Country Entertainments

17

Country Entertainments

    At Willow Court—which was hardly deserving of the appellation “Willow Swamp”, as the Most Noble the Marquis of Rockingham had dubbed it, though allowing that the house and gardens were on high enough ground, if that counted for anything—Lady Charleson received Mrs Maddern’s invitation to dine with a doubtful pout.

    “But Mamma, of tourse we must go!” cried Muzzie, unwisely betraying her anxiety. “You shall wear your ’licious silver-grey silk and—”

    “It makes me look an elderly hag,” said Lady Charleson with an awful pout.

    Muzzie looked helplessly at Eric.

    “No, it don’t, Mamma,” he said, sweating a little. “Makes you look like a—a water sprite!”

    “That is not true! I am an old woman!” wailed Lady Charleson, bursting into tears.

    When she was over that, which was not for some time, and after the administering of copious doses of smelling-salts and the burning of a few feathers by her maid—and after Eric had opened the French door into the garden to get the smell out of the room and Muzzie had anxiously wrapped her Mamma’s fragile shoulders in a pale pink and lilac Cashmere shawl, her offspring managed to convince her that she was not an old woman, that she would be by far the prettiest lady there, and that whatever she wore would become her. And, just by the by, that Mrs Maddern and Mrs Parkinson were both old and fat and ugly—though she knew that. Neither of them mentioned their private conviction that the even older, fatter, and uglier Mrs Urqhart would also be present at the dinner.

    At The Towers, Mrs Maddern’s invitation met with a very different reception. The older lady was aux anges; the two young persons distinctly lacking in enthusiasm.

    “Noël,” said Mrs Urqhart crossly when Lucas had left the room, “I declare, you is the world’s perfect pest! I thought we was agreed we was to encourage him to go for the pretty widder?”

    “Only if the bust develops some. –No, very well, Aunt Betsy, if you think so,” he said with a sigh.

    Mrs Urqhart eyed him dubiously but was wise enough not to mention Miss Ainsley’s name.

    Though the great day dawned cool, in spite of worst predictions the weather held.

    Mrs Maddern and Mrs Parkinson, at the arrival of Lady Charleson in spangled silver gauze over a shimmering blue-grey satin underdress, with a glittering diadem in her hair supporting a blue-grey plume which exactly matched the satin, and diamonds dripping from her ears, throat and wrists, did not even have to exchange glances. Each knew precisely what the other was feeling.

    Beside her mamma, little Muzzie in a drift of palest pink muslin paled into insignificance, so Mrs Maddern greeted her with cries of admiration that were all the stronger on the strength of it and, though not quite daring to kiss her with her mamma’s cold blue eye upon them, looked very much as if she would have liked to. And kindly promised her, if her mamma should permit it, a little impromptu hop.

    This was no more than Lady Charleson had expected. Nor had she truly expected, in spite of having dressed for it, the presence of the Most Noble the Marquis of Rockingham, so it could not have been said with truth that she was disappointed. She was, however, considerably chagrined and reflected irritably that it was just like Liam to let her believe the Madderns and Ainsleys knew his Lordship quite well! Doubtless the woman had never done more than nod to him across a crowded ballroom in her entire life.

    “Very well, dearest puss, I dare say it would not be totally ineligible in such an informal little gathering,” she sighed, as Muzzie begged for the treat.

    Muzzie’s face brightened and she did not remark, as her mother certainly did, the swelling of her hostess’s bosom at the carefully phrased insult.

    … “Insufferable,” Mrs Maddern managed to say a little later as Lady Charleson, laughing very much and with quite incredible flutterings of her fan of silvered lace and of her eyelashes, encouraged Mr Ainsley to flirt outrageously with her.

    Mrs Parkinson nodded grimly.

    Very soon after that, however, it was the turn of Lady Charleson’s bosom to swell indignantly, for the door of the small drawing-room opened and Deering announced Mrs Urqhart, along with her two house guests.

    Mrs Urqhart was sartorially even more stunning than Lady Charleson. And her diamonds were certainly finer quality. Naturally she could not have chosen a bright blue satin slashed and puffed with a grey silk on purpose to make Lady Charleson’s silver-blue shades look silly—and, indeed, they did not, to an unbiassed eye, they looked as delicious as ever—but Lady Charleson felt she had. And there was no denying, though the large ruby brooch on the bosom was an unfortunate touch, that the fox-fur wrap—silver, alas—was magnificent. Lady Charleson had never laid eyes on furs of such quality and was silently enraged when the traitorous Muzzie, oohing and aahing, begged for the privilege of stroking them, and was of course granted it. Mrs Urqhart explained on Mrs Parkinson’s admiring the wrap that the furs were Russian, and yes, her husband had traded considerable with the Russians, and had done very well out of it, she did not mind telling her! No—jolly laugh—of course she had never met the Tsar! Though the Russian ambassador had done her the favour of calling, not very long after Waterloo, for her and Pumps had known a cousin of his quite well back in their Calcutta days—though the company was not to regard that, these Roosian fellows had countless cousins and such, all calling themselves Prince, to which very like they had no more right than her Pumps had to call himself a Dutchman!

    She then unfurled an enormous silvered lace fan, far grander than Lady Charleson’s and adorned into the bargain with large glittering stones that no-one present was able to convince themselves were not sapphires, and fanned herself vigorously, chuckling amiably.

    It was not very long before Lady Charleson, having discovered Sir Noël’s parentage and property, was silently doing arithmetic in her head and telling herself that there was not all that much difference between—well, he must be at least thirty—and—well, thirty-five. True, she had married at twenty, but as Eric was now nineteen, this last was considerably flattering to herself.

    After dinner, Amabel having volunteered to play before Mrs Maddern could send for Miss Morton, Mr O’Flynn stationed himself quietly by the instrument to turn the pages. Mrs Maddern noted this and determined that after a few tunes she would have Miss Morton down: Amabel must not waste all the evening with Mr O’Flynn when there was Sir Noël, and Lord Lucas, and Paul, and Mr Charleson to dance with! And besides, it was too bad of Mr O’Flynn: he should be asking Christabel to dance!

    The pages did not get turned quite reliably, but as Amabel knew all the tunes by heart this did not matter.

    “Well, now, ain’t this pleasant?” said Mrs Urqhart comfortably as the four older ladies sat down in the drawing-room, in positions from where they could conveniently watch the dancing in the adjoining salon.

    “I am glad you think so; are you quite warm enough, Mrs Urqhart?” asked Mrs Maddern, smiling.

    “Indeed I am, my dear, don’t you worry about me! I always brings a fur when I goes visiting in other people’s houses. –My, Mrs Parkinson, I cain’t tell you how glad I am to see your little daughter out of her blacks, tonight!” she added cordially. “For for all she’s a pretty fair thing and they became her well enough, well, it’s depressing, when all’s said and done, ain’t it?”

    “Yes, indeed; I was also very glad that she consented to wear white,” she owned.

    “And dearest Amabel talked her out of black ribbons and persuaded her to wear the grey! She is such a treasure!” said Mrs Maddern with an anxious glance at the pianoforte.

    “Aye, a right little home-body, is that one, and a nicer girl you could not hope to find if you searched the length and breadth of the British Isles! I said to my Noël: ‘Now, why won’t you choose that little one, my dear: if ever there was a pretty little girl as was cut out to be a wife and mother—’ But well, you can’t tell these young people nothing. And there is no accounting for tastes, is there?”

    “Er—no, indeed,” agreed Mrs Maddern faintly.

    “She has been the dearest friend to Dorothea!” contributed Mrs Parkinson eagerly.

    “I’m sure she has that!” agreed Mrs Urqhart heartily. “And I don’t mind telling you as I was surprized to learn as your boy did not affect her, neither—only as I was saying, there is no accounting for tastes, at all!”

    “Er—no,” said Mrs Parkinson faintly, wondering who on earth had told her that. It had certainly not been either she or Mrs Maddern, during their morning call.

    “So your son has left Dittersford, Mrs Parkinson?” said Lady Charleson courteously.

    “Yes, indeed, Lady Charleson. We had hoped he could have stayed a little longer, but he was anxious to get back to his parish—he is in Holy Orders, you know.”

    “Indeed,” she said, inclining her head graciously. “And where is his parish situate, may I enquire?”

    At about this point it dawned on the outraged Mrs Maddern that the woman was coming the lady of the manor in her own drawing-room! She took an ominous breath.

    Mrs Parkinson having disclosed the whereabouts of the Vicar’s parish, Lady Charleson graciously enquired if perhaps they might expect to see him in the neighbourhood again soon?

    “We do not look for it,” said Mrs Maddern grimly.

    Mrs Parkinson had just been about to say they very much hoped for it. She looked at her friend in some surprize.

    “Aye: him and little Miss Hildegarde’s had what you might call a bit of a disagreement!” said Mrs Urqhart, shaking rather.

    Hastily Mrs Maddern said: “I fear our dear little Hildy does not affect him, after all. Well, she is but a child, as yet!” she added with an  airy laugh. “And then, she did not lack for admirers in London! Though I must own, a bouquet every day for an entire week was a lee-tle particular, even for a man as plainly infatuated as dear Sir Julian!” She gave another airy laugh.

    “Lawks, a bought posy every day for a week! Now, that is what I call keen!” choked Mrs Urqhart, shaking terrifically.

    “Certainly very particular,” said Lady Charleson in a cool voice.

    Mrs Maddern patted her bronze silk turban gently. “Well, a gentleman who is a little older than a girl who is just out can understandably be a trifle over-anxious. There were several much younger gentlemen... And of course, a widower, you know: it is not every young woman who would care to take on a family of three little girls that are not her own.”

    “Three…” said Lady Charleson, very faintly.

    “But Lord save us! You don’t mean it was that Sir as visits regular up to Daynesford Place?” cried Mrs Urqhart.

    Mrs Maddern arranged her bronze silk wrap with a very casual expression on her face. “I believe Sir Julian is Lord Rockingham’s oldest friend, indeed,” she said in a careless voice.

    There was a short silence.

    “Well, how old is he, then, my dear?” asked Mrs Urqhart bluntly.

    Lady Charleson had also been wondering that. She had never been privileged to meet Sir Julian Naseby, but almost every incident of life at Daynesford Place was repeated all round the neighbourhoods of Daynesford and Dittersford, so of course she had heard about Sir Julian and his little girls and their ponies. She could not reconcile the doating picture of the Marquis that the tale of the ponies conjured up with her own observation of his Lordship and had therefore discounted most of it. After all, the master of Daynesford could put his hand in his pocket for a whole flock of ponies and never notice the difference. She had much ado not to look avidly at her hostess.

    “I dare say he is not above four and thirty, Mrs Urqhart,” murmured Mrs Maddern.

    “Well, I wouldn’t say as it couldn’t work, and I wouldn’t say as it could,” summed up the worldly old lady. “It depends on his character, and what he wants from her.”

    “Indeed,” said Lady Charleson, rather coldly. Four and thirty, a widower, and visiting at the Place! If Lord Rockingham had stood before her she would have slain him on the spot for never having introduced his friend to her all these past years!

    “Has he been a widower long, Mrs Maddern?” Mrs Urqhart was asking with great interest.

    Lowering her voice, Mrs Maddern embarked on Sir Julian’s sad story. During the narrative Lady Charleson made up her mind that, never mind if Mrs Maddern was a frump and a bore and some of her acquaintances were impossibly vulgar, she would cultivate the woman. For it seemed the Madderns might have the entrée to Daynesford Place. And even if they did not, Sir Julian Naseby would be sure to call on them when he came for his visit this summer. Four and thirty and a widower! And doubtless a wealthy man: flowers every day for a week to a girl who was portionless! Lady Charleson’s withers, needless to say, remained entirely unwrung by Sir Julian’s sad story, whilst the kindly Mrs Urqhart had recourse to her handkerchief, declaring: “The poor lamb! I declare, he deserves a nice young thing for his second!”

