'Good G.o.d, sir, is it? I do most humbly beg your pardon!'

'I'll drop a word of warning in your ear, my boy!' said Sir Bonamy, ignoring this interpolation. 'I don't know what sort of wheedle you're trying to cut, and I don't ask you to tell me, because it's no affair of mine, but if you want to bamboozle people into thinking you're young Denville, don't offer 'em dry snuff, and don't use two hands to open your box!'

'So that was it!' said Kit. 'I was afraid I had betrayed myself, but I didn't know how!'

'Damme, Kit, Evelyn set himself to copy Brummell's way of handling a snuff-box!

One hand only, and no more than a flick of the thumb-nail to open it! You remember that!'

'I will, sir,' Kit promised. 'Thank you! You must feel that I owe you an explanation-'

Sir Bonamy checked him with an upraised hand. 'No, I don't!' he said hastily. 'I've told you already it's no affair of mine! I'd as lief it wasn't, too, because it looks to me like a d.a.m.ned havey-cavey business.'

'It isn't quite as havey-cavey as it must seem,' Kit told him.

'If it's half as havey-cavey as it seems I don't want to have anything to do with it!'

replied Sir Bonamy, not mincing matters. 'And from what I know of you and Evelyn- not that I came here to pull a crow with you, for I didn't! What's more, you won't goad me into it, my boy, so don't think it! If Evelyn hasn't been able to wind me up in all the years he's been trying to do it, it stands to reason you can't.'

'But I don't wish to, sir!' expostulated Kit mildly.

'Now I come to think of it,' conceded Sir Bonamy, ' you never did take so much pepper in your nose at the sight of me as that whisky-frisky brother of yours, so I dare say that's true. As a matter of fact, that's what made me suspicious: you shouldn't have looked as if you was glad to see me! Ought to have known better: civil enough, young Denville, but pokers up a trifle!'

'Does he? I'll comb his hair for it!' said Kit. He smiled. 'In any event I shouldn't have done so: I'm by far too grateful to you for coming to support us! I knew, too, that I'd nothing to fear even if you did recognize me.'

'No, no, nothing at all!' Sir Bonamy a.s.sured him. 'But I'm not as young as I was, Kit, and it's no use thinking, if you've got hold of a wolf by one ear, that I'm going to grasp the other, because I won't do it! So don't you tell me anything! If your mother wishes me to know the whole she'll tell me fast enough, bless her!' He added uneasily: 'No need to edge her on to tell me, mind!'

Kit rea.s.sured him on this head; and he went off, feeling that he had done as much for his young friend as could have been expected of any man of his years and elevated position.

Lady Denville, when informed next day of this interlude, not only went into a peal of laughter, but showed a regrettably mischievous desire to devise some way of entangling her hapless adorer in an imbroglio which she proudly claimed to be of her own making.

'No, Mama!' said Kit firmly. 'You'll do no such thing! We're devilish obliged to the old court card, and I won't have him roasted! No one could blame him for wanting to steer clear of this affair: if we save our groats without kicking up the very deuce of a scandal it's more than I'd bargain for!'

'I won't do anything you don't like, dearest,' she promised. 'But you mustn't be so downhearted!'

'Not downhearted! Henhearted!'

'No, no, Kit!' she protested, dismayed to hear him make such an admission. 'Never that! Besides, why should you be? I own that there may be difficulties ahead, and, of course, our situation is often most awkward, but we shall come about!'

'What makes you think so, love?' he asked, regarding her in affectionate exasperation.

'One always does-and particularly when one thinks one is quite knocked up. Only consider how many times I have been in the briars! I have always contrived to bring myself home, even when my case appeared to be desperate! Now, why are you laughing, wicked one? It's perfectly true! The thing is that it's no use for us to fret ourselves over what can't be helped. Depend upon it, something will happen, or I shall have a notion suddenly, which will bring us off prosperously. I very often do, you know-really nacky ones!'

'I know you do,' he said. 'All I beg of you is that you won't have one without telling me!'

'Dearest, how can you be so foolish? I shall be obliged to tell you, because if I do think of a clever scheme you will have to bear your part in it.'

'That's exactly what I'm afraid of,' he said frankly.

'You're hipped, and I know why,' she said. 'It was the lobster! I felt a trifle queasy myself, in the middle of the night, but I have some excellent powders, which Dr Ainslie gave me, so I swallowed one, and was right again in a trice. Come up to my dressing-room, poor boy, and I'll mix one for you!'

