“Nicky, I shall go distracted! I wish you will send a message to your brother, informing him of this arrival! Not,” she added bitterly, “that he is likely to be of the least comfort to me, for he is as bad as you are and will very likely say it is a happy circumstance or something just as heartless!”
“Well, I should not wonder at it if he did. The only thing is that I shall be hard put to it to be civil to the fellow! Do you know he would have killed Bouncer with that swordstick of his if I had not been there? A fellow that likes cats above dogs! Cats!”Nicky uttered, with awful scorn.
“He is like a cat himself. Oh, I wish he had not come here! Or I either!”
“Fudge! It is famous sport!” Nicky said, and went back into the parlor.
The guest, so far from searching the room, was still seated gracefully beside the fire, one slim, gray-swathed leg crossed over the other. He smiled sweetly at Nicky and made a gesture with his long-handled quizzing glass toward the silver tassels on his Hessians. “Observe!” he said. “I should not say so, for it is an inspiration of my own, but really I am quite lost in admiration. Silver tassels, dear boy, not gold, thus delicately preserving the mourning note. I shall wear black pantaloons for the ceremony, of course. I hesitated for long before I permitted Crawley to help me into these gray ones, for one would not wish to betray the least disrespect, but I think the relationship just remote enough to allow of my wearing them, do not you? I do flatter myself that my black neckcloth strikes precisely the correct note, however. Or do you think it makes me look like a military man?”
“No,” said Nicky frankly. “Nothing could!”
“Ah, how delightful of you, dear boy! Really, you have so much relieved my mind!” Francis said, beaming upon him. “Now, tell me! Must I look my last on Eustace’s face, or do I not indulge my optimism too much in trusting that his coffin is already nailed down?”
“Of course it is!”
“I am so thankful. Death is extremely painful to me, and although I am determined not to omit the least—Ah, not, I do trust, in this house?”
“No. It lies in a chapel.”
“Again you relieve my mind. I brought my vinaigrette with me, of course, and Crawley knows how to revive me, but I confess I should have been excessively loath to have slept under the same roof with a coffin. My sensibilities have always been extremely acute and I dare say I should have suffered a spasm.
But now, unless I should have taken a chill on the drive, I do trust we have nothing to dread. It is not to be, I collect, a lengthy cortege?”
“Carlyon has arranged for it to be as private as may be,” replied Nicky.
“One cannot but sympathize with him,” murmured Francis. He watched Nicky color up, and added apologetically, “I have never known myself to be so maladroit! Really, I intended not the smallest offense, dear Nicholas! Poor Eustace, alas, was not beloved in this neighborhood! But I do hope sufficient carriages have been bespoken, for he had some friends, you know. I feel persuaded that they must honor his obsequies with their presence. Indeed, I have myself advised Louis de Castres of this sad event, and I do not doubt of seeing him here tomorrow.”
Nicky fairly gasped at this effrontery and could only gaze at him openmouthed.
“You must be acquainted with Louis?” said Francis; mildly surprised. “A charming creature! One of my oldest friends!”
“Yes,” said Nicky. “Yes, I fancy I have met him!”
Elinor came back into the room just then with Miss Beccles and under cover of the necessary introduction Nicky escaped, to cool his heated head in the gardens. Since town hours were not kept at Highnoons, it was soon time to be dressing for dinner, and the uneasy party separated, Francis to deliver himself into the hands of his valet, Miss Beccles to superintend the laying of the table so that they might not all be shamed before such a fine gentleman, and Elinor to seek put Nicky, once more to implore him to send the groom up to the Hall with a message for Carlyon.
This he would by no means do, insisting that Carlyon’s assistance was not needed to deal with such a paltry fellow as Francis, and she went off to her own room quite out of charity with him.
The party which presently sat down to dinner was, with the exception of Miss Beccles who dignified the occasion by wearing her best lavender silk, as funereal as the most exacting critic could have desired. Francis had arrayed himself in a black coat and satin knee breeches which looked more fit for Almack’s Assembly Rooms than a country house. Elinor wore her black silk, and Nicky, not to be outdone by Francis, had put himself into a similar attire to his, though not, he enviously realized, of such extremely fashionable cut.
Nothing could have exceeded the affability of the guest, but Miss Beccles would not be lured into contributing her mite to the conversation. Elinor labored under a sense of indefinable alarm, and Nicky’s attempts to conceal his dislike of Francis only served to emphasize it. Elinor wondered how they were to get through a whole evening. When she and Miss Beccles withdrew to the parlor, Miss Beccles confided to her that she owned she could not quite like the tone of Mr. Cheviot’s conversation and very much feared he was not a good man.
“I think him a dreadful man!” Elinor said.
“Well, my love, since you say so, I shall not scruple to tell you that I thought that tale he told about Mr. Romeo Coates—such an odd name, too!—rather too warm, and not at all the sort of thing your dear Mama would have wished you to be listening to.”
“I wish he had not come here! I am afraid of him!”
“My dear Mrs. Cheviot! Oh, dear, dear! My love, lock your door! Or, no! I will sleep on the couch in your room!”
Elinor could not help laughing. “Oh, no indeed, Becky! I am very sure he has no designs upon my virtue! But now that I have spent a couple of hours in his company I cannot doubt the justice of Carlyon’s suspicions. He is the very man to be doing some wicked, treacherous thing! We must not leave him alone in the house an instant! If only that odious boy would have sent to advise Carlyon! And beyond all else, how in the world are we to pass the evening? I was never so uncomfortable in my life!”
“Well, my love,” said Miss Beccles doubtfully, “if you think he might like it, I could offer to play at backgammon with him.”
Happily, she was not obliged to do so. Hardly had the gentlemen entered the parlor than all the bustle of an arrival was heard in the hall, and within a very few minutes the door was opened to admit Carlyon, his brother John, and a lady and gentleman who bore all the air of being in the first rank of fashion.
The lady, who came in on Carlyon’s arm, was decidedly younger than Elinor. She was extremely pretty, with such golden ringlets and such sparkling blue eyes that it did not need Nicky’s shout of “Georgy!” or Carlyon’s quiet introduction to “My sister, Lady Flint,” to inform Elinor of her identity. She rose at once, blushing and curtsying, and found her hand seized between two warm little ones, and heard herself addressed in a sweet, mischievous voice.
“Mrs. Cheviot! My new cousin! Oh, you are such a heroine! I made Carlyon bring me to see you! This is Flint, my husband, you know! Oh, Nicky!”
Elinor’s hand was dropped. The engaging creature was off in a mist of gauze to throw her arms round Nicky’s neck, then to bestow hand and smile on Francis, and, upon Elinor’s murmuring her companion’s name, a handshake on Miss Beccles. She chattered all the while, explaining that she was on her way into Hampshire to spend a few weeks with the Dowager, but could not rest until she had discovered all the truth of what John had been telling her. Nothing would do but Flint must bring her not so very much out of their way, after all, to spend a night with Carlyon. While she rattled on in this style, her husband, a sensible looking man some years her senior, stood watching her in fond admiration, and Nicky pelted her with questions which she never paused to answer.