He bowed, and shut the door behind her. The Duchess said: “An undeserved compliment, Sylvester. My dear, how came you to speak as you did? It was not kind.”
“Her folly is intolerable!” he said impatiently. “Why do you keep such a hubble-bubble woman about you? She must vex you past bearing!”
“She is not very wise, certainly,” admitted the Duchess. “But I couldn’t send her away, you know!”
“Shall I do so for you?”
She was startled, but, supposing that he was speaking out of an unthinking exasperation, only said: “Nonsensical boy! You know you could no more do so than I could!”
He raised his brows. “Of course I could do it, Mama! What should stop me?”
“You cannot be serious!” she exclaimed, half inclined still to laugh at him.
“But I’m perfectly serious, my dear! Be frank with me! Don’t you wish her at Jericho?”
She said, with a rueful twinkle: “Well, yes—sometimes I do! Don’t repeat that, will you? I have at least the grace to be ashamed of myself!” She perceived that his expression was one of surprise, and said in a serious tone: “Of course it vexes you, and me too, when she says silly things, and hasn’t the tact to go away when you come to visit me, but I promise you I think myself fortunate to have her. It can’t be very amusing to be tied to an invalid, you know, but she is never hipped or out of temper, and whatever I ask her to do for me she does willingly, and so cheerfully that she puts me in danger of believing that she enjoys being at my beck and call.”
“So I should hope!”
“Now, Sylvester—”
“My dear Mama, she has hung on your sleeve ever since I can remember, and a pretty generous sleeve it has been! You have always made her an allowance far beyond what you would have paid a stranger hired to bear you company, haven’t you?”
“You speak as though you grudged it!”
“No more than I grudge the wages of my valet, if you think her worth it. I pay large wages to my servants, but I keep none in my employment who doesn’t earn his wage.”
There was a troubled look in the eyes that searched his face, but the Duchess only said: “The cases are not the same, but don’t let us brangle about it! You may believe that it would make me very unhappy to lose Augusta. Indeed, I don’t know how I should go on.”
“If that’s the truth, Mama, you need say no more. Do you suppose I wouldn’t pay anyone you wished to keep about you double—treble—what you pay Augusta?” He saw her stretch out her hand to him, and went to her immediately. “You know I wouldn’t do anything you don’t like! Don’t look so distressed, dearest!”
She pressed his hand. “I know you wouldn’t. Don’t heed me! It is only that it shocked me a little to hear you speak so hardly. But no one has less cause to complain of hardness in you than I, my darling.”
“Nonsense!” he said, smiling down at her. “Keep your tedious cousin, love—but allow me to wish that you had with you someone who could entertain you better—enter into what interests you!”
“Well, I have Ianthe,” she reminded him. “She doesn’t precisely enter into my interests, but we go on very comfortably together.”
“I am happy to hear it. But it begins to seem as if you won’t have the doubtful comfort of her society for much longer.”
“My dear, if you are going to suggest that I should employ a second lady to keep me company, I do beg of you to spare your breath!”
“No, that wouldn’t answer.” He paused, and then said quite coolly: “I am thinking of getting married, Mama.”
She was taken so much by surprise that she could only stare at him. He had the reputation of being a dangerous flirt, but she had almost given up hope of his coming to the point of offering for any lady’s hand in matrimony. She had reason to think that he had had more than one mistress in keeping—very expensive Cythereans some of them had been if her sister were to be believed!—and it had begun to seem as if he preferred that way of life to a more ordered existence. Recovering from her stupefaction, she said: “My dear, this is very sudden!”
“Not so sudden as you think, Mama. I have been meaning for some time to speak to you about it.”
“Good gracious! And I never suspected it! Do, pray, sit down and tell me all about it!”
He looked at her keenly. “Would you be glad, Mama?”
“Of course I should!”
“Then I think that settles it.”
That made her laugh. “Of all the absurd things to say! Very well! having won my approval, tell me everything!”
He said, gazing frowningly into the fire: “I don’t know that there’s so much to tell you. I fancy you guessed I haven’t much cared for the notion of becoming riveted. I never met the female to whom I wished to be leg-shackled. Harry did, and if anything had been needed to confirm me in—”
“My dear, leave that!” she interposed. “Harry was happy in his marriage, remember! I believe, too, that although Ianthe’s feelings are not profound she was most sincerely attached to him.”
“So much attached to him that within a year of his death she was pining for the sight of a ballroom, and within four is planning to marry a worthless fribble! It will not do, Mama!”
“Very well, my dear, but we are talking of your marriage, not Harry’s, are we not?”
“True! Well, I realized—oh, above a year ago!—that it was my duty to marry. Not so much for the sake of an heir, because I have one already, but—”
“Sylvester, don’t put that thought into Edmund’s head!”
He laughed. “Much he would care! His ambition is to become a mail-coachman—or it was until Keighley let him have the yard of tin for a plaything! Now he cannot decide whether to be a coachman or a guard. Pretty flat he would think it to be told that he would be obliged instead to step into my shoes!”
She smiled. “Yes, now he would, but later—”
“Well, that’s one of my reasons, Mama. If I mean to marry I ought, I think, to do so before Edmund is old enough to think his nose has been put out of joint. So I began some months ago to look about me.”
“You are the oddest creature! Next you will tell me you made out a list of the qualities your wife must possess!”
“More or less,” he admitted. “You may laugh, Mama, but you’ll agree that certain qualities are indispensable! She must be well-born, for instance. I don’t mean necessarily a great match, but a girl of my own order.”
“Ah, yes, I agree with that! And next?”
“Well, a year ago I should have said she must be beautiful,” he replied meditatively. (She is not a beauty, thought the Duchess.) “But I’m inclined to think now that it is more important that she should be intelligent. I don’t think I could tolerate a hen-witted wife. Besides, I don’t mean to foist another fool on to you.”
“I am very much obliged to you!” she said, a good deal entertained. “Clever, but not beautifuclass="underline" very well! Continue!”
“No, some degree of beauty I do demand. She must have countenance, at least, and the sort of elegance which you have, Mama.”
“Don’t try to turn my head, you flatterer! Have you discovered among the debutantes one who is endowed with all these qualities?”
“At first glance, I suppose a dozen, but in the end only five.”
“Five!”
“Well, only five with whom I could perhaps bear to spend a large part of my life. There is Lady Jane Saxby: she’s pretty, and good-natured. Then there’s Barningham’s daughter: she has a great deal of vivacity. Miss Bellerby is a handsome girl, with a little reserve, which I don’t dislike. Lady Mary Torrington—oh, a diamond of the first water! And lastly Miss Orton: not beautiful, but quite taking, and has agreeable manners.” He paused, his gaze still fixed on the smouldering logs. The Duchess waited expectantly. He looked up presently, and smiled at her. “Well, Mama?” he said affably. “Which of them shall it be?”
2
After an astonished moment the Duchess said: “Dearest, are you roasting me? You can’t in all seriousness be asking me to choose for you!”