As he hoisted himself out of his chair, she came across the room with her light, graceful step, looking so youthful that he exclaimed: 'Upon my word, Amabel, you don't look a day older than you did when I first saw you!'

She laughed, but said wistfully: 'You always say such charming things, Bonamy!

But, alas, you're offering me Spanish coin!'

'Oh, no, I'm not!' he a.s.sured her, kissing her hand. 'Never any need for that, my pretty! Not an hour older!'

'So many years older!' she sighed. 'I daren't reckon them. Do you care to come into the garden with me? Cressy has driven out with her Grandmama, so at last I am free to do what I choose! My dear, how prosy and dreadful Cosmo has become! Thank you for bearing with him so n.o.bly! I don't know what I should have done without you!'

'Oh, pooh, nonsense!' he said, beaming fondly down at her. 'Always a joy to me to be able to serve you! As for Cosmo-well, thank you for ridding me of him!' He rumbled a laugh. 'Scarlet fever indeed, you naughty puss! I thought you were pitching it a trifle too rum, but, lord, he's the biggest flat I ever knew, for all he thinks himself up to everything!' He drew her hand through his arm and patted it. 'If he knew you as well as I do, my pretty, you'd have been gapped!'

'But he doesn't,' she pointed out. 'I don't think anyone does.'

He was so much gratified by this that he could only heave an eloquent sigh, squeezing her arm, and growing pink in the face. Lady Denville guided him out of the house, and disengaged her hand to open her frivolous parasol. She then slipped it back within his crooked arm, and walked slowly along the terrace with him to the shallow steps, saying: 'How delightful this is! I have been so much hara.s.sed that it is a struggle to support my spirits, but it always does me good to talk to you, my best of friends.'

'It does me good only to look at you, my love!' he responded gallantly, but with a slightly wary look in his eye.

'Dear Bonamy!' she murmured. 'Such a detestably dull party to have invited you to!

I knew you wouldn't fail, too, which makes it quite shameless of me to have made such a demand on your good nature! I do beg your pardon!'

'No, no! Happy to have been of a.s.sistance to you!' he said, quite overcome.

'I expect you are longing to get back to Brighton,' she sighed. 'I don't wonder at it, and only wish I were going there too, for I do not like the country, except for a very little while!'

'Come, come, Amabel, what's this?' he expostulated. 'Of course you are going to Brighton! Why, you told me yourself that Evelyn had hired the same house on the Steyne which you had last year!'

'Yes, and doesn't it seem a waste? But Evelyn cannot go there until his shoulder has mended-he was in an accident, you know, which is why Kit was obliged to take his place-and he says he shall go to Leicestershire, to Crome Lodge, and only think how dismal for him, poor lamb, at this season! I must accompany him. Besides, he is in low spirits, because-but I don't mean to burden you with my troubles!'

'Never a burden to me! There's nothing I wouldn't do for you, Amabel, but the thing is that Evelyn wouldn't like it if I were to meddle in his affairs. Better not tell me what sort of a sc.r.a.pe he's got himself into, for you know he don't like me above half, and I'll be bound he'd fly up into the boughs if he got to know you'd taken me into your confidence!' said Sir Bonamy firmly.

'I am afraid that even you couldn't unravel this tangle,' she agreed, with another sigh.

'I'm dashed sure I couldn't! You leave it to Kit, my pretty! He don't want for sense!

In fact,' he said, with a sudden burst of candour, 'it's surprising how longheaded he's grown to be! Never thought there was a penny to choose between 'em, your boys, but I shouldn't wonder at it if Kit turns out to be a sure card.'

It was on the tip of her ladyship's tongue to utter a hot defence of her beloved elder-born son, but she bit back the words, and replied meekly that Kit had always been the more reliable twin. They had crossed the lawn by this time, to where a rustic seat had been placed in the shade of a great cedar, and she now suggested that they should sit down there, out of the sunshine. Sir Bonamy hailed this with relief, for he was already uncomfortably hot, and had grave fears that his rigid shirt-points were beginning to wilt.