    … “Uncky Cousin, you asserlutely must dance!” gasped Muzzie, whirling to a halt by the pianoforte. “It is of all things most asserlutely ’licious! And waltzing with Mr Ainsley”—she gave him a melting look—“is of all things the most divine of all!”

    Paul smiled tolerantly.

    Mr O’Flynn did not wonder that Muzzie’s mamma should permit a child of her age to waltz, even at such an informal little dance as this, for Evangeline had just this moment finished a waltz with Sir Noël and was playfully pressing him onto a sofa at the far end of the salon. “I own I should care to dance, for a little, if Miss Amabel would care to?” he said.

    “Oh— But I—” gasped Amabel.

    “Let me play, dear Amabel,” said Paul with a smile.

    “Do you play, Mr Ainsley?” squeaked Muzzle.

    “Very indifferently, I assure you. But I can manage a few simple dance tunes.”

    Mrs Maddern had hurried over to the group. “Nonsense, my dear boy!” she panted. “I have sent for Miss Morton and she will be down directly! –And dearest boy, pray do not ask her to dance,” she said in a low voice. “I know you mean it kindly, but it is not quite the— And besides, it embarrasses her.”

    “Very well, Tia Patty, I shall not, if you do not wish for it,” he smiled.

    “Thank you, my dear. –And here she is! Yes, my dear Miss Morton, your invaluable services are much in demand,” she said graciously. “For Amabel has more than done her duty, this evening! –Paul, my love, why do you not invite your cousin to dance?”

    “Because I believe Mr O’Flynn is before me in that honour,” said Paul, bowing to him, a twinkle in his dark eyes.

    Mr O’Flynn gave a relieved smile, bowed back, bowed much lower to Miss Amabel, and held out his hand.

    “Thank you, Mr O’Flynn,” she whispered. And Mr O’Flynn bore his prize off under her mamma’s outraged eyes.

    Paul then bowed low to Miss Charleson and said: “Tonight—I do not know how it is—I have conceived a positive passion for palest pink, which quite cancels out any former partiality for jonquil yellow!” He was not nearly aware of just how wounding these words were to a mother’s heart, or he would not have uttered them in front of Mrs Maddern.

    “Oh! Naughty!” gasped Muzzie, giggling madly, and going far pinker than her gown, but nevertheless putting her hand in his.

    Paul guided her onto the floor, his shoulders shaking infinitesimally.

    Meantime, Mrs Urqhart’s eyes were on the sofa at the far end of the room. “Well, I don’t know, I am sure.”

    Mrs Parkinson looked at her expectantly.

    “Well, she don’t socialize with the likes of me, you know!” she said with her comfortable laugh.

    Looking very sympathetic, Mrs Parkinson nodded understandingly.

    “But,” said Mrs Urqhart in a lower voice, glancing significantly over at Lady Charleson and Sir Noël on the sofa: “they do say as there may be more atween her and the Marquis than the mere draining of that swamp up beyond young Eric’s back pastures!”

    “Indeed?” she gasped.

    At this point Gaetana, who had been standing at the rear of the two ladies unnoticed in a little window embrasure, went very pale indeed. She took a deep breath, hands rolled into fists, nails digging painfully into her palms, and went silently from the room, still unnoticed.

    Mrs Urqhart looked dry. “Mm. Well, she do have that look in her eye. And I must say as I hope Noël has the sense to steer clear of it: I’ve seen something of the young officers goin’ silly over older women of that sort in the hills up around Darjeeling—grass widows, you know,” she added darkly.—Mrs Parkinson nodded blankly: there were few people in England who were acquainted with that expression and she was not one of them.—“It’s as well not all of the officers bring their English wives out to India, I can tell you, acos a spate of that sort of thing is what the place don’t need!” She nodded firmly.

    “Er—true. It cannot be an easy life for the wives who are left behind in England, however.”

    “No, and it cain’t be easy for the poor husbands as is stuck down in the plains in the swelterin’ heat of summer whilst their ladies gets up to a bit of no good behind their backs!” she said roundly.

    “No. Had I the choice I own it would be a very difficult one. –Whether to accompany my husband to a place like that or not, I mean!” she said with a laugh.

    “Aye, I gets your meaning, me dear, and no fear I might misunderstand you, neither, for you has ‘decent woman’ writ all over you. Whereas That One”—she glanced over at the sofa again—“hasn’t.”

    Mrs Parkinson bit her lip. “We are so fond of Mr O’Flynn,” she said faintly at last.

    “Aye, but no call to worry about him, me dear, for he’s one as has got ‘decent gentleman’ writ all over him! She won’t never get her claws into the likes of him, never you fret! But my Noël... Well. I won’t scruple to say to you, Mrs Parkinson, me dear, that he had his hopes of little Miss Ainsley, but she has hinted him off and no mistake!”

    “Indeed? Her aunt—” She broke off.

    Mrs Urqhart shook her head. “You had best warn her aunty there ain’t nothing to be hoped for in that direction.”

    “Did she—did she give any inkling, dear Mrs Urqhart, as to why?” she faltered.

    Mrs Urqhart shook her head firmly, her many plumes waving wildly and her long diamond earrings swinging. “Not a word. But mark my words, there’ll be a fellow in it somewhere!”

    Mrs Parkinson nodded weakly.

    “Well,” said Mrs Urqhart with a sigh, looking at the sofa again, “I’ll let it go on for this evening, so long as it don’t get too particular. Only trust me, she won’t get no forrader with Noël!” She nodded determinedly.

    Mrs Parkinson could not but reflect that Lady Charleson was quite out of luck. She would have wagered her pearls that if it came to a tussle between the two ladies, Mrs Urqhart would win hands down. She could not have been more protective of Sir Noël if he had been her own son: it was rather sweet, really! She enquired nicely after Mr Timothy Urqhart. His mother’s eyes lit up and she disclosed that she was expecting him the very next Friday as ever was, with his friend and partner, Ned Jubb, as good a man as ever walked the earth, though he were no gentleman and didn’t make no bones about it ...

    “Mrs O’Flynn, do you not care to dance?” said Lord Lucas Claveringham with his pleasant smile, finding he and she the only wallflowers. Paul had fled to the shelter of Miss Maddern’s arms, having nobly done his duty with Muzzie, Eric had captured a rather silent Gaetana, and Sir Noël, having been laughingly banished by Lady Charleson, who was aware of the older ladies’ eyes upon her, had offered his arm to Hildy. Tom Maddern, under the power of his mother’s constant glare, was now dancing with Muzzie. Hal Maddern, having managed to avoid his mamma’s eye for quite some time, had desperately declared a totally spurious interest in Mrs Parkinson’s netting, and was now holding the silk as she wound it, with a quite indecent smirk on his face. Any occupation was preferable to that of being forced to dance again with Muzzie Charleson—one duty dance was enough with one to whom in the privacy of the family circle he referred as “Mop-Head Muzzie.” Mr O’Flynn was once again dancing with Amabel but if Mrs Maddern had anything to do with it, it would be for the last time.

    Dorothea smiled timidly at Lord Lucas and blushed a little—not solely on account of his former connection with the late Captain O’Flynn. “I—I suppose I am really still in half-mourning, sir,” she said shyly.

    “Then we shall sit this one out,” he said with a kind smile, sitting down beside her on the sofa where she was all alone.

    “It is a pity there is not another young lady for you, Captain Lord Lucas,” she said timidly, after he had remarked on how pleasant the evening was, and she had agreed and they had both fallen silent.

    Lord Lucas flushed up just a little. “But there is, Mrs O’Flynn, and I am sitting next to her, and very happy to be so, I do assure you!”

    “You do not need to say so,” she said in a shaking voice: it was the first time in over a year she had sat so near a gentleman in company whom she did not know very well, but of course Lord Lucas was not to know this. And having been treated as less than a nothing during her marriage—indeed, as an unwanted burden, who had brought her husband only a dowry and a precious meagre one at that—she had not at all re-accustomed herself to think of herself as a young woman who could attract a pleasant gentleman.

    Lord Lucas looked at her in amazement: his remark had been nothing more than a conventional piece of meaningless flattery. “What is it?” he murmured, seeing that her wide blue eyes were swimming with tears.

    “I know that—that my late husband treated you shamefully, Lord Lucas, you need not—not pretend to me,” she whispered.

    The gallant soldier, extremely taken aback, did not pause to reflect that no doubt she was still suffering the aftereffects of a long period of trials and tribulations and was really not herself, or she would not have come out with such a statement to a young man who was almost a stranger. And certainly not in her mamma’s best friend’s music room during an informal hop. “Such a notion was never in my mind, ma’am! Why, I was a young fool of a boy, and it was many years back!” He hesitated. “Surely, you cannot even have been married to O’Flynn, then?” he said.

    “No,” she whispered, lips trembling.

    Lord Lucas frowned. “It was—yes, ten years ago, I suppose: I was eighteen, or so.”

    “I would have been twelve,” admitted Mrs O’Flynn.

    “Twelve! Then you cannot have been married to him very long, at all, before— I’m sorry,” he said stiffly.

    “No, pray do not regard it.”

    Lord Lucas looked at her a trifle desperately.

    Suddenly Dorothea looked up at him, hands twisted tightly together in the white muslin lap of the gown that was Christabel’s, and said in the breath of a voice: “He was a bad man.”

    He gulped. “Yes. I am very, very sorry that you should have discovered it.”

    Dorothea’s eyes dropped. “I suppose it is wicked to be happy that one’s husband is dead.”

    “Well,” he said licking his lips uneasily, “not if he was that sort, I shouldn’t think, Mrs O’Flynn. Well, I—I don’t know the ins and outs of it, and I dare say he— Well, he could not have treated you badly, at all events!” he said desperately.

    Dorothea’s lips trembled and she did not reply.

    Lord Lucas perceived that Captain O’Flynn must have treated his pretty little wife very shabbily indeed; a flush of anger rose up his neck and he said in a very restricted voice: “By God, if the fellow was in front of us this minute, I’d run him through!”

    “I should not have spoken!” gasped Dorothea, jolted into an awareness of reality.

    “Do not regard it,” he said grimly, nostrils flared. “My word, when I think— Well, a fellow like me has had a pretty easy life of it, compared to what you must have— And I’m ashamed to think how I’ve grumbled at it,” he said, making a face.

    Mrs O’Flynn looked at him in a wondering fashion. “But—but you are a gentleman and—and a soldier, sir. I do know that a soldier’s life is not always very easy. And—and were you not at Waterloo?”

    “Yes,” he said shortly.

    There was a short pause.

    “I am glad he died bravely,” she said faintly.

    “Yes.”

    Another pause. During it Captain Lord Lucas looked thoughtfully at the curve of her cheek and her fair curls. Then he said: “You have a little girl, I believe, ma’am?”

    “Little Catherine. It was she who—who gave me the strength to go on living, at a time when otherwise I might have given up,” she said quietly.

    “I see,” he said, wrenching his eyes off the bosom where they had unaccountably lingered. It wasn’t that flat. And that dress was dashed low cut, even if she had a piece of lace tucked there!

    The music changed: Miss Morton began to play a waltz. On the other side of the room, Gaetana, apparently cheered up, was laughingly explaining to Eric Charleson that his toes would suffer, so they had better sit this one out. Nearer, Hildy was giving Sir Noël a similar warning, but he was telling her that as a military man his toes were made of sterner stuff. Miss Maddern and Mr Ainsley were already circling gracefully in one another’s arms, what time Amabel was circling gracefully with Mr O’Flynn, and if Mrs Maddern had not that very moment been engrossed in examining Mrs Urqhart’s diamond necklace—she had not asked, she had merely admired, and the old lady had whipped it off—she might noticed something even from her position beyond the dark green brocade drapes that adorned the doorway of the adjoining salon.

    “I—I would be so glad if—if you would care to waltz,” Lord Lucas said haltingly, in a voice very unlike his earlier self-assured one.