'No, Mama, it was not the lobster!'

'Very well, dearest, I won't tease you-though I a.s.sure you the powders aren't in the least nasty. Don't be in a worry, will you? When Evelyn comes home everything will be tidy again, remember!'

'You know, Mama, we have been saying that since the start of this masquerade- and G.o.d knows I wish he would come home!-but does it ever occur to you that when he does we shall find ourselves in a worse hobble than ever?'

'It must have been the lobster!' exclaimed her ladyship.

He laughed, but said: 'No, do, pray, consider, love! If Evelyn were to walk in today, what are we to do? I could disappear, but not even Ambrose would be deceived for more than half-an-hour-far less Lady Stavely! It's one thing to hoax people for an evening, quite another to do so in such circ.u.mstances as these! At the outset, none of them knew me very well and Lady Stavely not at all. But they know me now! They couldn't meet me at breakfast, and Evelyn at dinner, and not detect the difference between us!'

'No, very true!' she said, much struck. 'That is very awkward! I wonder why it should not have occurred to me? We must lose no time in trying to hit upon a-Oh, but I see just how to overcome the difficulty! Evelyn must pretend to be you, of course!'

Mr Fancot, declaring that he had now received a settler, went off, dutifully trying to think of some way of entertaining his male guests. Like the Dowager, Sir Bonamy (except under the press of extraordinary circ.u.mstances) never left his bedroom until noon; so when Kit learned from Norton that Mr Cliffe had gone out with Mr Ambrose, to see how he had come on under the gamekeeper's tuition, his thoughts turned, very naturally, to the ladies. His search for his aunt could not have been described as more than perfunctory; but he had the great good fortune, as he stood in the hall, wondering where to look for Miss Stavely, to see her coming down the wide staircase. She was charmingly dressed in a simple, high-necked gown of French muslin, but just as he was thinking how well she looked, he saw that there was a pucker between her brows, and a troubled expression in her eyes. He said quickly: 'What is it, Cressy? Something has happened to vex you?'

She paused looking down at him, and hesitated for a moment before answering.

Then the crease disappeared from her brow, and she smiled, and descended the last stairs, saying: 'Well, yes! That is to say, it has vexed me, but not nearly as much as it has vexed Grandmama! I am afraid it has made her out of reason cross, but I have convinced her that it is absurd to lay the blame at poor G.o.d-mama's door! Or at Papa's!

Neither of them would do such a thing! It is one of Albinia's high pieces of meddling, of course-trying to clinch the matter! I collect you haven't yet seen the London papers?'

He shook his head; and she held out to him the journal she was carrying. As he took it, he saw that it was folded open at a page largely devoted to social announcements and discreetly phrased on-dit s. He looked quickly up, his brows asking a question. She answered it only by wrinkling her nose distastefully, and indicating with her forefinger the paragraph to which she wished to draw his attention. It stated, after enumerating the various persons of consequence to be found recruiting nature at Worthing, that the Dowager Lady Stavely (a well-known summer visitor to that elegant resort) was this year absent from the scene, having taken her granddaughter, the Hon. Cressida Stavely, to Ravenhurst Park, the princ.i.p.al seat of the Earl of Denville, where they were being entertained by the n.o.ble owner, and his mother, the Dowager Countess. The writer of this t.i.tillating paragraph understood, coyly, that an Interesting Announcement was shortly to be expected from this quarter.

'My mother never sent this to the paper!' Kit exclaimed, flushing with annoyance.

'Or anything that could have given rise to such a piece of impertinence!'

'No, of course she did not! I haven't the least doubt of its being Albinia's doing- trying to force my hand! Furthermore,' added Cressy, brooding darkly over it, 'I shall own myself astonished if I don't discover that she exerted herself to the utmost to persuade my father to insert a notice announcing that I had become engaged to marry the Earl of Denville! What a paper-skull she is! She should have known him better! You may imagine how much it has set up Grandmama's bristles!' She began to laugh. 'I don't know which has enraged her most: the detestably sly hint, or Albinia's impudence in having presumed to take it upon herself to give the Post information about her movements!'

Kit's eyes were kindling. 'And she thought that Mama- Mama!- would stoop to-'

She interrupted him, laying a hand on his arm, and saying quickly: 'Oh, pray, don't you rip up, Denville!' She gave a tiny choke of laughter. 'She did G.o.dmama the justice to say, even in the height of her rage, that she would not have thought it of her, which is more than she said of poor Papa, when she decided it must have been his doing! In fact, she said that it was just like him! I a.s.sure you it is not, however.'

