‘How can you be so heartless?’ wept Harriet. ‘I might have guessed this would happen! I mistrusted her from the start. Perry is tired of me, and she has stolen him from me.’
‘I have a great affection for Perry,’ responded Judith tartly, ‘but I doubt very much his having the power to engage Lady Barbara’s interest. Depend upon it, you are making a mountain out of a molehill.’
‘Oh no! I have been so poorly of late that I have had no spirits to go into society, and so he has looked elsewhere for amusement. I see it all!’
‘Well, Harriet, if he had looked elsewhere it would not be surprising. You know how much I have always deprecated your giving way to lowness as you do. If you have a particle of sense you will abandon your sofa and your everlasting hartshorn, give up maudling your inside with tea, and go about a little, and forget your delicate situation. There! That is plain speaking, but good advice. Dry your tears, and do not waste another thought on the matter. You must have forgotten that Lady Barbara is betrothed to Charles. How could she possibly flirt with Perry?’
‘There is nothing too base for that creature to do!’ Harriet said, roused to a ferocity surprising in one ordinarily so gentle. ‘I pity Charles Audley! He may be deceived, but I am not.’
‘That must be considered an advantage. With your eyes open to a possible danger you may act with tact and prudence.’
‘It is very easy for you to talk in that careless way! Your husband has not been stealing away from you to flirt with a fast, unprincipled female!’
‘Come! This is much better,’ said Judith, with a smile. ‘If flirtation is all you have to worry about, there can be no occasion for such heat. Lady Bab flirts with everyone, but I believe it to be no more than a fashionable diversion, signifying precisely nothing.’
Harriet burst into tears, and while Judith was endeavouring to give her thoughts a more cheerful direction, Colonel Audley strolled into the room with his nephew on his shoulder. He stopped dead on the threshold when he saw what lay before him, hastily begged pardon, and retreated with all a man’s horror of becoming mixed up in a scene of feminine vapours. But before he could make good his escape Judith had called to him to stay.
‘Charles, for goodness’ sake come here and tell Harriet what a goose she is!’
‘Oh!’ gasped the afflicted lady. ‘He must not know!’
‘Fiddle!’ said Judith. ‘If the tale is all over town, as you say it is, he will know soon enough. Charles, Harriet has taken a notion into her head that Perry has fallen in love with Lady Barbara, and has been seen dining with her in the suburbs. Now, is there one word of truth in it?’
‘I hope he has not fallen in love with her, but it is quite true that they dined together in the suburbs,’ replied the Colonel. He set his nephew down, and set him back to his nurse with a friendly pat. ‘Off with you, monkey! I am afraid you must blame me, Lady Taverner: it was entirely my fault.’
‘Oh no, no!’
‘On the contrary, it is oh yes, yes!’ he said, smiling. ‘The case was, that Bab took a fancy into her head to dine by the roadside at one of those cafés outside the Porte de Namur. I could not escort her, and so Perry became my deputy. That is the whole truth in a nutshell.’
‘I knew there must be some very ordinary explanation,’ exclaimed Judith. ‘Now, Harriet, you can be satisfied, I hope. If Charles sees no harm I am sure you need not.’
But Harriet was far from being satisfied. If the affair had been innocent, why had Perry kept it a secret?
‘What! did he forget to tell you?’ said the Colonel, exchanging a startled glance with his sister-in-law. ‘Stupid young rascal! I advise you to take him severely to task: he’s a great deal too forgetful!’
It would not do. Harriet dried her tears, but a score of incidents had been recalled to her mind, and she could not convince herself that Peregrine had not from the outset been attracted by Barbara’s wiles. The Colonel’s presence made it impossible for her to say that it was all Barbara’s fault, which she was sure it was, and so she was silent, allowing Judith to talk, but too busy with her own thoughts to lend more than half an ear to all the sensible things
that were being said to her.
She presently went away, leaving Judith and Audley to look at one another in some consternation.
‘My dear Charles, nothing could be more unfortunate!’ Judith said, with a rueful laugh. ‘I acquit Lady Barbara of wishing to enslave poor Perry, but I am afraid there may be a grain of truth in Harriet’s suspicions. It has sometimes seemed to me that Perry was a trifle smitten with Lady Barbara.
‘Yes, I think he is,’ admitted the Colonel. ‘But really, Judith, I believe it to be Harriet’s own fault!’
‘Oh, undoubtedly, and so I have told her! It all arose out of that wretched expedition to Hougoumont! I wish I had not meddled!’
He looked at her with arrested expression in his eyes. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What occurred at Hougoumont to give rise to this piece of nonsense?’
The colour rushed into her face. Vexed with herself for having allowed such unguarded words to escape her, she said: ‘Oh, nothing, nothing! It was only that Harriet took a dislike to Lady Barbara!’
‘Indeed! Why should she do that?’
She found herself unable to meet his gaze with composure, and turned away on the pretext of shaking up the sofa cushions. ‘Oh! You know what a country mouse Harriet is! She has not been in the way of meeting fashionable people, and is easily shocked. Lady Barbara was in one of her capricious moods, and I daresay that may have set Harriet against her.’
‘You may as well tell me the truth, Judith. Did Bab’s caprice lead her to flirt with Perry, or what?’
‘No, certainly not. Perry was with us the whole time,’ she said involuntarily.