    “I should not…”

    “It is only an informal little occasion. I know, I shall ask your Mamma if she feels it would be permissible!” Before Dorothea could stop him he was up and through the drapes.

    He came back smiling, with a beaming Mrs Parkinson on his arm.

    “My dearest child, Captain Lord Lucas has asked me if I do not feel you might dance, and amongst friends, you know, there could be no objection in the world!” she said gaily.

    “If you are sure, Mamma,” said Dorothea faintly.

    “Of course, little puss! Run along and enjoy yourself! Why, I declare, the roses are coming back into your cheeks at last—are they not, Lord Lucas?”

    “Indeed,” he agreed, bowing and smiling.

    Dorothea got up, looking very shy, and allowed him to lead her onto the floor.

    Lucas Claveringham had not stopped to ask himself what the Devil he thought he was doing, going out of his way to tempt poor little Mrs O’Flynn to dance. Indeed, with the big blue eyes and the blushes—not to say the low-cut bodice of Christabel’s gown—she had not struck him, really, in quite that way, though at one stage he had certainly felt desperately sorry for her. Having achieved his first object and having her now in his arms for the waltz, his hazel eyes sparkled and his cheeks flushed a little and he smiled at her very much and spoke to her in a caressing voice, not consciously perceiving he was exerting himself to charm her out of her shyness, but quite lost in the magic of the moment.

    From the adjoining room, Mrs Urqhart, who was not so vastly interested in her diamond necklace as was her hostess, perceived very nearly all of this and nodded and smiled to herself, terrifically pleased that the combination of her vast experience and her unerring instincts had not led her astray in this particular matter. She would invite the little widow over to visit with the baby as soon as ever she could! For, gentlemen being gentlemen, there was nothing like striking while the iron was hot. Mrs Urqhart did not subscribe to the sentimental maxim that absence made the heart grow fonder, in fact she had been known to declare it was the greatest piece of nonsense she had ever heard in all her borned days and if you asked her, “out of sight out of mind” was more near to the mark!

    “You was goin’ it a bit, weren’t you?” said Sir Noel a trifle uneasily as the gentlemen had a last brandy before turning in that evening.

    “And you were not, I suppose!” his friend replied indignant}y.

    “Mm? Oh—la belle Evangeline! –She informs me that’s her name: Evangeline. Sickener, what? I swear the damned woman had her hand on my thigh at supper!”

    “Good God,” he said, goggling at him.

    Sir Noël shrugged. “Hot for it. You ever meet Lady Violet C.?”

    Lord Lucas shook his head, goggling at him.

    “Oh? She was in Brussels just before the battle. Anyway, Lady Charleson’s the same type.” He made a face. “All charm on the surface, hard as nails underneath, and hot as Hell for it.”

    “You have not—not done it with Lady Violet, have you, old boy?” he said, swallowing.

    Sir Noël did not point out how puerile his friend’s choice of expression was: he looked at him with affection and said: “Not I! More sense than that, I thank you! –Did you hear the rumour that Rockingham was going to call Cunninghame out over that affair of young Welling’s?”

    “Surely not,” he said dazedly. “Not Cunninghame: I mean, what did he...”

    “Everything, I should imagine: fellow has ‘pander’ written all over him. No, well, I had it from Ainsley that what really happened was...” He retailed the story of the naked viscount, laughing very much.

    Lord Lucas smiled palely.

    “Anyway, as I was saying,” said Sir Noël, giving him a sharp look, “was you not going the pace a bit with the pretty little widow, old man?”

    “No. I hope I did not make her appear particular,” he said stiffly.

    Sir Noël’s handsome jaw dropped, but he made a quick recover. “No, no, not the least in the world! Only sometimes... Well, you know: a fellow finds he ain’t got a show with a certain lady and turns to another lady he don’t really feel the same about and—um—raises expectations he don’t have any intention of fulf—”

    “NO!” he shouted. “It’s not like that!”

    “I’m very glad to hear it,” said the baronet simply.

    Lord Lucas looked at him a trifle sulkily.

    “Look,” said Noël, frowning: “she had the Hell of a marriage. I’m quite sure the Maddern girls don’t know the half of it, but Grey was saying that little Miss Amabel told him the fellow deserted her in—um—Ostend, I think. Some damned Froggy dump. Left her and the baby flat. She was near-starving when some Englishwoman discovered her and rescued her. Seems to be barely over it—and no wonder, poor little soul!”

    A lump had risen in Lucas Claveringham’s throat. He nodded, unable to speak, half turned away from his friend, his head bowed.

    Noël looked at him uneasily. “Go easy, Lucas, that’s all I’m saying.”

    “I shall. She has nothing to fear from me,” he said stiffly, not looking round.

    “No. You’re the decentest fellow in the world, old man,” he said, touching his shoulder lightly and going out.

    Captain Lord Lucas waited for a little, until he was sure Noël had gone up to bed. Then he got out his silk handkerchief, wiped his eyes very thoroughly and blew his nose hard.

    … “Did you like him, my dear?” asked Mrs Parkinson hopefully next day.

    Dorothea blushed. “He is a very pleasant gentleman. Very kind,” she said in a low voice.

    Mrs Parkinson squeezed her hand hard with her own plump, be-ringed one, and for once in her life said no more. For perhaps she had belatedly learned a little caution where eligible gentlemen were concerned, in the wake of Dorothea’s disastrous marriage.

    “What the Devil—?” said Rockingham, coming over the brow of hill on his own property to find a picknick in progress under a lime tree.

    “Get up,” said Floss tersely to the company: “it’s him.” She and the three youngest Ainsleys scrambled to their feet.

    “Bow, imbecile!” hissed Bunch to Bungo.

    Ramón Ainsley bowed uncertainly, Bunch and Floss gave wobbly curtseys, and Maria quite a creditable one.

    Rockingham swung himself off the not very fiery Midnight, vastly amused. “How are you, Miss Florabelle?” he said, doffing his hat and bowing. “Can he say it yet?”

    “Sometimes, but he will not say it when one wants him to,” she admitted gloomily.

    “Keep plugging on,” he advised, shoulders shaking.

    “I shall.”

    “You’re the terrible twins, I take it,” said Rockingham to the red-headed pair, “but who is this?” He smiled at the shrinking Maria.

    Bunch took her hand, scowling up at him. “This is Maria, she’s between us and Gaetana, and she’s very shy.”

    “Buenas dias, Señorita Maria,” he said, bowing.

    Maria curtseyed again, and gasped out a reply, also in Spanish.

    “I’m afraid that’s about as far as my Spanish stretches,” he said regretfully. “May I join you?”

    “There ain’t much,” said Ramón Ainsley tersely.

    “But I have my own drink here, at all events,” he said, producing a flask, “and I had a nuncheon—er—not very long since. And do forgive me for mentioning it, but you are on my land.”

    “We can go,” said Bunch gloomily.

    “No, no, sit down again!” he said, laughing. “How did you all get here?”

    “On our ponies,” said Bunch, sitting down. “They’re over there, under those trees, see?”—His Lordship nodded meekly.—“If you like cheese, we do have a considerable quantity of that.”

    “I adore cheese.”

    “Bateson says it’s common,” warned Floss, sitting down.

    “Then I fear I am common, Miss Florabelle,” he said calmly.

    Floss gave a stifled giggle.

    “I don’t think I know your names,” his Lordship then said politely to the twins.

    Very red, Maria gasped: “Milord, this is Bungo, only his real name is Ramón! And this is Elinor.” She gave Bunch a pleading look.

    “Bunch,” said that young lady tersely, serving the Marquis with a hunk of cheese on a lime leaf. “Sit down, Maria, he won’t eat you.”

    “Yes, sit down,” said Rockingham, smiling at her. “You have a great look of your mother, Maria.” Maria sat down and smiled at him shyly. “How old are you?” he asked curiously. She was short, but well developed.

    “Fifteen, only I am nearly sixteen, because it is my birthday next month!” she-said, suddenly smiling at him.

    “Never! Why, it’s mine, too!” he said with a laugh.

    “We know,” agreed Maria, very pink and smiling.

    “Ned Adams says there will be fireworks on the estate: may we come?” asked Bungo with a melting look.

    “Well, if you can suborn Adams into bringing you, yes. But he may not wish to: the fireworks are for my people, not for gentry,” he said, lips twitching slightly.

    Bungo thought it over. “Could we be your people for the one evening, do you think? Sort of—qu’est-ce qu’on dit?” he asked his twin.

    “Est-ce que je sais, moi?” she replied crossly.

    “Ses gens honoraires?” suggested Maria.

    “Honorary status!” choked Rockingham. “What a splendid notion!”

    “There is no need to patronise us, we are not stupid,” said Bunch Ainsley blightingly, “and if you do not eat that cheese, I shall.”

    Rockingham hurriedly picked up his cheese portion. “I’m eating!” he assured her.

    “We’ve got lemonade,” Bungo informed him, producing a flask.

    “Well, sort of,” said Bunch honestly.

    “Sí,” he agreed, “we didn’t have much lemons. Only it’s got lots of sugar in it! What’s yours?”

    “Only water, I’m afraid,” the Marquis said apologetically.

    Bungo had hoped it had been brandy and that Rockingham—unlikely though this seemed—might have offered to share it. “Oh,” he said sadly.

    “I’m very willing to share it, though.”

    “No, I’d rather have lemonade.”

    Apparently they would all rather have lemonade. Apparently also they had no cups but that didn’t worry them: they passed the flask solemnly from hand to hand. Judging from the stunned expressions that followed it was strong stuff, all right.

    “Beef,” said Bunch, producing a small, squashed package.

    Rockingham looked at it suspiciously but did not have to voice his suspicions, because Maria immediately said: “How old is it, Bunch?”

    “Yes, it looks kind of green,” agreed Floss in a hollow voice.

    “No! It’s yesterday’s!”

    “If that’s been in your petticoat for a day, I’m not touching it!” said Floss frankly.

    “Nor I,” agreed Maria, shuddering.

    “It hasn’t!”

    “Well, where has it been?” said Bungo, poking it gingerly with his pocket-knife.

    “Um... I got it out of the larder yesterday morning.”

    Nobody reached for it on this recommendation.

    “Um—well, then I had to hide it in my stocking, but—”

    Rockingham got up, seized the beef, and wordlessly hurled it into the bushes.

    “íGracias, señor!” said Maria fervently.

    “Aye: thank you kindly, my Lord, it looked as if it could have poisoned us all,” agreed Bungo.

    “It could that!” agreed Floss. “Go on, Maria!” she urged.

    Maria had a satchel. She produced a large packet from it. Macaroons and tartlets.

    “Where did you get them?” gasped Bunch.

    “I asked Berthe, of course,” she replied calmly.

    The others goggled at her: this was obviously not correct procedure, at all.

    “Miss Maria, I fear you and I are too old for surreptitious picknicks!” choked his Lordship. “One does not ask for provisions, one borrows or steals ’em!”

    “Yes, possibly I should not have come. Only I did not realize we were on your land until it was too late,” she replied seriously.

    Rockingham looked at her in some amusement: funny little thing. Cuddly little morsel, too: now, if only Vernon Standish were not such a damned fool, he would find him just such a cuddly little girl to take to wife. But she was probably, judging by the Lady V., a good twenty years too young for Welling at present. Damned shame: the boy was not deliberately vicious, just weak and foolish...

    “Mm? Oh, thanks, I love macaroons,” he said, taking one.

    The picnic finished with a handful of nuts—the Marquis was stunned to find they were pistachios, and the children had to tell him all about Mrs Urqhart, who had provided them—and a bagful of fruits which Floss assured his Lordship were mainly not windfalls—the Marquis did not precisely regale himself on them, nonetheless—and for the younger ones, another round of the gaspingly sweet “lemonade.”

    “That was good,” said Bungo, lying on his back in the sun.