The angry look was fading, but as Kit glanced again at the paragraph his lips curled contemptuously. 'Insufferable! Your mother-in-law should have her neck wrung! As for the sneaking tattlemonger who composed this masterpiece-!' He tossed the paper aside.

'He took good care, you'll observe, to write nothing which I can either contradict or force him to apologize for!' His face softened, as he turned towards her again. 'I don't know why I should fly up into the boughs, when it is you who are the victim-except for that reason! My poor girl, I'm well aware of the embarra.s.sment it must cause you to feel! Don't let it cut up your peace, or influence your decision!'

An odd little smile flickered for a moment in her eyes. 'No, I shan't do that. As for Albinia, I left Grandmama writing to her. You may depend upon it that it will be a thundering letter! I dare say she had liefer have her neck wrung than receive it. Indeed, I could almost pity her, for my father will be vexed to death, and although he is in general easy-going to a fault he flies into a worse pa.s.sion than Grandmama, if one succeeds in putting him out of temper. The impropriety of this horrid piece of gossip will strike him most forcefully: I wish it may not lead to a serious quarrel between him and Albinia.'

'Do you? I'm not so charitable!'

'Well, she's such a pea-goose!' Cressy explained. 'One can't blame her for being foolish, or, I suppose, for being so jealous. One ought rather to feel compa.s.sion for her-or at least try to!-because she is bound to suffer a great deal of anguish.'

This view of the matter was not shared by Lady Denville, who, when she read the paragraph, was put into a flame. She went pink with anger, her eyes flashing magnificently. She turned them upon Kit, demanding in a trembling voice: 'How dared th ey? Who is responsible for this abominable piece of vulgarity!'

'Cressy believes that it was her mother-in-law. I feel as you do, Mama, but our only course is to ignore it.'

'That woman!' exclaimed her ladyship. 'I might have guessed as much! Do you see what she had the effrontery to call me? The Dowager Countess! Dowager-! '

He was taken aback. 'Well, yes, but-'

'And I know why!' raged her ladyship. 'She is a jealous, spiteful toad, and she knows that Stavely offered for me once, and still has a tendre for me! It would afford me very great pleasure to set her mind at rest! Very great pleasure! I'll have her know that if I had no fancy for Stavely when he was young, and pa.s.sably good-looking, I have less now! She is very welcome to a husband who will offer a carte blanche to some lightskirt the instant he becomes bored with her charms!'

Somewhat alarmed by this unusual venom, Kit made a quite unavailing attempt to soothe her. She interrupted him, requesting him not to put her out of all patience; and swept away, the offending newspaper clenched in her hand, to knock imperatively on the door of Lady Stavely's bedchamber. Since nothing annoyed the Dowager more than to receive visitors before she chose to emerge from her seclusion, Kit waited for the inevitable disaster. It did not befall. The two ladies remained closeted together for a full hour, deriving great benefit from a free exchange of opinions on the character of Albinia Stavely. The only discordant note was struck by Lady Stavely, who bluntly informed her lovely hostess that however little she might relish the notion, she was Dowager Countess, and would be well-advised to accustom herself to this t.i.tle.

'Which I cannot do, Kit!' Lady Denville said later, and in tragic accents. 'No one can say that I haven't borne up under a great deal of adversity, but this stroke is too much!'

The effect of the paragraph upon his maternal relations Kit dealt with summarily and conclusively. He told his aunt, who said that she had seen from the first how it was, that if his mother had dreamt that such an absurd construction would be placed on a visit from her favourite G.o.dchild she would never have invited her to Ravenhurst; and when his uncle, in a dudgeon, started to read him a lecture on the impropriety of allowing the news of his approaching nuptials to reach his relatives through the medium of the press, he put a swift end to any further recriminations by saying, in a voice of cold and quelling civility: 'You may rest a.s.sured, sir, that when I contemplate matrimony I shall do myself the honour of informing you of the impending announcement.'

Ambrose, whose evil genius prompted him to quiz his cousin, was disposed of without finesse; and when Kit was able to exchange a private word with Cressy he told her not to waste a thought on an unpleasant, but evanescent annoyance. 'I fancy we shall hear no more about it,' he said.

12.