He lowered himself on to the seat, beside her ladyship, and mopped his brow. Lady Denville, looking deliciously cool, shut up her parasol, and leaned back, observing that there was nothing so exhausting as walking in such sultry weather. She then fell silent, gazing ahead with so much melancholy in her expression that Sir Bonamy began to feel perturbed. After a long pause, he laid one of his pudgy hands on hers, and said: 'Now, my pretty! You mustn't let yourself get into the hips! Depend upon it, Kit will make all tidy!'

She gave a little start, and turned her head to smile at him. 'I wasn't thinking of that.

I was-oh, remembering! Do you ever look back over the years, Bonamy? It does sink one's spirits a little: so long ago! so many mistakes! so much unhappiness! But there are happy memories too, of course! Do you recall the first time we met?'

'Ay, as if it were yesterday, and so I shall to the end of my life! All in white, you were, my lovely one, with your glorious gold hair glinting under just a light powder, and your eyes like sapphires! I fell in love with you the instant I saw you-swore I'd win your hand, or remain a bachelor! Which I have done! And, what's more, I was never tempted to break that oath! For no man, my pretty, that loved you,' said Sir Bonamy earnestly, conveniently forgetting the several articles of virtue whom he had subsequently maintained at enormous expense, 'could ever feel the smallest tendre for any other female!'

Lady Denville, recalling one veritable Incognita, and at least three high-flyers, who had enjoyed Sir Bonamy's protection, stifled a giggle, and said soulfully: 'And Papa married me to Denville! We danced together, didn't we? And the next day you sent me a bouquet of white and yellow roses-so many that there was no counting them! That should be a happy memory, but it makes me want to cry. Not that I mean to do so,' she added, with one of her dancing gleams of mischief, 'for there is nothing so tedious as a female who turns herself into a watering-pot! I've never done that, have I?'

'Never!' he declared, raising her hand to his lips. 'Well, I hope it will be set down in my favour in the judgement-book, and I do feel it may be, for I haven't had a happy life.

One shouldn't speak ill of the dead, and I perfectly realize that poor Denville had as much to bear as I had-well, almost as much! The truth is that we were each of us deceived in the other, and should never, never have been married!' She wrinkled her brow. 'I've often wondered why he believed himself to have fallen in love with me, for he disapproved of me amazingly, and he was so cold-so formal-that even now it makes me shiver to remember it!'

'Ah, my poor pretty!' said Sir Bonamy, much moved. 'If you had married me, how happy we should both have been!'

Her eyes quizzed him laughingly. 'Well, I might have been, but perhaps you would have been as much provoked by me as Denville was! Consider my shocking want of management, and economy, and my fondness for gaming, and my dreadful debts!'

Sir Bonamy snapped his fingers in the air. ' That for such fiddle-faddle! Your debts?

Pooh!-an almond for a parrot! Let me settle them! Over and over I've told you I'm able to stand more of the nonsense than you ever dreamed of, my lovely one. It don't do to be prating like some counter-c.o.xcomb, but I'm no chicken-nabob. Well, I'm not a nabob at all, of course: I inherited my fortune, and how much I'm worth I can't tell you, for it don't signify: even you couldn't spend the half of it!'

'Good gracious, Bonamy, you must be rich!' she countered.

'I am,' he said simply. 'Richest man in the kingdom, for I fancy I have a trifle the advantage of Golden Ball. Much good it does me! I had as lief be living on a mere competence, for I've not a soul to spend it on, Amabel, and it didn't win me the only thing I wanted. You may say it's of no consequence-no consequence at all!'

