She was very much shocked. Unlike his aunt, and Lady Sefton, and Mr Ringwood, she neither said nor believed that Sherry was to blame for Hero’s flight. Never having felt the smallest desire to depart from the strictly conventional herself, the story of the racing engagement quite dismayed her. She could not imagine how any female with the least pretension to elegance of mind, or propriety of taste, could have even listened to such a proposal without a blush of mortification. She could not find it in herself to blame Sherry for having been very much provoked; and she would have extended her warmest sympathy towards him would he but have accepted it. But such was his perversity that no sooner did he find himself in the company of a partisan than he spared no pains to assure her that the fault had been his from start to finish, and that if his Hero had erred in judgment it was through innocence and his own neglect. Miss Milborne thought that such sentiments did him honour, and said so, to which his lordship replied shortly: “Fudge!”
She would have lent him any aid that lay in her power, but with the best will in the world there was nothing she could do, since she had no more idea than he where Hero might have hidden herself. For several years they had not been intimate. Only one idea, and that a painful one, occurred to her. She asked, with a little difficulty, if Sherry had spoken to Lord Wrotham.
“He didn’t know anything,” Sherry replied impatiently. “Thinks she’s in the country, indisposed.”
Miss Milborne rather carefully smoothed out her handkerchief. “I only thought ... It has sometimes seemed to me that — that George displays a marked partiality for Hero, Sherry.”
“Oh, there’s nothing in that!” he said. “Good God, you should know George don’t give a button for any female but yourself!”
Miss Milborne coloured faintly, and looked up as though she would have liked to have said more. But Sherry, having no interest outside his own pressing problem, was already on his feet, and wishing to take his leave. She did not detain him; upon consideration, she did not even know what it was that she wanted to say to him. As she shook hands, she informed him, a little consciously, that she was going into Kent for a time. He accepted this without surprise or interest, and so they parted. Miss Milborne did her best not to fell ill-used, but could not help reflecting that his lordship was a singularly impercipient young man.
For Miss Milborne, for the first time in her life, had behaved in a manner contrary to her own interests, thus disobliging her Mama, and leading that redoubtable dame to prophesy a single existence for her, attended by all the ills that were commonly supposed to wait on spinsters. Miss Milborne, travelling to Severn Towers with the dutiful intention of fulfilling her Mama’s expectations, had been received by the Duchess with every mark of distinguishing attention. There had been a number of other, and certainly more exalted, guests, but she had known herself to be the guest of honour, and had had no difficulty in interpreting her hostess’s benign manner to signify approval of Severn’s suit. She had been shown all over the vast pile, even down to the linen and stillrooms; obviously interested family retainers had bobbed curtsies to her; the housekeeper had initiated her into the mysteries of domestic arrangement; and the Duchess had talked in a casual way of her own plans when her son should bring home a bride. Nothing could have been more gratifying, and why Miss Milborne should suddenly have taken fright was a matter passing the comprehension of her parent. Miss Milborne found herself unable to advance any reasonable explanation for her behaviour. All she would say was that she did not love the Duke, and this was too frivolous an utterance to be accepted by Mama.
Miss Milborne, losing herself in the enormous mansion, being driven about the prosperous estate, dining off gold plate, and being waited on by armies of liveried servants, saw herself mistress of all this grandeur, and, since she was but human, was not unattracted by the vision. But at her side was the unromantic figure of her ducal suitor, a model of punctilious civility, treating her with pompous respect, bestowing his admiration on her rather as though it had been an accolade. His grace was as correct in his advances to the lady whom he designed to make his wife as in every other detail of his well-ordered life, the greatest display or ardour he permitted himself to indulge in being the fervent pressing of his lips to her hand. Miss Milborne doubted whether it would ever enter his head to seize her in a rough embrace, and to devour her with kisses as Lord Wrotham had shown lamentably little hesitation in doing. She knew that he would never rave and storm at her, make extravagant gestures, threaten to blow his brains out, or spend all his energy in procuring for her flowers that were out of season. She thought his notions of propriety would preclude his even quarrelling mildly with her, since whenever she displeased him a more than ordinarily stolid expression would descend upon his countenance, and he would withdraw from her vicinity, reappearing after a judicious lapse of time as though nothing whatever had happened to disturb the harmony of their intercourse. He disapproved of gaming, took no more than a fashionable interest in racing, chose his friends from amongst the more sedate of his contemporaries, and was prone to moralize upon such dismal subjects as the decay of modern manners, the frivolity of the younger set, and the lack of modest restraint observable in the damsels at present gracing Society.
And all at once, just as everything was in train for a brilliant betrothal, Miss Milborne knew that she could not marry Severn. Aghast at her own conduct in having encouraged his advances, wishing she had never allowed George to goad her into accepting the Duchess’s invitation to Severn Towers, she did what she could to prevent his grace’s coming to the point. Her manner towards him was retiring to the point of coldness. The Duchess, observing it, reiterated her opinion that she was a very pretty behaved girl, for such formal reserve exactly suited her own ideas of well-bred behavior. George might have been cast into despair by a tenth of such repulsive chilliness as was being shown to the Duke, but Severn, knowing himself to be the biggest matrimonial prize in the market, read it as admirable female modesty, and was not in the least discouraged. Miss Milborne felt hunted, and if Lord Wrotham had appeared at the Towers he might have ridden off with her across his saddle-bow with her very good will. But although his lordship would no doubt have obliged her had he had the least idea of her desire, he had no such idea, and the respectability of the Duke’s ancestral home was undisturbed by his romantic presence. The Duke declared himself; Miss Milborne declined his flattering offer; the Duchess was both staggered and affronted; and Mrs Milborne expressed her unshakable belief that her wretched daughter was out of her senses.
She brought her back to London, and it was in London that the full evils consequent upon the rejection of his grace’s hand were borne in upon Mrs Milborne. No one believed that his grace had come up to scratch. She read the truth in the discreetly veiled smiles which met any reference to the affair, and was mortified indeed. The Polite World had no doubt at all that his grace’s Mama had triumphed by subtle means, and that the return of the Milbornes to town betokened defeat.
Miss Milborne was quite as conscious as her parent of this disagreeable circumstance. She had foreseen it, and it had taken a considerable degree of resolution to make her refuse the Duke’s offer. What she had not foreseen was that Lord Wrotham should fall into vulgar error.
But this was precisely what that impetuous young man had done, and it apparently led him to suffer a revulsion of feeling. Instead of being relieved and gratified at the Beauty’s return, unbetrothed, to London, he laughed in a harsh and bitter way, and uttered some comments so caustic as to be almost insulting. These were naturally repeated, and came in due course to Miss Milborne’s ears. She experienced a strong desire to box George’s ears, but as he did not come near her she was unable to gratify it. A period of calm reflection made her acknowledge to herself that she might have been in some degree to blame for George’s abominable lack of faith in her, and instead of wishing any longer to box his ears she would have given much to have had the opportunity of explaining herself to him. Such signs of encouragement as might be bestowed on a gentleman by a modest female she bestowed on George, and he received them with a curling lip, and an eye sparkling with contempt. Miss Milborne, who had fallen into the way of thinking that he might be treated with impunity like a stray mongrel, suffered a severe shock, and was torn by indignation and a curious satisfaction that he could not, after all, be whistled back to heel at her pleasure.