He was permitted to dwell in this hopeful belief for rather less than twenty-four hours. Upon the following afternoon, driven indoors by a shower of rain, he was playing billiards with Cressy when Norton entered the room, and asked him in an expressionless voice if he might have a word with him.

'Yes, what is it?' Kit replied.

Norton coughed, and directed a meaning look at him. Unfortunately, Kit was watching Cressy, critically surveying the b.a.l.l.s on the table, her cue in her hand. Their disposition was not promising. 'What a very unhandsome way to leave them!' she complained. 'I don't see what's to be done.'

'Try a cannon off the cushion!' he recommended. A second cough made him say, rather impatiently: 'Well, Norton? What do you want?'

'If I might have a word with your lordship?' Norton repeated.

Kit glanced frowningly at him. 'Presently: you are interrupting the game.'

'I beg your lordship's pardon!' said Norton, his meaning look becoming almost a glare. 'A Person has called to see your lordship.'

'Very well. Tell him I am at present engaged, and ask him to state his business!'

Cressy, who had raised her eyes from the table to look at the butler, said: 'Do go, Denville! I'll concede this game to you gracefully and happily, having already been beaten all hollow!' She smiled at Norton. 'I collect the business is urgent?'

'Well, yes, miss!' replied Norton gratefully.

By this time, Kit, his attention fairly caught, had realized that Norton was trying to convey an unspoken message to him. Since he had been a.s.sured by Fimber that the butler had no suspicion that he was not his n.o.ble master, he was puzzled to know why he was trying to warn him. He thrust his cue into the rack, made his apologies to Cressy, and preceded Norton out of the room. 'Well? Who is it?' he asked, as soon as the butler had shut the door behind him. 'What's his business with me?'

'As to that, my lord, I shouldn't care to say: the Individual being unwilling to divulge it to me.' He met Kit's questioning look woodenly, but added a sinister rider. 'I should perhaps mention, my lord, that the Individual in question is not of the male s.e.x.'

Not by so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Kit betray his feelings. He asked curtly: 'Her name?'

'She calls herself Alperton, my lord,' responded Norton, at once disclaiming responsibility and revealing to the initiated the social status of the visitor. ' Mrs Alperton-not a young female, my lord.' His gaze, became fixed on some object over Kit's shoulder as he made his next tactfully worded disclosure. 'I thought it best to show her into the Blue saloon, my lord, Sir Bonamy and Mr Cliffe being in the library, as is their custom at this hour, and her not being willing to accept my a.s.surance that you were not at home to visitors, but declaring to me her intention of remaining here until it should be convenient to you to receive her.'

It was now apparent to Kit that when he entered the Blue saloon he would be facing guns of unknown but almost certainly heavy calibre. His first alarming suspicion that some Cyprian whom Evelyn had taken under his protection had had the effrontery to present herself at Ravenhurst had been banished by the information that Mrs Alperton was not a young female; and relief at the knowledge that he would not be confronted by a female quite so intimately acquainted with Evelyn made it possible for him to nod, and to say coolly: 'Very well, I'll see her there.'

Norton bowed. 'Yes, my lord. Would you wish me to tell the postboy to wait?'

'Postboy?'

'A job-chaise, my lord, and one pair of horses.'

'Oh! Send him round to the stables: they'll look after him there.'

Norton bowed again, and led the way across the hall, and down a wide pa.s.sage to the door leading into the Blue saloon. He held it open, and Kit walked into the room, his face schooled to an impa.s.sivity he was far from feeling.

His visitor was seated on a small sofa. She greeted him with a basilisk stare, and said, with terrible irony: 'Well, there! And so you was at home, after all, my lord!'

He advanced slowly into the middle of the room. His first thought was: Ewe-mutton!

no bread-and-b.u.t.ter of Evelyn's! his second, that, incredible though it seemed, Mrs Alperton was a member of a certain sisterhood of elderly females known inappropriately as Abbesses. For this uncharitable belief her attire was largely responsible. His notions of feminine apparel were vague; had he been asked to describe what his mother was wearing that day he would have been unable to do so; but it struck him forcibly that Mrs Alperton's dashing and colourful raiment would never have been worn by a respectable, middle-aged female, and far less by a lady of quality. In spite of an elaborate array of metallic yellow locks, visible beneath a white satin cap, worn under a dome-crowned hat turned boldly up at the front, and with an ostrich plume curled over the brim to brush her forehead, he a.s.sessed her years at fifty. In fact, she was within a few months of Lady Denville's age; but although it was easy to see that in her youth she must have been a very prime article indeed, an over-lavish use of cosmetics, coupled with an addiction to spirituous liquors, had sadly ravaged a once-lovely countenance. Captious persons might consider that the size and brilliance of her eyes was marred by an avaricious gleam, but only those who had a predilection for slender women could have found fault with her well-corseted and opulent figure.