Since she was well aware that he lived in the height of luxury, maintaining, in addition to his mansion in Grosvenor Square, establishments at Brighton, Newmarket, York and Bath (to which slightly outmoded resort he occasionally retired, when his const.i.tution demanded rehabilitation); stabling teams of prime cattle on no fewer than five of the main post-roads; and gaming for preposterous stakes either at Watier's, or at Oatlands, the residence of his extremely expensive crony, the Duke of York, she had no overmastering desire to avail herself of this permission. But, although her lips quivered, and there was just the suspicion of a choke in her voice, she responded, with a shake of her head: 'No, indeed! How very sad it is, my dear friend! How empty your life has been! How lonely!'

'Ay, so it has!' he agreed, struck for the first time in many years by the truth of this sympathetic remark. He took her hand again, pressing it in his own very warm and slightly damp one, and said with great earnestness: 'All the use I ever had for my wealth was to bestow it upon you, my dear! It's yours for the asking, and always will be. Only let me take your debts on my shoulders! Let me-'

She interrupted him, raising her beautiful eyes to his face, and saying: 'Bonamy, are you-after all these years-asking me to marry you?'

There was a stunned pause. Sir Bonamy's round eyes stared down into hers. They were never expressive, but they were now more than ordinarily blank; and the rich colour faded perceptibly from his pendulous cheeks. Twenty-six years earlier he had been a suitor for her hand; during the years of her marriage he had been her constant and devoted cavaliere servente, and very agreeably had those years slipped past. She was indeed the only woman he had ever wished to marry; but although the disappointment he had suffered when the late Lord Baverstock had preferred the Earl of Denville's offer to his had been severe it had not been very long before his cracked heart had mended sufficiently for him not only to appreciate the advantages of his single state, but to offer a carte blanche to a charming, if somewhat rapacious, ladybird, universally acknowledged to be a dasher of the first water. But throughout this left-hand connexion, and the many which had succeeded it, he had maintained his devotion to the lovely Countess of Denville, earning for himself the envious respect of his less favoured contemporaries, and, in due course, the reputation of being a man who, having once lost his heart, would never again offer it (with his enormous fortune) to any other lady. After a couple of years, even the most determined matron, with marriageable daughters on her hands, considered it a waste of time to throw out lures to him, and observed his light, elegant flirtations without a flicker either of hope or of jealousy.

Such a state of affairs exactly suited his indolent, hedonistic disposition. He had settled down into a state of opulent bachelordom, enjoying every luxury which his wealth could provide, rapidly becoming the intimate of the Prince of Wales, and of his scarcely less expensive brother, the Duke of York; abandoning the struggle to overcome a tendency to corpulence; and achieving, by his impeccable lineage, his amiable manners, his lavish hospitality, the genius of his tailor, and the favour of the most admired lady in the land, the position of being a leader of fashion, and one whom any ambitious hostess was proud to include amongst her guests.

Credited by his world with an undying pa.s.sion for his first love, it had never until this moment occurred to him to question his own heart; and had it been suggested to him that his original infatuation had gently but inevitably declined into fondness he would have been much affronted. But now, staring down into Lady Denville's beautiful face, an even more beautiful kaleidoscope of his comfortable, untrammelled existence intervened.

Lady Denville's soft laughter recalled him from this vision; she said, in a voice of affectionate chiding: 'Oh, Bonamy, what a complete hand you are! A Banbury man, no less! You don't wish to marry me, do you?'

He pulled himself together, declaring valiantly: 'The one wish of my heart!'

'Well, you didn't look as if it was! Confess, now! You've been shamming it-all these years!'

He rejected this playful accusation with vehemence. 'No, that I haven't! How can you say such a thing, Amabel? Haven't I stayed single for your sake?'

A provocative smile hovered about the corners of her mouth; she seemed to consider him. 'That's what you say, but are you perfectly sure it wasn't for your own sake, abominable palaverer that you are, my dear?'