    “Mm. –How long did it take you all to get here?” asked Rockingham idly, reclining on his side propped on an elbow.

    “Aucune idée. Hours,” said Ramon Ainsley sleepily.

    “We started just after breakfast. Well, sort of,” amended Bunch hastily as Maria looked at her in a shocked way. “The kitchenmaids had had their breakfast and Gregory and Francisco were just having theirs,” she explained.

    “I see. –That is the man who sings, I believe?”

    “¡Sí, sí, he sings good!” she said, nodding.

    “I can do it,” said Bungo sleepily.

    “Can not!”

    “Can too!”

    Bunch lapsed into Spanish. They screamed at each other for a little and then Bungo abruptly sat up and in a piercing soprano pitched in a way Rockingham had never heard in his life before burst into—

    “My God!” said his Lordship in awe.

    “That’s how the ladies sing, of course, the men are much...” Bungo thought about it. “Hoarser,” he decided.

    “Paul says ‘raucous’,” objected Maria.

    “My God,” said Rockingham again.

    “It was a very sad song,” said Bungo with a melting look, “a song of a lady who has been deserted by her lover. Soon she will kill him with a knife and then she will die.”

    “Not a knife!” objected Bunch.

    “Well, how else will she kill him, Rat-Head?” He lay down again.

    Bunch and Floss began to think of ways the lady might kill her faithless lover without a knife’s being involved—aloud, of course.

    More or less in order to silence them Rockingham produced a guinea. “Here. For effort. And for not doing it again,” he said drily.

    “íGracias!” gasped Bungo. “Cor, a guinea!” he gasped.

    “That is too much, milord,” said Maria anxiously.

    “Not if he don’t do it again, it ain’t,” said the Marquis frankly, winking at her. Maria went into a gale of giggles. “So you think it took hours to get here?” he pursued.

    “Yes. Well, the sun was not very high and the fires were only just lit. And we did come cross-country, but the ponies won’t jump anything very high,” owned Floss.

    “Had to make a few detours, eh?” he said, lips twitching.

   She nodded hard. Rockingham consulted his watch. “Mm. Well, it’s near three, now.”

    “Three o’clock in the afternoon?” gasped Maria. “íMadre de Dios!” she gulped, hands to her cheeks. “The sheets!”

    “Pooh!” said Floss sturdily.

    “Yes: forget about the sheets for one afternoon!” advised Bunch. “Sheets are boring, and in any case I dare say Paul could afford to buy all new sheets! –Don’t you think?” she demanded of the Marquis.

    “Undoubtedly. What the Devil were you planning to do to these sheets, Maria?”

    “To hem and darn them, sir,” she whispered.

    “‘My Lord’, imbecile, or ‘your Lordship’,” corrected Bunch sternly.

    “No, ‘sir’ is perfectly acceptable, especially from a person of gentle birth,” he said, smiling at Maria. “I could put you up before me on Midnight and get you home in very little more than an hour: would that help?”

    “Thank you, sir, but I do not think so,” she whispered, blushing.

    “No, she’s blotted her copybook: they’ll have started the sheets by now,” stated Floss on a pleased note.

    “Sí, sí. ‘Where can dear little Maria be?’” wailed Bungo in his piercing soprano. The Marquis winced, but his lips twitched.

    “‘Oh, her darning is so fine: where can those naughty children have persuaded her to go?’“ croaked Floss.

    Abruptly the company, not excluding Maria herself and the Marquis of Rockingham, collapsed in sniggers.

    ... “I’ll leave you here,” said Rockingham with a grin, reining in Midnight at the corner of Paul’s orchard some two hours later.

    “Thank you awf’ly for showing us the short-cuts, sir,” said Bungo earnestly, holding out a grimy hand. The Marquis shook it solemnly. “And for my guinea—only I don’t really deserve it: you should hear Francisco, he’s a wonder!” he added impressively.

    “Aye, I should like to. –Wait, Ramón; do you not have a watch?”

    “No,” he said blankly.

    The Marquis frowned.

    The children looked at him anxiously.

    “My papa gave me a watch when I went to school,” he said abruptly. “I shall write your brother a note.” He wheeled the big black about and was gone.

    “Cor, do you think he meant it?” gasped Bungo.

    “They never do,” said Floss wisely.

    “I think he is a man of integrity,” said Maria, blushing.

    “Honorary integrity!” said Bunch with a loud giggle.

    “Shut up,” ordered her brother. “I will wager you, um… a bag of those nuts of Mrs Urqhart’s that he does remember to write to Paul!”

    “I’ve eaten all mine,” she said glumly.

    “So’ve I, but she could give us some more.”

    “That was the last of mine that we had today,” revealed Floss sadly. “It’s funny he didn’t know Mrs Urqhart, don’t you think?”

    They looked at her blankly.

    “Well, I suppose she is not one of his people, but Lower Dittersford does march with part of his lands.”

    “Tia Patty says she is not a gentlewoman, so possibly that is why he doesn’t know her,” Maria offered.

    “I think she’s right,” decided Floss. “Well?” she cried, as they looked at her dubiously. “Who would have introduced her to him?”

    “Brilliant,” decided Bungo.

    Floss looked at him angrily but Bunch cried quickly: “No, he means it!”

    “Yes,” said Bungo simply. ”Lady Charleson wouldn’t: I heard Mrs Parkinson say she was a cat that wouldn’t give its mother the time of day. And Mrs Purdue wouldn’t, Mrs Urqhart said she has her nose so high in the air she’ll fall over her own feet one o’ these days—’member?”—They all nodded.—“And there ain’t no-one else!”

    “Yes, that’s it, then,” Floss decided.

    “íSí!” agreed Maria.

    “He could introduce himself,” said Bunch dubiously.

    “What?” Floss cried scornfully. “Walk up to her—no, ride up to her on his great big horse—and say: ‘Good-day, ma’am, I don’t know you from Adam, or should I say from Eve, but I’m the Marquis of Crabapple, the lord of all these fair lands!’ Yes, very like!”

    “Sí, sí. ‘And this is my faithful cat, le Chat botte!’” finished Bunch, in ecstasy.

    They all thought that one was so exquisite that they almost fell off their ponies laughing, and went on home for supper happily dismissing the mystery of the Marquis’s not having met the most interesting person in the neighbourhood from their minds.

    Lord Rockingham, however, rode home with a good deal of food for thought. When he reached the house he sat down to write a letter to the occupant of The Towers. He had been utterly intrigued by the children’s account of this lady—whereas the rest of his neighbours were, to say the least, not intriguing. There was no doubt that she must be a cit—but a lady who draped herself in furs and jewels to receive afternoon callers, had ridden on elephants, and served her guests mysterious sweetmeats whilst pressing ivory objets d’art on ‘em? This he must see! Not to mention what Ramón Ainsley claimed was a stuffed snake in the hall the size of the grandfather clock, though his Lordship took leave to doubt that one. Miss Elinor Ainsley's description of the tiger-skin shot by the hand of the famed ‘‘Pumps” Urqhart seemed more credible, however. As did Miss Maria’s shuddering description of the real elephant’s foot which held an assortment of sticks, parasols and large feathers of an astounding jewel-like beauty—peacocks, doubtless, thought his Lordship, staring unseeingly out at his own terrace, pen suspended. He came to with a little jump, finished and sealed his letters, and rang the bell.

    “Hollings, I want someone to ride over to The Towers in Lower Dittersford with this, this evening,” he said. “Oh—and this note to Mr Ainsley, at the Manor. And—er—who would know what happens to the peacock feathers?”

    “The peacock feathers, my Lord?” said the butler weakly.

    “Yes, peacock feathers, man! From the creatures that infest the west terrace. I want ’em.”

    “Yes, my Lord. Er—how many, my Lord?”

    “However many there are!” he said impatiently. “Why, is that a problem?”

    “I believe,” said Hollings very cautiously indeed, “that the birds have a season, sir.”

    “Aye, well, most birds do,” he said, staring.

    “No, my Lord, a season for the feathers.” He gave a slight cough. “At which they drops them, my Lord.”

    “Oh. Well—well, find out, Hollings!”

    “Certainly, my Lord. Will that be all, your Lordship?”

    “Um—no. I want a watch.”

    “Beg pardon, my Lord?”

    “A watch: are you deaf?” he shouted.

    Hollings looked at him mildly.

    “No—sorry, Hollings,” he said sheepishly. “I wish to buy a watch for the young son of a friend, and I don’t have a notion as—as to what would be suitable. Well,” he said taking his own beautiful time-piece out of his pocket and looking at it dubiously: ‘‘I don’t think—”

    “My Lord, that is a French enamelled case that belonged to your Lordship’s grandfather!” said the butler in a voice that shook with pure horror.

    “Yes,” said Rockingham with a little smile: “I wasn’t proposing to give it away. But do you remember the first watch I had? Papa gave it me, I think it must have been the only thing beside Quicksilver that he ever did give— Never mind.”

    “He was a grand little pony, my Lord,” the man murmured.

    “Yes. And in those days Papa was not drinking his six bottles a day,” he said grimly. “That was a silver watch, quite plain, was it not?”

    “Nicely chased, Master Gi— My Lord,” the elderly butler corrected himself without visible signs of chagrin. “I believe his late Lordship purchased it from the jewellers in town to which her Ladyship’s jewels were sent to be cleaned.”

    “I thought you’d know,” said Rockingham in relief. “Can you get them to send down a selection of pieces, suitable for a young lad?”

    “Indeed, my Lord, that would be no problem. And would you wish to have it engraved?”

    “En— Look, don’t confuse the issue, I’m bad enough at this sort of thing as it is!” he said with a grin. “And while we’re on the subject, what the Devil can you give to a girl of ten or eleven whose brother is going away to school?”

    Hollings immediately realized to whom his master was referring. He looked at him with tremendous interest and sympathy, for of course those of the staff such as Mr Sweet and Cummins who were fortunate enough to accompany his Lordship when he moved from one residence to another had purveyed all the London happenings with breathless excitement to the staff of the principal seat, and the household was in a ferment at the news that his Lordship had it bad for the daughter of Ainsley Manor.

    “I think I had best consult Mrs Freeman on that one, my Lord.”

    “Aye... Well, she’s a tomboy of a little thing, you know,” he said dubiously.

    “Never fret, Master Giles, Mrs Freeman will know what’s best.”

    “Yes. And I need a suitable birthday gift,” he said, frowning a little, “for a girl who is about to turn sixteen. Next month.”

    “Indeed, my Lord.” The butler surveyed him benignly.

    “Bring me Grandmamma’s jewel case,” he said abruptly, handing him a small key.

    “Master Giles—!”

    “Don’t be an idiot; I’m not about to give away the Hammond emeralds! No, the case of her own personal trinkets.”

    “Buh-but do you think they ought to go outside the family, my Lord?” he faltered.

    “High time they did. Go on, man!”

    Hollings bowed slightly and went out. Naturally he did not entrust the job of fetching her late Ladyship’s jewel case, trinkets or no, to any minion, but he had the household flying about pretty sharpish on the quest for feathers. Not to say for someone who would know about the feathers. For if it was a garden responsibility, a stable responsibility (which Cummins and his chief aid stoutly denied) or even a poultry-yard responsibility, which after all did seem the more likely the more you thought about it, Hollings was blessed if he knew.

    … “He ain’t been up to change yet, Mr Hollings!” gasped a minion, some little time later.

    “Then we shall delay dinner for him,” he said majestically. “And so you may inform M. Foulet, John.”

    John swallowed hard. “Yes, Mr Hollings,” he said weakly.

    Hollings did not deign to watch him off, for at Daynesford Place his word was law. But the back of John’s head felt as if the back of Mr Hollings’s head was watching him.

    The butler then went quietly along to the Marquis’s study and went in. “My Lord, you have forgotten to change for dinner,” he said calmly.

    “Mm? Oh! What do you think?” He held up a string of small pearls.

