“That’s right!” said Mrs Underhill, pleased with him. “And mightily puffed-up she’s been ever since, you talking to her so kindly, as she tells me you did! As for the tall lady, that would be Miss Trent: her governess. Well, properly speaking, she’s my niece’s companion, and a very superior young female. Her uncle is General Sir Mordaunt Trent!”
“Indeed!” murmured Sir Waldo.
“Waldo!” interrupted Julian, “Mrs Underhill has been so kind as to invite us to attend the party she is holding on Wednesday next! I believe we have no other engagement?”
“None that I know of. How delightful! We are very much obliged to you, ma’am!” said Sir Waldo, with the courtesy for which he was renowned.
But afterwards, jolting back to Broom Hall in the late Mr Calver’s ill-sprung carriage, he expressed the acid hope that his cousin was properly grateful to him for accepting the invitation.
“Yes, very grateful!” replied Julian blithely. “Not but what I knew you would!”
“Having thrust me into an impossible position I imagine you might!”
Julian chuckled. “I know, but—She’s that glorious creature’s aunt, Waldo!”
“I am aware! It remains only for you to discover that your glorious creature is engaged to one of the local blades, and you will have come by your deserts.”
“Oh, no! I’m tolerably sure she’s not!” said Julian confidently. “Her cousin must have mentioned the circumstance, if—Besides,—”
“Do you mean Charlotte? Was she there tonight?”
“Charlotte? No—who’s she? Courtenay Underhill!”
“Oh, a male cousin! What is he like?”
“Oh—oh, very agreeable!” said Julian. He hesitated, and, then said: “Yes, I know what you’re thinking, and I suppose he is inclined to be what you’d call a coxcomb, but he’s very young: hardly more than a schoolboy!”
“Quoth the graybeard!” said Sir Waldo lazily.
“Now, Waldo—! I only meant that I shouldn’t think he could be twenty yet, and I’m three-and-twenty,after all!”
“No, are you? I’ll say this for you then: you’re wearing very well!”
The infectious chuckle broke from Julian again. He retorted: “I’m too old, at all events, to ape your modes!”
“Is that what Master Underhill does?”
“Corinthian fashions, anyway. He was looking you over so closely that I wouldn’t bet a groat on the chance that he won’t turn out in your sort of rig within the week. He asked me all manner of questions about you, too.”
“Julian!” said Sir Waldo, with deep foreboding. “Tell me at once just how rum you pitched it to that wretched youth?”
“I didn’t! I saidI didn’t know what larks you was used to engage in—which was true, though I know more now than I did yesterday! Waldo, did you once win five guineas by flooring the bruiser at some Fair in the second round?”
“Good God! How the devil did that story reach Yorkshire? I did: and if that’s the sort of folly this chuckleheaded new friend of yours admires I hope you told him it was a fudge!”
“No, how could I? I told him to ask you for the truth of it. He didn’t like to approach you tonight, but I daresay he will, when we go to Staples next week.”
“Before then—long before then!—I shall have sent you packing, you hell-born brat!”
“Not you! I’d rack up at the Crown if you cast me out! Only wait until you have seen Miss Wield! Then you’ll understand!”
Sir Waldo returned a light answer, but he was beginning to feel a little uneasy. There was a certain rapt note in Julian’s voice which was new to him; and he had not previously known his young cousin to pursue a fair object with a determination that brushed aside such obvious disadvantages as a vulgar aunt, and a cousin whom he frankly acknowledged to be a coxcomb. He set little store by his consequence, but Sir Waldo had never yet seen him either encouraging the advances of led-captains, or seeking the company of those whom he would himself have described as being not fit to go; and it seemed highly improbable that he would try to fix his interest with any girl, be she never so beautiful, who was sprung from the mushroom-class he instinctively avoided. At the same time, it would be unlike him to be thinking of mere dalliance. Under his gaiety, Sir Waldo knew, ran a vein of seriousness, and strong principles: he might (though his experienced cousin doubted it) look for amusement amongst the muslin-company, but it would be wholly foreign to his nature deliberately to raise in any virtuous breast expectations which he had no intention of fulfilling. He had once or twice fancied himself in love, and had paid court to the chosen fair; but these affairs had dwindled, and had died perfectly natural deaths. He had never dangled after any marriageable girl in the cynical spirit of the rake: his youthful adventures in love might be transient, but he had embarked on them in all sincerity.
“I like the Squire, don’t you?” remarked Julian idly.
“Better than I like his wife!”
“Oh, lord, yes! All pretension, ain’t she? The girls are very unaffected and jolly, too: nothing to look at, of course! I suppose the most striking, au fait de beauté,as Mama would say, was the redheaded dasher, with the quiz of a brother, but, for my part, I prefer Miss Chartley’s style—and her parents! No pretensions there,but—I don’t know how to express it!”
“A touch of quality?” suggested Sir Waldo.
“Ay, that’s it!” agreed Julian, yawning, and relapsing into sleepy silence.
He made no further reference to Miss Wield, either then or during the succeeding days; and so far from showing any of the signs of the love-lorn entered with enthusiasm on a search for a likely hunter, under the aegis of Mr Gregory Ash; struck up a friendship with Jack Banningham’s elder brother, and went flapper-shooting with him; dragged his cousin twenty miles to watch a disappointing mill; and in general seemed to be more interested in sport than in ravishing beauties. Sir Waldo did not quite banish his uneasy suspicion that he was harder-hit than his mother would like, but he relegated it to the back of his mind, thinking that he might well have been mistaken.
On Wednesday, when he saw Miss Wield at the Staples party, he knew that he had not been mistaken.
The hall at Staples was very large and lofty, with the main staircase rising from it in a graceful curve. Just as the cousins, having relinquished their hats and cloaks into the care of a powdered footman, were about to cross the floor in the wake of the butler, Miss Wield came lightly down the stairs, checking at sight of the guests, and exclaiming: “Oh! Oh, dear, I didn’t know anyone had arrived yet! I’m late, and my aunt will scold! Oh, how do you do, Lord Lindeth!”
As conduct befitting one who was to all intents and purposes a daughter of the house this belated arrival on the scene might leave much to be desired; but as an entrance it was superb. Sir Waldo was not at all surprised to hear Lord Lindeth catch his breath; he himself thought that he had never beheld a lovelier vision, and he was neither impressionable nor three-and-twenty. The velvet ribbons which embellished a ball dress of celestial blue crape and silver gauze were of an intense blue, but not more brilliant than Tiffany’s eyes, to which they seemed to draw attention. Pausing on the stairway, one gloved hand resting on the baluster-rail, her pretty lips parting in a smile which showed her white teeth, Tiffany presented a picture to gladden most men’s hearts.
O my God! thought Sir Waldo. Now we are in the basket!
She resumed her floating descent of the stairs, as Julian stood spellbound. Recovering he started forward to meet her, stammering: “M-Miss Wield! We meet again—at last!”
Enchanting dimples peeped as she gave him her hand. “At last? But it’s hardly more than a sennight since I disturbed you at your fishing! You were vexed, too—horridly vexed!”