He was so indignant at having a doubt cast on his fidelity that the colour surged up into his face, and he almost glared at her. 'No! I mean, yes! I am sure! Upon my word, Amabel-! Have I ever formed an attachment for anyone but yourself? Have I-'

'Often!' she said cordially. 'First, there was that ravishing creature, with black curls and flashing eyes, who was used to drive in the park in a landaulet behind a pair of jet-black horses, perfectly matched, and such beautiful steppers that everyone said they must have cost you a fortune! Then there was that languishing female-the one with the flaxen hair, who was certainly of a consumptive habit! And after her-'

'Now, that will do!' interposed Sir Bonamy, aghast at these accurate recollections.

'Bachelor's fare! Good G.o.d, Amabel, you should know that they don't mean anything, those little connexions! Why, your own father-Well, well, mum for that!'

The laughter was quenched in her eyes; she turned her head away, and said in a low voice: 'And Denville. Did it mean nothing? It seemed to me to mean so much! What a goose-cap I was!'

'Amabel!' p.r.o.nounced Sir Bonamy, controlling himself with a strong effort, 'I have never permitted myself to utter a word in dispraise of Denville, and I'll keep my tongue between my teeth now, but had you married me, the most dazzling bird of Paradise amongst the whole of the muslin company would have thrown out her lures in vain to me!'

'But it is too late,' she said mournfully. 'I've worn out your love, my poor Bonamy!

I read it in your face, and indeed I cannot wonder at it!'

'Nothing of the sort!' he replied stoutly. 'You misunderstood! I had come to believe that my case was hopeless-can you wonder at it that I was knocked ac.o.c.k? My heart stood still! Was it possible, I asked myself, that its dearest wish might yet be granted? A moment's rapture, and my spirits were dashed down again, as I realized how absurd it was to think that at my age I could win what was denied me when I was young, and-I fancy-not an ill-looking man!'

'Very true! Even then you had a decided air of fashion-though it wasn't until much later that you became of the first stare!'

'Well, well!' he said, visibly gratified, 'I was always one who liked to have everything prime about me, but propriety of taste, you know, comes to one in later years! But I am growing old, my pretty-too old for you, I fear! Alas that it should be so!'

'Fudge!' said her ladyship briskly. 'You are three-and-fifty, just ten years older than I am! A very comfortable age!'

'But of late years I have grown to be a trifle portly! I don't ride any more, you know, and I get f.a.gged easily nowadays. Ticklish in the wind, too-I might pop off the hooks at any moment, for I have palpitations!'

'Yes, you eat too much,' she nodded. 'My poor dear Bonamy, it is high time you had me to take care of you! I have thought for years that your const.i.tution must be of iron to have withstood your excesses, and so it is, for you don't even suffer from the gout, which Denville did, although for every bottle he drank you drank two, if not three!'

'No, no!' protested Sir Bonamy feebly. 'Not three, Amabel! I own I eat more than he did, but recollect that he was of a spare habit! Now, I have a large frame, and I must eat to keep up my strength!'

'So you shall!' said her ladyship, smiling seraphically upon him. 'But not to send yourself off in an apoplexy!'

Regarding her with eyes of fascinated horror, he played his last ace. 'Evelyn!' he uttered. 'You are forgetting Evelyn, my pretty! Ay, and Kit too, I dare say, though he don't seem to hold me in such aversion as Evelyn does! But you must know Evelyn wouldn't stomach it! Why, he never sees me but he looks yellow! Well do I know there ain't a soul you dote on more, and never would I cause a rift between you!'

Wholly unimpressed by this n.o.ble self-abnegation, she replied: 'You couldn't!

Besides, he is going to be married!'

'What?' he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, momentarily diverted. 'But it's as plain as a pack-saddle the gal's head over ears in love with Kit!'

'Yes, and was there ever anything so delightful? Dear Cressy! she might have been made for Kit! Evelyn has formed what he declares to be a lasting pa.s.sion for quite another sort of girl. Kit believes it may well be so, but she sounds to me to be positively Quakerish! The daughter of a mere country gentleman- perfectly genteel, but only picture to yourself how ineligible Brumby will think her!-and one of those pale, saintly females, reared in the strictest respectability!'