Whatever might have been her opinion of Mrs Alperton's taste, any woman would have recognized that she had taken great pains over her toilet, and thought it proper to wear, on a visit to a n.o.bleman's seat, her bettermost dress and pelisse. Kit merely hoped, very devoutly, that he could succeed in getting rid of her before any of his guests-set eyes on her; for a lilac pelisse, embellished with epaulets and cords, and worn over an open-bosomed robe of pink satin, struck him with horrifying effect. Pink kid half-boots and gloves, a lilac silk parasol, and a number of trinkets completed her costume; and she had lavishly sprayed her person with amber scent.

Kit paused by the table in the middle of the room, and stood looking down at her.

'Well, ma'am?' he said. 'May I know what brings you here?'

Her bosom swelled. ' May you know indeed! Of course, you haven't a notion, have you? Oh, not the least in the world! Standing there, as proud as an apothecary, and holding up your nose at one which has kept company with gentlemen of the highest rank! And I've had grander servants than that niffy-naffy butler of yours waiting on me like slaves, my lord! I'm here to tell you that you can't jaunter about breaking a poor, innocent female's heart! Not without paying for it! Oh, dear me, no!'

'Whose heart have I broken?' asked Kit. 'Yours, ma'am?'

'Mine! That's a loud one!' she exclaimed. 'If I didn't break it for the Marquis, who treated me like a princess, never grudging a groat he spent on me, besides a handsome present when we parted, as part we did, and not a hard word spoken on either side, him knowing what was due to a lady-' She stopped, unable to find the thread of her argument, and demanded: 'Where was I?'

'You were saying,' supplied Kit helpfully, 'that you did not break your heart for the Marquis.'

'And nor I did! So it ain't likely I'd break it for a sprig scarce breeched, even if I were ten years younger than I am!' said Mrs Alperton, taking a telescopic view of her age. 'It's not my heart you've broke, but Clara's-though that's not to say mine don't bleed for her wrongs! Which is why I'm here today, my lord, and small pleasure to me, being jumbled and jolted in a yellow bouncer that has been used to travel in my own chaise, lined with velvet, and four horses, and outriders, besides, let alone the violence done to my feelings to think of being obliged to demean myself, which only a mother's devotion could have prevailed upon me to do!'

These last words effectually banished from Kit's mind an irresistible desire to discover the ident.i.ty of the Marquis who had supported Mrs Alperton in such magnificent style. He had begun to think that the affair, whatever it was, might not be very serious; but he now realized that he had been indulging optimism too far. When Mrs Alperton, after groping in the pocket of her pelisse, brandished before his eyes a sc.r.a.p cut from a newspaper he had no need to read it to know what it must be. For an awful moment the thought that Evelyn, in a besotted state of mind, had made the unknown Clara an offer of marriage flashed through his brain, and the vision of an action for breach of promise a.s.sailed him. It was strengthened by Mrs Alperton's next utterance. 'You are a serpent!' she told him. 'A knavish, deceiving man of the town that seduced that poor innocent with false promises!'

'Nonsense!' said Kit, maintaining his calm.

'Oh, so it's nonsense, is it? And I suppose you'll say next that you didn't give her a slip on the shoulder?'

He had no hesitation in answering this, for whatever folly Evelyn had committed it was impossible to believe that he had seduced an innocent damsel-or, indeed, that a daughter of Mrs Alperton's answered to that description. 'Most certainly I shall!' he said.

'When you took my Clara under your protection, my lord, you promised you'd care for her!'

'Well?'

The colour rose in her cheeks, causing them to a.s.sume a hue that nearly matched her pelisse, but which was at peculiar variance with the rouge she favoured. Her eyes narrowed; and she said menacingly: 'Trying to come crab over me, are you? Well, you won't do it, my fine sir, and so I tell you! You was able to put the change on that sweet, pretty lamb, but I'll have you know I'm more than seven, and I'm up to all the rigs!'

'I don't doubt it,' he said, smiling a little.