    “Not for sixteen, my Lord, unless you were her papa or grandpapa.”

    “Damn,” he muttered. “Well, I don’t know! I thought these rose quartz beads, only they’re damned trumpery rubbish!”

    “Very pretty,” approved the butler. “I believe they were her late Ladyship’s when she was a girl, herself.”

    “Really? Grandmamma wore them as a girl?”

    “Indeed. There is a portrait of her as a young girl in which she wears them, and her sister wears a similar string, only in coral. May I enquire the young lady’s colouring, my Lord?”

    “Oh—very dark. Black hair, olive skin.”

    “Mm...” The butler came and looked into the case. “They may be too pale for her, then, my Lord. Now, this is very pretty. Her late Ladyship informed me she had had it as a girl, though I remember her wearing it in this very house.”

    It was a medallion, enamelled with a little scene of shepherds and shepherdesses in a landscape, and surrounded by seed pearls and tiny red stones set in gold. Rockingham touched the frame dubiously. “Are these garnets?”

    The butler coughed slightly. “Er—small rubies, I believe, my Lord, and of course you might not wish to see a valuable piece leave the—”

    “No. She is young enough to be my daughter, and by Christ I wish— It will do,” he said harshly. “Find me something pretty to wrap it in. Stay, does it have a case or anything?”

    “I believe it has never had its own case.”

    “Oh; well, what shall I—?”

    “I shall take care of it, my Lord,” said the butler, “and I am sure Mrs Freeman will find a little riband to string it on.”

    “What? Oh—yes,” he said, a trifle blankly. “Of course. Um… Are you sure it will do, Hollings?”

    “Certainly, my Lord. Very suitable indeed for a dark young lady. Her late Ladyship, of course, was dark, though you probably remember her as poudrée.”

    “I remember her as human,” he said with a sigh, waving him away.

    “Dinner, my Lord,” said the butler firmly.

    “What? Oh—yes. What’s the time— Good God. You had best convey my apologies to Foulet. And where the Devil’s Miss Carolyn?”

    “In the small withdrawing-room, my Lord. Alone. Miss Heather has the migraine.”

    “Eh? Oh. One mercy,” he muttered.

    The butler looked at him sympathetically. He entirely agreed.

    “Well, has my message gone to The Towers?”

    “Certainly, my Lord. And the feathers are all under control,” he added soothingly, if over-optimistically.

    “What? Oh—good. Remind me, for God’s sake, Hollings,” he said.

    The butler bowed him out. “Certainly, my Lord.”

    “And tell Miss Carolyn I shall be a trifle late for dinner,” he added, making for the stairs.

    Hollings bowed. He had already done so, naturally.

    The Marquis ate an excellent dinner, though it was only excellent at the cost of M. Foulet’s nerves and the tears of several underlings, but without noticing it. Carolyn sulked, but this was usual, so he didn’t really notice it, either. After dinner he made an effort and asked her if she would like to play spillikins (at which she always endeavoured to cheat), piquet (at which she was hopeless), or—desperately—any other game within his capacities, but Carolyn pouted and said they were all boring. The Marquis went back to his study without another word.

    “COCHON!” screamed Mlle Girardon, throwing a cushion across the small withdrawing-room and herself onto a blue satin sofa in a storm of sobs.

    In his study his Lordship sank into a reverie, emerging from it with a jump when John came in quietly with more candles.

    “What’s the time?” he said dazedly.

    “A quarter of eleven, my Lord.”

    “What? Great God, I had best turn in. –Stay, did Hollings not give you a package for me?”

    “He has put it on your dressing table, I believe, my Lord, and said to inform you, should you ask after it, that the riband is garnet red, and in his opinion most suitable,” said John without the slightest trace of interest or emotion in his voice.

    “Good. Er—have they found those damned feathers yet? I should like them to go with the— Have they?”

    “I shall enquire, my Lord.”

    “No, no, the morning will do. But may I charge you not to let me dispatch that packet without the feathers?”

    “Certainly, my Lord,” said the footman, bowing.

    Rockingham nodded, and went to bed. Though once there, he did not fall asleep. He had made up his mind after finding Gaetana, as he had thought, dead by the roadside, that he would marry her or, if it were not too melodramatic a thought, perish in the attempt. For after all he had only the one life, and to waste it worrying over whether he was too old, or she too young—! But to marry her he must first persuade her that her silly notions about the difference in their stations counted for nothing, and he had not yet worked out how the Devil to do so. Perishing in the attempt to win her would really have been much, much easier.

    However, for the first night since that encounter he lay in bed staring into the dark not thinking directly of Gaetana but of the black-eyed, plump little Maria, and how if he and Gaetana were to have children, perhaps it was not too unlikely that—for he was dark and she had dark eyes. And he was a sentimental fool, but… Harry Ainsley was a lucky man, and a damned fool, to have dispatched such children to England without him!

    ... And possibly he should drop a hint in Paul’s ear that Bungo was picking up servants’ cant and his brother should have a word with him before he went to Winchester. Only it was none of his damned business, after all!

    Rockingham eventually got out of bed in the cold grey light just before dawn and stood by his window looking out over his wide acres for a long time.

    “A Mrs Knowles,” said Patty Ainsley Maddern in a dubious voice. “Of Holmden House.”

    “That quite new house between Dittersford and Daynesford, Tia Patty. Nearer to Daynesford, really,” explained Gaetana.

    “She did leave cards, Mamma,” murmured Miss Maddern.

    Mrs Maddern sighed and laid the invitation down. “I suppose we shall have to go. I dare swear it will be quite unspeakable. A country breakfast?”

    Amabel was reading the invitation. “She says ‘Al fresco’ here, Mamma.”

    “Well, we are in the country!” Mrs Maddern pointed out crossly.

    “Spiders in the soup!” said Hildy with a giggle.

   Although Mrs Maddern was quite glad to see Hildy recovering her spirits at last in the wake of Mr Parkinson’s departure, she immediately retorted sharply: “Soup? At a breakfast?”

    “Cousin Sophia had soup at her breakfast,” said Hildy valiantly.

    “That was a town breakfast. Al dining-room-o!” choked Gaetana.

    Hildy shook her head. “Unworthy.”

   The cousins smiled at each other.

    Mrs Maddern sighed deeply. “What does one wear to an al fresco country breakfast, dare one ask?”

    Nobody knew.

    Finally Miss Maddern said sensibly: “I dare say your new cambric walking gown will be quite acceptable, Mamma.”

    “But I shall not walk to it,” she said dubiously.

    “Possibly the grey silk, Mamma?” ventured Amabel.

    “Not for a breakfast, dearest! –Christa, your blue and white striped walking gown would be the very thing: you must wear it!” she added with energy.

    “Er—yes, certainly, Mamma.”

    “Wear the new lilac morning gown, Mamma,” suggested Hildy.

    “Ye-es... Well, I shall think about it. I dare swear it will pour and the thing will be rained out. –I wonder who else will be there?”

    Hildy opened her mouth to say “Mrs Purdue”, caught Miss Maddern’s eye, and shut it again.

    “Lady Charleson, I expect,” said Amabel peaceably.

    “Eric—I mean Mr Charleson,” said Hildy very quickly, as her mother turned an amazed eye on her, “tells me that Holmden House is famous for its strawberry beds.”

    There was a slight pause.

    “This invitation says nothing of strawberries,” noted Mrs Maddern, picking it up and re-reading it.

    “Ned Adams, of course, says that that is entirely due to the horse manure used on the beds,” added Hildy calmly.

    “Hildegarde Maddern!” gasped her mother.

    “He heard it from his brother, the one who is gardener at Willow Court. Evidently there is a great rivalry between the two gardeners,” explained Hildy, ignoring her mother’s reproof.

    “Well, I am sure my dear little Harry Higgs will do better than the both of them!” Mrs Maddern cried crossly. “Paul is sparing no expense with the gardens!”

    “Yes. Well, if Ned Adams can be persuaded to make a contribution from the stable yard: possibly,” agreed Hildy calmly.

    “Hildy, did I not just warn y— What do you mean?” said Mrs Maddern sharply.

    “Just that the rivalry between Willow Court and Holmden House is apparently such that Ned has entered the lists in support of his brother and supplies him—”

    “With our stable manure?” cried Mrs Maddern furiously. “Never! Ring the bell this instant, Gaetana, my love, I shall speak to the man myself! This must be stopped!”

    The girls watched in awe as Gaetana duly rang the bell, Gregory appeared and was dispatched forthwith—via the French windows, to boot—in search of Ned Adams, and the latter, looking mildly surprized, duly appeared.

    “Did you want me, Mrs Maddern?” he said politely.

    “Yes. –You may go, Gregory!” she said sharply to the interested footman.

    At least two of those present had been anticipating with pleasure how Mrs Maddern might handle the thing when it actually came to the point of her having to do so, but they were doomed to disappointment. She took a deep breath and said majestically, but as of a monarch who is yet willing to be swayed—though against the Royal better judgement: “I should like an explanation, Adams, of the rumour that has come to my ears about our stable-yard wastes”—Here Hildy mouthed “Manure” at Gaetana and they both choked, but Mrs Maddern ignored them superbly—“finding their way to Willow Court’s gardens.”

    Mr Adams replied on a regretful note, though without the least trace of apology about him: “It were a good scheme while it lasted, Mrs Maddern, and Berthe was right glad to get them hasteds—early peas, ma’am. Only Harry Higgs tells me he’ll be needing it all for our gardens, now.”

    “I see. Well, Higgs was quite right to tell you so, and in future—though I do not deny it was an excellent idea at the time,” she allowed graciously, what time Hildy and Gaetana watched her in awed admiration, “our own gardens must always be put first. And if there should be any future suggestions of such a—an exchange, you must consult first with me or Mr Ainsley.”

    “Right you are, Mrs Maddern!” he said cheerfully. “Oh—Reverend Stalling, he’s been getting a couple of barrer-loads every so often, only if you don’t think as—”

    “Naturally I should be only too pleased to supply Mr Stalling,” she said graciously.—Here Gaetana mouthed: “Apricots” at Hildy and they both shook helplessly.—“A few barrow-loads cannot possibly signify.”

    “That’s what I thought, Mrs Maddern, and of course Mr Stalling, he don’t have but the one cob. A decent enough nag, too, for a vicar’s horse,” he said generously.

    “Indeed. Thank you, Adams, that will be all. --No, stay: pray send a lad to find John Pringle and send him to me.”

    “Aye, I will, Mrs Maddern, only I think he’s potting up them hothouse things with the spikes as was sent from Chypsley. Not pines, I don’t think.”

    “Cactus plants,” said Mrs Maddern kindly. “Lord Hubbel is a great expert, you know. It was most kind of Lady Georgina to think of our hothouses.”

    “Aye... Do they bear fruit, ma’am?” the head groom asked, scratching his head.

    “No, they are purely ornamental,” she said graciously.

    “Ah. Well, I’ll send him, Mrs Maddern, only as I say, he’s a-potting up them things, and I think he’s all mucky.”

    “He may stand on the terrace,” she said firmly.

    “Aye: I’ll tell him.” Adams withdrew.

    “Purely ornamental, Mamma?” gasped Hildy. “They are hideous!”

    “Well, yes,” she said, swallowing, “but you must admit they do not bear fruit.”

    “Perhaps John Pringle will not know what to do with them, and they’ll die,” said Gaetana hopefully.

    “Don’t be silly, my dear, they are very... exotic,” said Mrs Maddern on a weak note.

    “I must own they are not attractive,” owned Amabel, “though I should not wish them to die.”

    “That one with the hair looks as if it’s dead already,” noted Hildy.

    “Well, they are not so very big, after all,” murmured Mrs Maddern.

    “The red-flowered vine from Mrs Urqhart is much prettier,” said Hildy.

    “Sí: perhaps it will grow up and cover them up!” choked Gaetana.

