Miss Wraxton said smoothly, “Miss Stanton-Lacy is at all times impatient of convention. She has driven down to her home at Ashtead, but I am confident that the persuasions of Miss Rivenhall and myself must weigh with her, and she will return to London with us tonight. We are about to set forth for Ashtead immediately.”
He seemed to be much struck, and said at once, “This is like you! I understand you, I believe! I have known that fellow for a libertine these many weeks! Depend upon it; he has quite taken her in! Does Rivenhall accompany you?”
“We go alone,” Miss Wraxton said, “You have guessed the truth and will readily appreciate that our endeavors now must be fixed on keeping this unhappy event from the ears of the world.”
“Yes, indeed!” he said eagerly. “But it is not to be thought of that two delicately nurtured females should undertake such a mission, unsupported by the firmness of a man! I think I should escort you. I think it is what I should do. I shall call Charlbury to book. His conduct in this affair has shown me what he is. He has grossly deceived Miss Stanton-Lacy, and shall answer for it!”
An indignant protest rose to Cecilia’s lips, but Miss Wraxton intervened swiftly, to say, “Your sentiments do you honor, and, for my own part, I must say that I shall be grateful to you for the protection of your escort. Only the most stringent necessity could prevail upon me to undertake such a mission, without the support of a responsible gentleman!”
“I will have my horse saddled at once!” he announced, in a voice of stern resolution. “I can tell you, it will be wonderful if I do not call Charlbury out! I am not, in general, an advocate of the barbarous custom of dueling, but circumstances, you know, alter cases, and such conduct must not go unpunished! I will be off home on the instant and shall be with you again in the least time possible!”
He barely stayed to grasp both their hands before hurrying from the room. Cecilia, fairly weeping with annoyance, began to upbraid Miss Wraxton, but this lady, losing not a jot of her self-possession, replied, “It was unfortunate that he should have been aware of Miss Stanton-Lacy’s elopement, perhaps, but it could do no good to leave that suspicion in his mind. I own, the presence of a man of sense will be a comfort to me, and if, my dear Cecilia, his chivalrous nature should prompt him to renew his offer for your cousin’s hand, it would be a solution to all our difficulties, and, I must add, a great deal more than she deserves!”
“That prosy bore!” Cecilia exclaimed.
“I am aware that Lord Bromford’s merits have consistently been undervalued in this house. For my part, I have found him a sensible man, feeling just as he ought upon serious subjects, and having a great deal of interesting information to impart to those who are not too frivolous to attend to him.”
Unable to control her swelling emotions, Cecilia ran out of the room, more than half inclined to take her mother fully into her confidence.
But Lady Ombersley, finding that Amabel’s pulse was too rapid, was so wholly absorbed in the sufferer as to have little attention to spare for anyone else. Knowing the delicate state of her parent’s nerves, Cecilia forbore to add to her anxieties. She told her merely that a message from Lacy Manor had taken Sophy posthaste into Surrey, but that since she felt it to be unfitting for her cousin to remain in a deserted house alone, she was setting out, either to bear her company or to persuade her to return to London. Upon Lady Ombersley’s showing some astonishment, she divulged that Sophy had quarreled with Charles. This distressed Lady Ombersley but scarcely surprised her. Too well did she know her son’s bitter tongue! She would not have had such a thing happen for the world, and must, she said, have gone after Sophy herself had not Amabel seemed so unwell. She did not like to think of her daughter’s traveling alone, but upon hearing of Miss Wraxton’s resolve to go with her was able to be tranquil again, and to give her permission for the journey.
Meanwhile, Miss Wraxton, busily writing in the library, was unable to resist the temptation of inscribing a note to her betrothed as well as to her mama. Now, at last, Charles should be brought to acknowledge the moral turpitude of his cousin, and her own magnanimity! She gave both notes to Dassett with instructions for their immediate delivery, and was presently able to climb into the Ombersley traveling chaise in the happy consciousness of having punctiliously performed her duty. Not even Cecilia’s pettishness had the power to allay her self-satisfaction. Never had Cecilia shown herself so out of temper! She replied to her companion’s moralizings with the briefest of monosyllables, and was even so unfeeling, when the rain began to fall, as to refuse point-blank to have the third seat in the chaise pulled out to accommodate Lord Bromford, riding unhappily behind the vehicle, with his coat collar turned up and an expression on his face of the most acute misery. Miss Wraxton represented to her the propriety of desiring one of the outriders to lead his lordship’s horse, while his lordship traveled in comfort within the chaise; but all Cecilia could find to say was that she hoped the odious man would contract an inflammation of the lungs and die of it.
Scarcely an hour later, Dassett was as nearly put out of countenance as it was possible for a person of his dignity and experience to be by the arrival in Berkeley Square of a second post chaise. This, also a hack vehicle, was drawn by four sweating horses, and was caked in mud up to the axles. A number of trunks and portmanteaus were piled on the back, and on the roof. A soberly dressed individual first jumped down and ran up the steps of the Ombersley mansion to set the bell pealing. By the time the door had been opened by a footman, and Dassett stood ready to receive guests upon the threshold, a much larger figure had descended in a leisurely way from the chaise, and, after tossing a couple of guineas to the postilions, and exchanging a jovial word with them, trod unhurriedly up the steps to the door.
Dassett, who afterward described his condition to the housekeeper as fairly flummoxed, found himself unable to do more than stammer, “G — good evening, sir! We — we were not expecting you, sir!”
“Wasn’t expecting myself,” said Sir Horace, stripping off his gloves. “Devilish good voyage! Not a day above two months at sea! Tell your people to see all that lumber of mine carried into the house! Her ladyship well?”
Dassett, helping him to struggle out of his caped greatcoat, said that her ladyship was as well as could be looked for.
“That’s good,” said Sir Horace, walking over to a large mirror, and bestowing an expert touch or two upon his cravat. “How’s my daughter?”
“I — I believe Miss Sophy to be enjoying excellent health, sir!”
“Ay, she always does. Where is she?”
“I regret to inform you, sir, that Miss Sophy has gone out of town,” replied Dassett, who would have been pleased to have discussed the mystery of Sophy’s disappearance with almost anyone else.
“Oh? Well, I’ll see her ladyship,” said Sir Horace, displaying, in the butler’s opinion, an unnatural want of interest in his only child’s whereabouts.
Dassett took him up to the drawing room and left him there while he went in search of her ladyship’s maid. Amabel having just dropped off to sleep it was not many minutes before Lady Ombersley came hurrying into the drawing room and almost cast herself upon her brother’s manly bosom. “Oh, my dear Horace!” she exclaimed. “How glad I am to see you! How sorry to think — But you are safely home!”
“Well there’s no need for you to ruin my necktie, just because of that, Lizzie!” said her undemonstrative relative, disengaging himself from her embrace. “Never been in any danger that I knew of! You don’t look very stout! In fact, you look quite knocked out! What’s amiss? If it’s stomach trouble, I knew a fellow once, ten times worse than ever you were, who got himself cured by magnetism and warm ale. Fact!”