'You don't mean it!' gasped Sir Bonamy, staggered by this disclosure.

'I do mean it!' she a.s.serted, tears sparkling on her curling eyelashes. She brushed them hurriedly away. 'Evelyn thinks I shall love her, but I have the most melancholy conviction that I shan't, Bonamy! And, what is more, I don't think she will love me, do you?'

'No,' he replied candidly. 'Not if she's Quakerish! You wouldn't deal well at all!'

'Exactly so! I knew you would understand! Evelyn declares I must continue to live in Hill Street, but that I was determined not to do, even if he had married Cressy! I had quite made up my mind to it that I must retire to an establishment of my own, and dwindle into a mere widow, until you came here, my dear friend, only because I begged you to, and not wanting to leave Brighton in the least, which I know very well you didn't, and it struck me, like a flash of lightning, that never had you wavered in your attachment to me, and never had you received the smallest reward, or even looked for one, for all your goodness to me, and your exceeding generosity!'

'I see what it is!' he exclaimed. 'Kit blabbed to you that I didn't have that brooch of yours copied, silly chub that he is! Now, put it out of your mind, my pretty! Yes, yes, you think you must make a sacrifice of yourself, but I won't permit you to do so!'

She interrupted him, staring at him with widened eyes. 'You didn't- Do you mean to tell me that I lost the real brooch to Silverdale? And you gave me 500 for it, saying that-Bonamy, did you sell any of my jewellery? Kit has never breathed a word of this!

Bonamy- did you?'

'No, no, of course I didn't!' he answered, much discomposed. 'Now, is it likely I'd let you sell your jewels, and replace 'em with paste and pinchbeck? It was nothing to me, Amabel, so, if Kit didn't tell you, you may forget it, and oblige me very much!'

'Oh, Bonamy!' she cried, impulsively stretching out her hands to him, 'how good you are! How much, much too good!'

He responded instinctively, and, the next instant, found himself clasping a fragrant armful to his ma.s.sive bosom. Lady Denville, adapting her slim form, not without difficulty, to his formidable contour, lifted her face invitingly. His senses swimming, Sir Bonamy tightened his hold about her, and fastened his lips to hers. At the back of his mind lurked the conviction that he would regret this yielding to temptation, and the premonition that the sybaritic pleasures of his life stood in jeopardy; but never before had he been encouraged to venture more than a chaste salute upon her ladyship's hand, or, upon rare occasions, her cheek, and he surrendered to intoxication.

He came to earth again when she gently disengaged herself, saying: 'How comfortable it is to reflect that we need neither of us look forward to a lonely old age, which I have always thought the most lowering prospect!'

His countenance would not have led anyone to suppose that he was deriving much comfort from this reflection, but he replied heroically: 'You have made me the happiest man on earth, my beautiful!'

The irrepressible laughter, inherited from her by her sons, bubbled up. 'No, I haven't: I've thrown you into gloom! But I shall make you happy. Only consider how alike are our tastes, and how very well we are acquainted! Naturally it will seem strange at first, because you are so much accustomed to being a bachelor. To own the truth, I didn't think I should ever marry again, for I have enjoyed being a widow amazingly!

But I am persuaded it will be the best thing for everyone! Particularly for Evelyn!'

'I hope he may think so!' Sir Bonamy said gloomily.

'It isn't of the least consequence if he doesn't, because it will be. I dare say he won't care nearly as much now that his mind is full of his angelic Patience. In any event, he's at the end of his rope, poor love, on account of my wretched debts, which he is determined to discharge, and which he would never be able to do until he is thirty, if he marries Patience, because you may depend upon it Brumby will utterly disapprove of the match! But if he were not obliged to pay my debts that wouldn't signify in the least, and although he made me promise I would never again borrow money from you, he couldn't refuse to let you pay the debts if I were your wife, could he?'

'Well, it won't make a ha'porth of odds if he does!' said Sir Bonamy, accepting without resentment this unflattering reason for the marriage proposed to him, but regarding his prospective bride with tolerant cynicism. 'I might have known that resty young bellows-blower of yours was behind this!'