    Mrs Maddern smiled a little but said rather firmly: “Yes, it is a— Well, I forget the name, but it is an Indian thing. Imagine, the parent plant sailed all the way from India on a ship!” she added, beaming.

    “I think it would have had a better chance on a ship than coming overland on a camel!” gurgled Gaetana.

    “Er—very true, but you have not grasped my meaning, my love,” replied her aunt firmly. “Once it has wreathed all round the hothouse as Mrs Urqhart’s one has done, the effect will be entirely delicious!”

    “Yes, and the cactus plants will be hidden,” muttered Hildy. Mrs Maddern was strong-minded enough to ignore this. Which was perhaps not to be wondered at, after the way she had handled the Adams confrontation.

    “íSi, sí!” agreed Gaetana with a smile. “It’s the most striking thing!”

    Mrs Maddern nodded pleasedly. “Indee— Do not come any further, John Pringle!” she screamed.

    “No, Mrs Maddern,” said the young man obediently, stopping at the open French door. “You was wishful to see me, Mr Adams was saying.”

    “Yes, indeed! Oh, dear, now what was I—?”

    “Strawberries?” suggested Hildy’

    “Do not be ridiculous, Hildegarde, even you must know they are not grown in a hothouse. Though since you are here, John, perhaps you might just explain to us whether they are in season, yet.”

    “Strawberries, Mrs Maddern? Yes, indeedy, if the beds be well strawed up and nicely sheltered, they is in their season, now, and I was hearing as Mr and Mrs Knowles, over to Daynesford, like, their strawberries is doing surprising well for the weather. Well, it ain’t been favourable, ma’am, but they is in a real good position.”

    “Then it will be a dratted strawberry breakfast,” said Mrs Maddern vexedly to the young ladies.

    “It would seem not unlikely. Though I am sure Mrs Knowles will also provide other refreshment,” opined Christabel kindly.

    “They are such an acid fruit!’’ lamented Mrs Maddern.

    “Nay: if they be ripened proper, Mrs Maddern, and are planted in a spot where they gets the sun, strawberries will ripen up sweet as you please!” protested the young gardener.

    “I dare say to a youthful person,” said Mrs Maddern, looking at his youthful person with a sigh, “it may well seem so. But I did not call you here to discuss strawberries!”

    “No, Mrs Maddern,” he said respectfully. He waited, but Mrs Maddern merely wrinkled her brow in thought. “Was it about the cactuses, like?”

    “N— Well, I own I should like to know how you are managing, John. They did appear so very—very bristly.”

    “Aye, they be spiky things. Interesting, though. Very dry surroundings, is what they like, not like most of your exotic plants, at all. They’ve travelled real well, ma’am, and they’re potting up good. In their season, they’ll bear one or two splendid blooms: very shiny, like, and bright, only they do last but a day in general. Though there be some kinds as has flowers what last longer.”

    “Indeed? That sounds most interesting, John,” she said kindly.

    “Aye, it is, Mrs Maddern. Acos you see,” he said enthusiastically: “you gets the little spiky thing a-looking like nothing, much, and all of sudden it do burst out with this huge great pink flower, or bright yaller, as it might be, or red!”

    “Well,” she said kindly: “on the day each one blooms I think you must bring it into—into this room,” she said, involuntarily glancing at his grimy hands—“and place it on the sideboard.”

    “Yes, indeed!” cried Amabel, bouncing up. “And I know the very thing!” She ran to a sideboard and produced a low bowl of a beautiful dark blue shade. “The pots may sit in this bowl, John!”

    “Aye: that’ll look right pretty, Miss Amabel,” he agreed, beaming and blushing, rather.

    “Amabel, dear, that is a piece of Sèvres porcelain which your grandpapa acquired on the Grand Tour,” said Mrs Maddern rather faintly. “There is the most charming little landscape painted inside it.”

    “Yes, but such a lovely plain bowl on the outside, Mamma, the bright flowers will just glow above it!”

    “Very well, my dear, let it be that bowl, then. Leave it out, Amabel: then everybody will know which bowl the cactus plants may go in.”

    “And John will not have to hunt in cupboards for the right one!” said Gaetana, smiling at him.

    “No, Miss Gaetana: Mrs Giles wouldn’t like that, I dare say!” he agreed.

    Mrs Maddern felt that the conversation had got rather out of hand. “Yes, but never mind that,” she said hurriedly. “Why did I send for John, girls?”

    As she had not mentioned her reason, no-one could remind her. “Well, perhaps it was the cactus plants,” she said dubiously. “No—stay: how are the plants which Mrs Urqhart so kindly sent doing, John?”

    “Very well indeed, Mrs Maddern. Though that little tree that that blackamoor gardener of hers set such store by, it be but a poor thing, after all.”

    “It is a sacred tree, in his religion,” said Hildy.

    “Is that right, Miss Hildy?” he replied dubiously.

    “So he told me. He is a Buddhist, it is the tree under which—”

    “Never mind, dearest, I am sure John Pringle is not interested!” said Mrs Maddern quickly.

    “So he be a heathen, Miss Hildy?” the man said curiously.

    “You could say that,” replied Hildy on a dry note”

    “Aye... But he ups and says to me as the blackamoor butler over to The Towers, he were a heathen!”

    “Yes, he has a different religion from the gardener.”

    “Well, now, ain’t that a funny thing! Still, there do be no accountin’ for blackamoors. Though he do look after the hothouses good, I’ll say that for him. They ain’t got no pines, though,” he added sadly.

    “That is it!” cried Mrs Maddern.

    Everyone stared at her.

    “The pines! Have you managed to—”

    “No, Mrs Maddern,” he said, shaking his head. “Um, I was wondering, seein’ as how they sent the cactuses, Mrs Maddern— Well, the pinery at Chypsley be very fine.” He looked at her hopefully.

    “No, I am afraid not. I am really not on those terms with Lord and Lady Hubbel,” she said regretfully. “It is Lady Georgina—the Dowager Lady Hubbel—who was my late Mamma’s friend.”

    “Aye: old Mr Higgs, he do remember her Ladyship right well: he said—”

    “That will do,” said Mrs Maddern quickly. “I merely wished to enquire whether you had found a source of pines.”

    He shook his head gloomily. “Them as has ’em, they be right set on hangin’ on to ’em, you see, Mrs Maddern. And though they ain’t that hard to propagate—when you knows how,” he added hastily, “well—”

    “Yes, quite. Well, run along, John,” said Mrs Maddern. “ I will come along later and see how the cactus plants look,” she added kindly as the young man touched his forelock.

    “Aye; I’d like that, ma’am,” he said, beaming. “Good day, ma’am, good day, young ladies.” He went out, not without a last lingering glance at the blue bowl and a bashful, blushing look at Miss Amabel.

    “See! Sheep’s eyes!” choked Hildy, falling around the room laughing herself silly.

    “Hildegarde Maddern!” cried her mamma. “Pull yourself together!”

    “Mamma, you must have noticed! He thinks Amabel is the most wonderful thing that ever walked, merely because her kind heart overcame her honesty and she admired that row of dead-looking sticks he had set out in pots, and now she has set the seal to it by choosing a bowl for his hideous cactuses!”

    “Should it not be cacti?” ventured Gaetana, getting side-tracked.

    “Indubitably!” choked Hildy, going into a fresh paroxysm.

    “Hildegarde, one does not laugh at servants,” said her mother grimly. “And John Pringle is a most valuable asset: he has been excellently trained and is a master of his craft.”

    “Mamma, I dare say he is not a day above twenty-five, he is the merest boy! And he blushes whenever she smiles at him!” choked Hildy.

    Amabel herself blushed and protested: “Hildy, you are exaggerating.”

    “No, in this instance she is not exaggerating,” said Christabel on a grim note. “But she is certainly behaving with considerable want of delicacy.” She went out, frowning.

    “Oh, dear, now you have upset her,” worried Amabel.

    “No, no, Amabel, it is you who have upset her, she is jealous of John Pringle’s admiration for you—”

    “That is ENOUGH!” shouted Mrs Maddern

    Hildy subsided, pouting sulkily.

    Mrs Maddern took a deep breath. “If you wish for strawberries, Hildegarde, you may apologize to the company, and then go and apologize to Christabel. Otherwise you may stay behind when the rest of us drive over to Holmden House!”

    Hildy opened her mouth. She shut it again. “I apologize, Mamma, it was unnecessarily facetious and—and indelicate of me.”

    Mrs Maddern eyed her suspiciously but she appeared genuine. “Very well. Now go and apologize to Christa, if you please.”

    Hildy went out meekly.

    ... “And of course she never guessed that I did not wish to accept the invitation in the first place!” she gurgled the following afternoon in Mrs Urqhart’s garden.

    The old lady nodded. “No, I dare say. But you is fond of strawberries?”

    “Well, yes—very. Dr Rogers had them, we used to eat them with sugar and cream. But Mamma was assuming that the promise of strawberries would be enough to outweigh all other considerations! She must think I am still ten years old!” she choked.

    “Mm, I dare say. You don’t act like it, out of course.”

    Hildy grinned guiltily. “Only when I get desperately bored.”

    “Which ain’t often,” noted Mrs Urqhart, very drily. “Well, never mind, me dear, it was very proper in you to apologize, and as long as your poor mamma didn’t see through it, it don’t signify.”

    “She appeared not to. And she was so—so naïve about it, really, I suppose is what I mean,” said Hildy with a sigh: “that what else could I do but obey?”

    “Well, I don’t quite get that, but I’m all for peace in the house. ’Sides, if you go on getting under her skin she’ll only get all riled up. And it won’t make her stop tryin’ to turn you into a lady, you know,” she said, winking at her.

    “No, indeed!” agreed Hildy, laughing. “You are so very wise, dear Mrs Urqhart!”

    “Well, I wouldn’t say that, entirely,” replied Mrs Urqhart, very gratified. “Common sense is more my watchword, if you takes my meaning.”

    “Mm... Pragmatism.”—Mrs Urqhart did not understand that word: she merely lay back in her large white canvas hammock and fanned herself gently.—“Would you claim that the end justifies the means, Mrs Urqhart?”

    “Well, I might, if I knowed what you was talking about, me love!”

    Hildy was also in a hammock: she and Gaetana were enchanted by the discovery of these artefacts, which Mrs Urqhart caused to be slung between several very stout trees in her garden. Sometimes on a very hot day the shade of the trees would be augmented by the addition of several strips of bright cottons stretched taught between them. Often Bapsee would sit on cushions, fanning her mistress’s face or, the girls had discovered with mixed shock and ecstasy, her feet. At such times Mrs Urqhart would wear a drapery very much akin to Bapsee’s saree, for, as she confessed cheerfully to her fascinated visitors, she never had held with the wearing of corsets in the hot weather, it seemed like madness to her. And if the English memsahibs as did it out in India fainted like nobody’s business, to be sure it was their own stupidity to blame. And if they thought the gentlemen had objected to her going without one—jolly chuckle—they were very much mistaken! This particular day was merely pleasant, though certainly the warmest they had had for some time, and as she was wearing a heavy silk saree it was very probable that she was corsetless. The saree was a startling crimson, with a wide gold trim, and in deference to the English weather she had further adorned it with a white fur wrap lined with bright blue silk which lay half off her substantial form, draping onto the grass. Her grey hair, gathered back neatly, exactly as Bapsee wore hers, sported a large pink rose tucked into the bun. Completing the effect, huge pearl drops dangled from her ears.

    Rocking her hammock a little, Hildy explained: “I mean that if you wished something to occur which in itself was good, would you consider that you were justified in using any means to make it occur, however wicked?”

    “Well, now... Not however wicked, I wouldn’t,” she decided, having thought it over. “Only if it was just a little wicked, well, maybe I would!”

    “I thought so,” agreed Hildy, smiling at her.

    “Wouldn’t you?” Mrs Urqhart ate a nut.

