“Well, you didn’t look as if it was! Confess, now! You’ve been shamming it—all these years!”
He rejected this playful accusation with vehemence. “No, that I haven’t! How can you say such a thing, Amabel? Haven’t I stayed single for your sake?”
A provocative smile hovered about the corners of her mouth; she seemed to consider him. “That’s what you say,but are you perfectly sure it wasn’t for your own sake, abominable palaverer that you are, my dear?”
He was so indignant at having a doubt cast on his fidelity that the colour surged up into his face, and he almost glared at her. “No! I mean, yes! I am sure! Upon my word, Amabel—! Have I ever formed an attachment for anyone but yourself? Have I—”
“Often!” she said cordially. “First, there was that ravishing creature, with black curls and flashing eyes, who was used to drive in the park in a landaulet behind a pair of jet-black horses, perfectly matched, and such beautiful steppers that everyone said they must have cost you a fortune! Then there was that languishing female—the one with the flaxen hair, who was certainly of a consumptive habit! And after her—”
“Now, that will do!” interposed Sir Bonamy, aghast at these accurate recollections. “Bachelor’s fare! Good God, Amabel, you should know that they don’t mean anything, those little connexions! Why, your own father—Well, well, mum for that!”
The laughter was quenched in her eyes; she turned her head away, and said in a low voice: “And Denville. Did it mean nothing? It seemed to me to mean so much! What a goose-cap I was!”
“Amabel!” pronounced Sir Bonamy, controlling himself with a strong effort, “I have never permitted myself to utter a word in dispraise of Denville, and I’ll keep my tongue between my teeth now, but had you married me, the most dazzling bird of Paradise amongst the whole of the muslin company would have thrown out her lures in vain to me!”
“But it is too late,” she said mournfully. “I’ve worn out your love, my poor Bonamy! I read it in your face, and indeed I cannot wonder at it!”
“Nothing of the sort!” he replied stoutly. “You misunderstood! I had come to believe that my case was hopeless—can you wonder at it that I was knocked acock? My heart stood still! Was it possible, I asked myself, that its dearest wish might yet be granted? A moment’s rapture, and my spirits were dashed down again, as I realized how absurd it was to think that at my age I could win what was denied me when I was young, and—I fancy—not an ill-looking man!”
“Very true! Even then you had a decided air of fashion—though it wasn’t until much later that you became of the first stare!”
“Well, well!” he said, visibly gratified, “I was always one who liked to have everything prime about me, but propriety of taste, you know, comes to one in later years! But I am growing old, my pretty—too old for you, I fear! Alas that it should be so!”
“Fudge!” said her ladyship briskly. “You are three-and-fifty, just ten years older than I am! A very comfortable age!”
“But of late years I have grown to be a trifle portly! I don’t ride any more, you know, and I get fagged easily nowadays. Ticklish in the wind, too—I might pop off the hooks at any moment, for I have palpitations!”
“Yes, you eat too much,” she nodded. “My poor dear Bonamy, it is high time you had me to take care of you! I have thought for years that your constitution must be of iron to have withstood your excesses, and so it is, for you don’t even suffer from the gout, which Denville did, although for every bottle he drank you drank two, if not three!”
“No, no!” protested Sir Bonamy feebly. “Not three, Amabel! I own I eat more than he did, but recollect that he was of a spare habit! Now, I have a large frame, and I must eat to keep up my strength!”
“So you shall!” said her ladyship, smiling seraphically upon him. “But not to send yourself off in an apoplexy!”
Regarding her with eyes of fascinated horror, he played his last ace. “Evelyn!” he uttered. “You are forgetting Evelyn, my pretty! Ay, and Kit too, I dare say, though he don’t seem to hold me in such aversion as Evelyn does! But you must know Evelyn wouldn’t stomach it! Why, he never sees me but he looks yellow! Well do I know there ain’t a soul you dote on more, and never would I cause a rift between you!”
Wholly unimpressed by this noble self-abnegation, she replied: “You couldn’t! Besides, he is going to be married!”
“What?” he ejaculated, momentarily diverted. “But it’s as plain as a pack-saddle the gal’s head over ears in love with Kit!”
“Yes, and was there ever anything so delightful? Dear Cressy! she might have been made for Kit! Evelyn has formed what he declares to be a lasting passion for quite another sort of girl. Kit believes it may well be so, but she sounds to me to be positively Quakerish! The daughter of a mere country gentleman—perfectly genteel, but only picture to yourself how ineligible Brumby will think her!—and one of those pale, saintly females, reared in the strictest respectability!”
“You don’t mean it!” gasped Sir Bonamy, staggered by this disclosure.
“I do mean it!” she asserted, tears sparkling on her curling eyelashes. She brushed them hurriedly away. “Evelyn thinks I shall love her, but I have the most melancholy conviction that I shan’t, Bonamy! And, what is more, I don’t think she will love me, do you?”
“No,” he replied candidly. “Not if she’s Quakerish! You wouldn’t deal well at all!”
“Exactly so! I knew you would understand! Evelyn declares I must continue to live in Hill Street, but that I was determined not to do, even if he had married Cressy! I had quite made up my mind to it that I must retire to an establishment of my own, and dwindle into a mere widow, until you came here, my dear friend, only because I begged you to, and not wanting to leave Brighton in the least, which I know very well you didn’t, and it struck me, like a flash of lightning, that never had you wavered in your attachment to me, and never had you received the smallest reward, or even looked for one, for all your goodness to me, and your exceeding generosity!”
“I see what it is!” he exclaimed. “Kit blabbed to you that I didn’t have that brooch of yours copied, silly chub that he is! Now, put it out of your mind, my pretty! Yes, yes, you think you must make a sacrifice of yourself, but I won’t permit you to do so!”
She interrupted him, staring at him with widened eyes. “You didn’t—Do you mean to tell me that I lost the real brooch to Silverdale? And you gave me £500 for it, saying that—Bonamy, did you sell any of my jewellery? Kit has never breathed a word of this! Bonamy—did you?”
“No, no, of course I didn’t!” he answered, much discomposed. “Now, is it likely I’d let you sell your jewels, and replace ’em with paste and pinchbeck? It was nothing to me, Amabel, so, if Kit didn’t tell you, you may forget it, and oblige me very much!”
“Oh, Bonamy!” she cried, impulsively stretching out her hands to him, “how good you are! How much, much too good!”
He responded instinctively, and, the next instant, found himself clasping a fragrant armful to his massive bosom. Lady Denville, adapting her slim form, not without difficulty, to his formidable contour, lifted her face invitingly. His senses swimming, Sir Bonamy tightened his hold about her, and fastened his lips to hers. At the back of his mind lurked the conviction that he would regret this yielding to temptation, and the premonition that the sybaritic pleasures of his life stood in jeopardy; but never before had he been encouraged to venture more than a chaste salute upon her ladyship’s hand, or, upon rare occasions, her cheek, and he surrendered to intoxication.