-aged female, and far less by a lady of quality. In spite of an elaborate array of metallic yellow locks, visible beneath a white satin cap, worn under a dome-crowned hat turned boldly up at the front, and with an ostrich plume curled over the brim to brush her forehead, he assessed her years at fifty. In fact, she was within a few months of Lady Denville’s age; but although it was easy to see that in her youth she must have been a very prime article indeed, an over-lavish use of cosmetics, coupled with an addiction to spirituous liquors, had sadly ravaged a once-lovely countenance. Captious persons might consider that the size and brilliance of her eyes was marred by an avaricious gleam, but only those who had a predilection for slender women could have found fault with her well-corseted and opulent figure.
Whatever might have been her opinion of Mrs Alperton’s taste, any woman would have recognized that she had taken great pains over her toilet, and thought it proper to wear, on a visit to a nobleman’s seat, her bettermost dress and pelisse. Kit merely hoped, very devoutly, that he could succeed in getting rid of her before any of his guests—set eyes on her; for a lilac pelisse, embellished with epaulets and cords, and worn over an open-bosomed robe of pink satin, struck him with horrifying effect. Pink kid half-boots and gloves, a lilac silk parasol, and a number of trinkets completed her costume; and she had lavishly sprayed her person with amber scent.
Kit paused by the table in the middle of the room, and stood looking down at her. “Well, ma’am?” he said. “May I know what brings you here?”
Her bosom swelled. “May you know indeed! Of course, you haven’t a notion, have you? Oh, not the least in the world! Standing there, as proud as an apothecary, and holding up your nose at one which has kept company with gentlemen of the highest rank! And I’ve had grander servants than that niffy-naffy butler of yours waiting on me like slaves, my lord! I’m here to tell you that you can’t jaunter about breaking a poor, innocent female’s heart! Not without paying for it! Oh, dear me, no!”
“Whose heart have I broken?” asked Kit. “Yours, ma’am?”
“Mine! That’s a loud one!” she exclaimed. “If I didn’t break it for the Marquis, who treated me like a princess, never grudging a groat he spent on me, besides a handsome present when we parted, as part we did, and not a hard word spoken on either side, him knowing what was due to a lady—” She stopped, unable to find the thread of her argument, and demanded: “Where was I?”
“You were saying,” supplied Kit helpfully, “that you did not break your heart for the Marquis.”
“And nor I did! So it ain’t likely I’d break it for a sprig scarce breeched, even if I were ten years younger than I am!” said Mrs Alperton, taking a telescopic view of her age. “It’s not my heart you’ve broke, but Clara’s—though that’s not to say mine don’t bleed for her wrongs! Which is why I’m here today, my lord, and small pleasure to me, being jumbled and jolted in a yellow bouncer that has been used to travel in my own chaise, lined with velvet, and four horses, and outriders, besides, let alone the violence done to my feelings to think of being obliged to demean myself, which only a mother’s devotion could have prevailed upon me to do!”
These last words effectually banished from Kit’s mind an irresistible desire to discover the identity of the Marquis who had supported Mrs Alperton in such magnificent style. He had begun to think that the affair, whatever it was, might not be very serious; but he now realized that he had been indulging optimism too far. When Mrs Alperton, after groping in the pocket of her pelisse, brandished before his eyes a scrap cut from a newspaper he had no need to read it to know what it must be. For an awful moment the thought that Evelyn, in a besotted state of mind, had made the unknown Clara an offer of marriage flashed through his brain, and the vision of an action for breach of promise assailed him. It was strengthened by Mrs Alperton’s next utterance. “You are a serpent!” she told him. “A knavish, deceiving man of the town that seduced that poor innocent with false promises!”
“Nonsense!” said Kit, maintaining his calm.
“Oh, so it’s nonsense, is it? And I suppose you’ll say next that you didn’t give her a slip on the shoulder?”
He had no hesitation in answering this, for whatever folly Evelyn had committed it was impossible to believe that he had seduced an innocent damsel—or, indeed, that a daughter of Mrs Alperton’s answered to that description. “Most certainly I shall!” he said.
“When you took my Clara under your protection, my lord, you promised you’d care for her!”
“Well?”
The colour rose in her cheeks, causing them to assume a hue that nearly matched her pelisse, but which was at peculiar variance with the rouge she favoured. Her eyes narrowed; and she said menacingly: “Trying to come crab over me, are you? Well, you won’t do it, my fine sir, and so I tell you! You was able to put the change on that sweet, pretty lamb, but I’ll have you know I’m more than seven, and I’m up to all the rigs!”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said, smiling a little.
Her colour mounted still more alarmingly; but after glaring at him for several seconds she managed to get the better of her temper, and to say, abruptly abandoning her dramatic style for a more business-like approach: “We’ll have a round tale, if you please! You haven’t been next or nigh Clara for close on a month, and when she wrote to you, as write she did, not a word did she get in reply from you, and her sick with apprehension, thinking you was ill, or had met with an accident! Not so much as a whisper did you see fit to vouchsafe, to warn her of the shocking sight which was to meet her poor, deluded eyes in this paper! She fell into hysterics on the instant, never dreaming but what you’d have told her, if you was meaning to get riveted, and acted gentlemanly by her!”
Considerably relieved to learn from this that Miss Alperton had apparently had no expectation of marrying Evelyn herself, Kit replied: “That piece of gossip, ma’am, was published without my knowledge.” He was about to add that it was also without foundation, but he bit the words back, too uncertain of Cressy’s intentions to venture to utter them. He said instead: “Clara must know that I’m a poor hand at letter-writing, but I should have written to reassure her had I not meant to answer her letter in person. Circumstances intervened which have obliged me to postpone my visit to her—”
“Yes, and everyone knows what they are!” interrupted Mrs Alperton. “What’s more, anyone that isn’t a knock-in-the-cradle knows better than to believe that bag of moonshine! Trying to shab off without paying down your dust, that’s what you’re doing, and you living as high as a coach-horse!”
“I don’t, but you may tell Clara—”
“Oh, yes, you do!” said Mrs Alperton, a steely light in her eyes. “No use thinking you can bamboozle me into believing your pockets ain’t well-lined, my lord! for that’s where you’ll be made to turn short about! Full of juice your father was, and I’ll be bound he cut up warm. And don’t think I wasn’t acquainted with him, because I was used to know all the swells, and very well pleased most of them were to get their legs under my mahogany, I can tell you!” She added, with dignity: “Before I retired, that was. My dinners were thought to be first-rate, which I promise you they were, with a French chef, and no expense spared, the Marquis never grudging a penny, but telling me always to buy the best, and keeping the cellar stocked with his own wines.”