    “No,” said Hildy on a regretful note. “Though I can see that it is a wholly sensible attitude. But I don’t think my conscience would let me.”

    “Well, now,” said Mrs Urqhart, twinkling very much and offering her the dish of nuts: “that’s pretty much what I thought, so we’re a pretty sharp pair, ain’t we?”

    “Yes, indeed!” gasped Hildy, gigging. “Um—I don’t think I will have any more nuts just yet, thank you.” she added, with a hopeful glance at the house.

    “Go on, me dear, have a nut, Gaetana’ll be in there burning butter and sugar and wondering why it don’t work out as good as Bapsee’s for hours, yet!”

    Grinning, Hildy took a nut and leaned back in her hammock.

    “Have a nap, deary, I nearly always do,” said Mrs Urqhart, yawning, “in the afternoons. It helps the digestion, is what Pumps always used to say.” As she then unashamedly closed her eyes, Hildy could see she meant it. She closed her eyes, too.

     In the garden, the bees hummed, the sun continued to shine, a tiny breeze moved the leaves gently, and Mrs Urqhart and Hildy slept.

    In the kitchen, surrounded by burnt sugar, burnt butter, and mounds of singed semolina and carrot, Gaetana sweated and stirred. Bapsee instructed her patiently. It would come right in the end. And there was no hurry.

    Mr and Mrs Knowles had three hopeful sons. This was a blessing, for Mrs Maddern had begun to experience a distinct feeling of annoyance that Lady Charleson had not produced a second son instead of Muzzie. But three sons of a suitable age! Even though Mr Knowles’s grandpapa had been in trade, Mrs Maddern managed to overlook it—after all, so had their dearest Dorothea’s grandpapa. And the young Messrs Knowles were all most proper young gentlemen.

    It was fortunate indeed that she could not know that in the wake of the strawberry breakfast Hildy and Gaetana would christen the three, in descending order of seniority, Prim, Prissy and Prue. The last short for Prudence, should anyone have enquired. Prim was tall and pale and very like his name: even his smile was proper. Prissy was shorter and much plumper and had a way of pursing up his mouth at anything of which he disapproved—some of Muzzie Charleson’s more artless remarks, for instance—and was in Holy Orders. Prue was short, pale and solid, and of a very prudent disposition indeed. Such matters as a little breeze’s getting up while the young people were wandering in the strawberry beds and the dangers of draughts in his parents’ carriage, should he venture on a drive such as that to see the ruined priory, exercised his mind very much. On enquiry he revealed that his health had always been delicate, and retailed the care his mamma had had to take over his chest when he had caught a feverish cold at the age of fourteen. After a short silence Gaetana had ventured: “Feverish cold?” and Hildy had asked baldly: “Is that the worst illness you have ever had, sir?” The solid Mr Prue had revealed mournfully that naturally he had had all the usual childish ailments, and never had his mamma seen anyone so full of measles as he had been, at the age of five years.

    So in the strawberry garden, Mr O’Flynn had it all his own way with Amabel, even her sweetness and prettiness not having made any visible impression on the Messrs Knowles. Christabel clung unashamedly to Paul’s arm, after trying to talk to Prim about his Papa’s draining the lower parts of his estate recently and having been met with: “It is kind in you to ask, Miss Maddern, but I will not bore a young lady’s ears with such a dull topic.” Hildy rapidly captured Eric Charleson and they took up their flirtation approximately where they had left it the last time they had met. This left the unfortunate Gaetana and Muzzie to be treated by Prissy to a dissertation on the desirability of the country people’s being required to attend two services on a Sunday and by Prue to an earnest warning of the dangers of eating fresh fruit in combination with cream. Muzzie’s delicious bergère hat and rustic basket tied up with blue ribbon bows to match the hat’s were entirely wasted, as, indeed, were Gaetana’s sprig muslin, delightful green shawl, and green-trimmed straw bonnet.

    Dorothea had not formed one of the party which went to Holmden House, for she had received a pressing invitation from Mrs Urqhart to visit that same day with Baby. She had been keen to go and Mrs Parkinson, though far from approving of Mrs Urqhart’s vulgarity, had urged her to accept. For in spite of Mrs Urqhart’s note having mentioned they would be “quite alone”, there was always the hope that—

    Mrs Urqhart having sent her own carriage for Dorothea and Baby Catherine, they set off not very long after the strawberry breakfast party. Bapsee, who had come with the carriage, immediately took charge of the little girl, so any fears Dorothea might have had about having to manage her without Nurse—Mrs Urqhart having issued the strange instruction “Do not Bother to bring Nurse, we shall be more Comfortable without”—were quickly allayed. Bapsee immediately provided Catherine with something delicious to suck and though this might not have been entirely desirable, as tending to spoil her, it certainly made for a peaceful, happy ride and induced Miss Catherine O’Flynn to look favourably upon Bapsee from the very outset.

    The gentlemen having gone out for the day, Sir Noël to pay a duty visit to some friends of his mamma’s who lived over towards Chipping Ditter, a considerable drive to the northwest, and Lord Lucas to indulge in some fishing, a passion his friend did not share, Mrs Urqhart proposed the hammocks after the midday meal, remarking with some vigour that the country people said it was the worst summer they could ever remember, and they had best grab what sun they could. Dorothea, a little surprized but willing, agreed. In the garden it was very evident that this had all been arranged, for an extraordinarily lovely flowered Persian rug in shades of blues and pinks was spread on the grass, and scattered with silken cushions and little brass trays of sweetmeats bedecked with flowers; and the two white-fringed hammocks were provided with more silk cushions and some warm shawls.

    “How lovely!” gasped Dorothea.

    “Aye, and now you have seen ’em, me dear,” said Mrs Urqhart with a fat chuckle, “you can understand as how a corset is the last thing one wishes to be a-wearing of, in ’em!”

    “No, indeed,” said Dorothea faintly, eyeing her hostess in awe: Mrs Urqhart was today swathed in a glorious turquoise silk saree scattered with gold medallions to match its gold-embroidered trim, over an abbreviated under-jacket of a bright blue with a little pattern of tiny gold flowers. It was evident she was not wearing a corset with this: for though the saree mostly veiled her, Dorothea had seen with a shock that Gaetana’s and Hildy’s accounts had not been exaggerated: there was nothing but Mrs Urqhart between this jacket and the waist of the saree. The old lady was again wearing the long blue-lined white fur wrap she had worn the day Gaetana had learned to cook hulwa, and though Dorothea had been brought up to believe that one could not possibly wear bright blue and turquoise together—and in particular not with a necklace of emeralds and huge emerald earrings—she could not persuade herself that Mrs Urqhart looked anything but magnificent. Well, bizarrely magnificent, but magnificent all the same.

    “Now, me dear, get yourself out o’ that corset,” the old lady ordered cheerfully, “for it do make me feel fair strangulated just to see you in it! I can see plain as plain that you’ve been squished into it like a sausage into its casing, and frankly, me dear, I think your mamma must have been crazy to allow it!”

    Dorothea involuntarily put her hand to her bosom. “It—it is Hildy’s dress, ma’am,” she admitted faintly.

    Mrs Urqhart sniffed. “Aye, well, she’s a skinny little thing. Now, Bapsee will hold up this cloth to screen you from the house—though they won’t look, never you fear, they knows it’s more than their lives are worth to so much as glance this way,” she added darkly, “and I’ll help you out if it meself!”

    “No, really, dear Mrs Urqhart, I do not think Mamma—”

    “But you would not lay yourself down upon your bed to rest in the afternoons all laced up like that, my dear!” she cried.

    “Wuh-well, no; but—but in my room...” she faltered.

    “Aye, well, this is like a bedroom, but in the open air! For the sailors sleep in these here things, you know, me dear, every night of their lives, and the minute as that pretty Lieutenant Lysle, he showed ’em to me, I thought: the very thing! And I wished I had had one in my pa’s garden—this very garden as we is in now, my dear—for although Pa had built me a most comfortable swing, it was nought but a seat. So when we gets our own house and garden in India I says to Pumps, Now, never pay no mind to what them lazy beggars tells you—begging your pardon, I’m sure, my dear—but you get hold of some of those hammocks and make em string ’em up all ship-shape under that great bunyun! Which is a tree as you don’t get in England, my dear. So he done it, and after we had made the butler try ’em, for he was a lazy dog as would not have supervised a thing without my eye upon him, and he had fallen to the ground and we had laughed ourselves silly, we got ’em strung up all right and tight, and after that had ’em in every garden as we had, and brought a nice set home to England with us! Because the natives they do favour a-sittin’ upon the ground, like Bapsee is now, the heathen,”—Bapsee giggled and pulled a fold of her saree further over her face—“only what I says is, there ain’t nothing like a bit of a breeze all round your body, in the warmer weather! And we did discover after, that a very grand gentleman indeed, what I won’t mention his name acos you won’t never have heard of him, my lovey, but he was a top gentleman in the Company, he had one exactly similar!”

    Limply Dorothea allowed Mrs Urqhart to divest her of her dress and remove the offending corset.

    “Drat,” the old lady discovered. “That will not do at all! Why, they is inches and inches larger than skinny little Hildy’s, my angel!”

    “Yes,” said Dorothea faintly, now a brilliant scarlet, no longer knowing what she was saying and wishing the soft grasses would part and the ground swallow her up.

    “Well, I’ll undo these,” decided Mrs Urqhart, attacking the tiny buttons that adorned the front of the pretty sprig muslin dress. “There, now! Plump ’em up, my love, edge ’em up above the silly thing’s waist. –Well, now!” she beamed, as Dorothea did so. “Bapsee!” she cried loudly, adding something which most fortunately was in a language that Dorothea did not understand.

    The ayah giggled very much. “Yes, indeed, Betsy Begum!”

    “Now in my day,” said Mrs Urqhart, allowing Bapsee to help her into her hammock—“yes, that will do, you go and help Mrs Dorothea—in my day, at least the corset and the dress could both be eased together, when a woman had growed some. For if the corset was laced, so was the bodice. And it do seem to me as our corsets were designed so as to hold one up as well as out, whereas these modern ones,”—she picked up a large fan and unfurled it—“ain’t designed to do nothing but squash and squish. And it’s small wonder as the dashers don’t wear ‘em!” she said, fanning herself and chuckling. “Now, my Pumps and me, we goes to a watering spot, two-three years after we had come home, it would have been, and the fashion is already in for little bits of muslin dresses, not to say your damped petticoats, which in the English climate seems to me a madness, but there! And we sees two of these dashers a-walking along arm-in--arm, one was a dark girl and one fair, though not near so pretty as you, my love,”—she eyed her complacently, what time Bapsee assisted her into the hammock—“and my Pumps, he chokes rather and says: ‘Am I dreaming?’ and I says ‘No, Pumps, and if you was, I should hope as you wasn’t dreaming of doin’ what you’ve got on your mind at this very minute!’ And he laughs himself silly, only after, he admits that it may be all very well for ladies as are not ladies, only a man would not like to see his own daughters in such a rig-out! And I says, ‘No, very true, my love’, and Pumps—for he was a One, me dear, I shall not scruple to admit it, for we is both married woman, aye and widows, too, what is more;” she sighed a little: Dorothea eyed her in alarm but she continued happily: “Pumps up and says: ‘Though I own I should not mind if the pretty things was to run round in our garden like that, me dear’—for our girls was both well growed—‘only more than that,’ says Pumps with a gleam in his eye, ‘I should like to see their ma in such a rig-out, and I dare say she might discover there was life in her old dog of a Pumps, still!’ At which we laughs very hearty, my dear, for if he did put on weight considerable, my Pumps was always a man, up to the very end.”

    “I see,” said Dorothea faintly.