'Yes, but how fortunate, Bonamy, that my affairs had come to such a pa.s.s that I was obliged to consider the advantages of marrying you! But for that I might never have thought of it!' she said. ' Or have perceived how much more comfortable I should be if I did marry you! It is all very well now to be a widow, but only think how dismal when I begin to grow hagged, and have to cover up my throat, because it looks exactly like the neck of a plucked hen, and I've no flirts left to me! And then, of course, I thought of you, my poor Bonamy, and my heart was wrung! I, at least, have my beloved sons, and I might become wrapped up in my grandchildren-though it seems most unlikely, and quite sinks my spirits-but what, my dear, will be left to you, when your friends drop off-'

'Eh?' exclaimed Sir Bonamy, startled.

' Or die!' continued her ladyship inexorably. 'And you find yourself alone, with no one to care a straw what becomes of you-except that odious cousin of yours, who will very likely push you into your grave!-and your whole life wasted? Dear Bonamy I cannot endure the thought of it!'

'No!' he said fervently. 'No, indeed!'

She smiled brilliantly upon him. 'So you see that it will be much better for you too!'

'Yes,' he agreed, horrified by the picture she had delineated. 'Good G.o.d, yes!'

20.

It was not many minutes before Cressy, dutifully accompanying the Dowager on a sedate drive, realized that an open carriage was hardly the place for an exchange of confidences. The Dowager, with a magnificent disregard for the coachman and the footman, perched on the box-seat in front of her, knew no such reticence, and discoursed with great freedom on the birth of an heir to the barony, animadverting with embarra.s.sing candour, and all the contempt of a matriarch who had brought half-a-dozen children into the world without fuss or complications, on sickly young women who fancied themselves to be ill days before their time, and ended by suffering cross births and hard labours. For herself, she had no patience with such nonsense.

But although she expressed the fervent hope that the heir would not grow up to resemble his mama, it was evident that Albinia (in spite of her hard labour) had grown considerably in her esteem. Lord Stavely's first wife had been of the Dowager's choosing, but although she had, naturally, held her up as a pattern of virtue and amiability, she had never been able, in her secret heart, to forgive her for having failed to present her lord with an heir. But Albinia, whom Lord Stavely had married without so much as a by-your-leave, had produced (if his lordship's ecstatically scribbled letter were to be believed), a bouncing boy, sound in wind and limb, and weighing almost nine pounds; and this feat, notwithstanding her own subsequent exhaustion, raised her pretty high in the Dowager's esteem. But not so high as to exempt her from censure for her alleged inability to nurse her child. The inescapable duty of a mother to suckle her offspring was one of the Dowager's hobby-horses; and originated from the shocking discovery that the wet-nurse engaged to supply the wants of her second son (unhappily deceased), had been strongly addicted to spirituous liquors. The Dowager informed her granddaughter, in a very robust way, that she had already written to recommend hot ale and ginger to Albinia.

Cressy bore this with tolerable equanimity, but when the Dowager abruptly deserted the subject of the proper sustenance of the Honourable Edward John Francis Stavely, to warn her that the appearance of this young gentleman on the scene made it imperative for her to withdraw from Mount Street to an establishment of her own, she laid a hand on her outspoken grandmother's knee, and warningly directed her attention to the stolid, liveried backs on the box of the landaulet.

The Dowager appeared to appreciate the propriety of this reminder. She said: 'Drat these open carriages! I never could abide 'em! Coachman! Drive back to Ravenhurst!'

She reinforced this command by digging him in the back with her cane, an indignity which he suffered with perfect good humour, having decided, days previously, that she was a rare old griffin, full of pluck, and game to the scratch.

'I want to talk to you, Cressy,' she said grimly. 'It's high time you emptied the bag!

So we'll go back, and you'll come with me to my room, and give me a round tale before I take my nap!'