    The old lady then lapsed in to reminiscences of India, remarking upon such things as Bapsee’s amaze at first seeing an English girl with pink nipples—Dorothea blushing all over again—as “the heathen” had only seen dark Indians or chee-chee girls: half-caste, me dear: English father, Indian mother; and the unwise decision of John Company to discourage the custom of earlier days for English officers to take Indian wives. Ending this involved somewhat involved peroration with: “It’s different out there, me love. And men will be men, whatever their colour or the country as they finds themselves in. It don’t make no different to a man what’s been at sea for weeks on end or up the country for months whether the girls are brown, black or sky-blue-pink, me dear!”

    “No,” she said, blushing fierily. “Men are—are animals, are they not?”

    “Rubbish, my deary!” cried the old lady. “They have animal natures, that is true enough, and some on ’em acts no better—no, worse, than the animals. But no-one can’t help his animal nature, and if some on ’em can’t control it as good as others, well, they is mostly not bad, only weak. We all on us is animals under these here garments, you know, me dear.”

    ”Yes,” said Dorothea, swallowing, “but some men, even gentlemen—” She broke off.

    “Now, now, lovey,” said Mrs Urqhart, patting her hand with her own warm, beringed one, “just because your first was a dead loss, ain’t to say as you might not find another gent who’d please you better, and know what a bargain he had and not go wandering off to other females’ beds!”

    “Yes,” said Dorothea faintly.

    “Your ma did just mention it the day they druv over,” she said casually.

    “Yes,” she whispered, blushing. “The poor girl had a baby, and—and Uncle O’Flynn was most kind and generous: he has settled her on his estate in Ireland.”

    “And so a decent feller should, me love! I gather as the Captain, he run off and abandoned the girl?”

    Dorothea nodded hard.

    “No, well, you is well out of it.” Here Mrs Urqhart broke off to order Bapsee to get a tray of chai, for she could just fancy it. Only no more of them dratted sweetmeats, mind! And Baby would be all right, and if she did whimper, her ma could pick her up, and get movin’, jooldee, jooldee! “But did you like it well enough in bed, my love?” she asked, giving her a searching look.

    Dorothea gulped. “Um—at first it was very strange,” she whispered.

    “Aye, it can be that, especial when you don’t have a clue what it’s all about. Bat later, me love? What about by the end of the honeymoon?”

    “Yes,” she said, tears starting to her eyes, “but then he began to say I was a boring, clinging woman and—and he could not be bothered with me.”

    Mrs Urqhart gave one of her sniffs. “Proves he weren’t no decent feller, then. And don’t you go thinkin’,” she said, giving her a shrewd look, “as it weren’t a merciful Providence what rescued you from a fellow like that, my lovey!”

    “I had not thought of it quite like that... Oh, Mrs Urqhart,” she said eagerly: “Do you really think that it—it could have been a dispensation of a merciful Providence?’

    Mrs Urqhart of course thought no such thing: she had seen far too much of life in all its varieties to believe much in any Providence, and certainly not a merciful one; but she said robustly: “’Deed I do, my angel! Why, there was never no need for him to get killed at Waterloo at all, so many officers come through it without a scratch, look at Noël and Lucas! Only in your case, there was a reason for him to be took. And if I were you I would say a little prayer of thanks for God’s understanding and pity when you goes to church of a Sunday!”

    “I shall. I had felt,” she said stiltedly, “that it was wicked to be glad that—that his death had released me.”

    “Aye, but when you think it over it don’t make sense, do it? –Here is that tea at last, what has that woman been a-doing of in there?”

    They drank tea comfortably, all three of them, Mrs Urqhart endeavouring to explain that although Hindoos would not eat and drink with you, though some might drink if they had prepared it themselves, Bapsee, being of a different persuasion, did not mind. But there were meats as she wouldn’t touch, not if it was ever so, and if Mrs Urqhart was to say “P,I,G” the creature would scream and clap her hands to her ears, and wasn’t it amazing, the variety the Lord had put on the earth?

    Dorothea, dazed but smiling, agreed to this.

    Mrs Urqhart was quite satisfied and cheerfully urged her to a nap, forthwith closing her own eyes. Bapsee arranged a light Cashmere shawl on the guest’s feet, removing her shoes without being asked to do so and, as her hostess had drifted off, Dorothea closed her eyes and allowed herself to do likewise.

    Lord Lucas, making his way back slowly from the stream where he had not had very much luck, had encountered Lord Rockingham, out riding on his black.. Naturally the younger man had not enquired, but it did not seem to him that his Lordship was on his way to anywhere in particular. The more so as Rockingham, after inspecting the catch and telling him in great detail of a much better fishing spot, further downstream, asked where he was staying and forthwith decided to accompany him back to The Towers, noting gleefully: “The nabob’s widow! I cannot wait!”

    They emerged onto the edge of the lawn to a view of a perfect pastoral scene: the young mother, her babe in her arms, lying back with her bosom half-exposed, amidst the dappled shadows of the drooping foliage. –Mrs Urqhart had persuaded the blushing Dorothea to let the tiny girl suck, it would pacify her. Which it had done. Why Dorothea had let herself be persuaded she could not have said—though it was true that they had seen no-one all afternoon except the elderly Bapsee.

    “Sight for sore eyes,” muttered Rockingham, grinning all over his dark face.

    “Yes,” said Lord Lucas huskily, wishing to God that he had not given in to the Marquis’s breezy declaration that their easiest route would be to lead the horses round via the garden.

    “Mm. Ain’t they sweet?”

    “Er—yes,” he muttered, very red, hurrying off.

    Rockingham watched the scene for a few moments, smiling, and then followed him at leisure.

    When they eventually were ushered onto the lawn by a footman the ladies had both been awakened and Mrs O’Flynn was entirely proper, draped in the colourful folds of a bright shawl.

    As might have been expected by anyone who knew the two of them, the Marquis of Rockingham and Mrs Urqhart were delighted with each other—for his refusal to indulge in the social niceties marched very well with the old lady’s frankness of speech; or, to put it another way, as Mrs Urqhart very soon did, they were each of ’em such as called a spade a spade.

    Rockingham was in no hurry to leave, and when Mrs O’Flynn and her little girl eventually took their leave of their hostess—the old Indian servant quickly gathering up a bundle from the ground which Rockingham kindly did not look at, for he had already spotted, with huge amusement, that it was a corset—and Lord Lucas had gone indoors to change, he accepted the offer of a glass of something without even enquiring as to what, climbed into Mrs O’Flynn’s vacated hammock without asking if he might, leaned back in it and said to his hostess with a laugh: “I must say, you know how to live, ma’am!”

    “I ought to have learned some sense, at my age!” responded Mrs Urqhart simply. “And torturing oneself for some silly idea of what be right or wrong ain’t my idea of living at all!”

    “Nor mine,” he admitted.

    “No, but you has a position, me Lord, which I,” said the shrewd old lady, “does not.”

    “Very true,” he said with a grimace. “It is not often that I manage to escape from my damned obligations.”

    “Aye: I can believe that, acos all the folk hereabouts say that you are an excellent landlord.”

    “Thank you,” he said in astonishment.

    “I may live retired, but I has my ear to the ground,” she assured him.

    “So I see. Er—have you known Mrs O’Flynn long, ma’am?”

    “No. Has you?” she replied.

    “Er—no. A matter of a few months; I do not know her at all well.”

    “Knowed her late hubby, did you?”

    “Not at all, I am thankful to— Not at all,” he said shortly.

    “Ah.”

    “Mrs Urqhart,” said the Marquis desperately, “I have no notion what you may be thinking, but if you imagine that I see myself as some sort of rival to Lucas Claveringham, let me assure you it is no such thing!”

    “Oh, ain’t it? Well, that weren’t what it looked like when the pair of you come round them bushes and spotted her with the baby to her tit,” she said frankly.

    Rockingham had to swallow. “I thought you were asleep,” he owned.

    “Aye, else you would not have stood and stared,” she noted drily.

    “Well—no. But I would still have enjoyed it, ma’am!” he added hastily.

    At this Mrs Urqhart laughed so much she nearly fell out of her hammock. “You is not all bad!” she choked at last. “Would still have enjoyed it, would you?” She had another wheezing fit.

    Rockingham eyed her in some alarm but her constitution appeared to support the fit, for she then fumbled in her capacious bosom, produced a handkerchief, trumpeted into it, tucked it away again, sighed gustily and said: “Joking aside, you was not unaffected by the pretty little widder—and before you says anything, I knows as he were too, that’s what I’m sayin’!”

    “Er—yes. But what man with red blood in his veins would not have been, ma’am?”

    “Aye, and between you and me, I was right glad to see it. I knowed as I was right to make her get out of that dratted corset as was squishing her up real flat, only I never dreamed as that would be the outcome!” she added happily.

    Rockingham promptly had another fit.

    Mrs Urqhart eyed him complacently but in spite of his avowal that he was not Lucas Claveringham’s rival and for all he was what she categorized as an old and ugly fellow, she did not entirely trust him, and did not entirely trust that Dorothea would not be swayed by a vision of becoming a marchioness, and silently made up her mind she would be very careful not to invite him when she invited her.

    Next morning, when Lord Lucas declared in a casual voice that he had thought of riding over to the Manor today to pay his respects, she encouraged him loudly, and advised him to take a posy for Mrs O’Flynn, for them other girls was used to fine London posies, but she would bet her best necklace the little widow had not received any such attention this many a long day. Lord Lucas, rather startled, and rather red, too, said that if she thought so, then he would. Mrs Urqhart immediately sent for the head gardener and when he came screamed at him for a long time in Hindoostanee, the result of which—the little gardener seeming only happily eager to please in any case—was an huge bunch of mixed English and exotic blooms, giving an effect  which Sir Noël, at least, thought rather odd, though he kindly refrained from saying so.

    Mrs Urqhart accompanied Lord Lucas to the front steps to wave goodbye and said, when he was barely out of earshot, digging her nephew in the ribs: “Look at him go! Lordy, every every-step that nag is takin’ must be givin’ him an agony, in the state he is in!”

    “Aunt Betsy, I absolutely refuse to contemplate what you mean by that!” choked her nephew.

    Chuckling richly, Mrs Urqhart dug him in the ribs again.

    “I envy him,” he admitted glumly.

    “Yes, well, you will find a nice girl for yourself very soon, my lovey, I has no doubt.”

    “Do I want one, though?” he said with a twist of the lips.

    Mrs Urqhart eyed him dubiously.

    “Oh, well,” he said with a shrug.

    “Now, do not be downhearted, Noël,” she said, leading him back into the house, “for you is twice as bright as Lucas, you know, though he is a decent fellow enough, and a little rumty-tum girl like Mrs O’Flynn would not do for you at all, you would be bored with her within a twelvemonth.”

    “Er—probably. I was not contemplating spending a twelvemonth with Mrs O’Flynn, Aunt Betsy.”

    “I knows that, y’fool! Now, if you has nothing better to do, you may come in the barouche with me, I has to go to Daynesford for a few bibs and bobs.”

    Sir Noël bowed and escorted her with a good grace.

    However, when they had returned and had eaten a nuncheon, and she declared her intention of having forty winks, he asked for his horse to be brought and on enquiry revealed in a very airy voice that he thought he might ride over to Willow Court.

    Mrs Urqhart made no protest, for she was too shrewd for that. But when Sir Noël had gone she lay down in her spacious bedroom, with her corsets off, and had a very long think. At the conclusion of which she called loudly for pen and ink, and laboriously wrote out a note, with much head-scratching, sucking of the pen, staring into space, and muttering.

    “There!” she said when she had finished it. “Now we shall see what we shall see!” She sat back against her pillows, looking grimly satisfied, and rang the bell again.

    “This must go to London tonight without fail,” she said when Bapsee appeared. “Send up one of the grooms, I will speak to him myself.”

    “But Betsy Begum, is not proper—”

    “Send me the syce, jooldee, you impertinent heathen!” she screamed.

    Bapsee bowed obediently and withdrew.

    “For,” said Mrs Urqhart crossly to herself: “I will not have it, not if it was ever so!”