Black Sheep

'Almost none, I fear. Would you marry me if I had?'

She ignored this. 'Or any sense of shame either! But you have a great deal of quickness, and I'm persuaded you must see how outrageous it would be if I were to do the very thing I am trying to prevent Fanny from doing!'

'O my God!' he ejaculated. 'These Calverleighs – !'

'Exactly so!'

'Do you think exactly?' he asked diffidently. 'Would you object to it if I were to point out to you certain differences between the Calverleighs?'

She put out her hand impulsively. 'Oh, I know, I know!

There is no comparison between you!'

He took her hand, and held it lightly on his knee. 'Oh, there is some comparison! Shocking fellows, both of us! I was one of the roaring-boys when I was on the town: they used to say of me that I was a hell-born babe – too rackety by half ! But what no one ever said of me, not even my loving family, was that I was a bounce, or a queer-nabs!'

'Do they say that of Stacy?' she asked anxiously.

'So I've been informed, and I don't find it at all difficult to believe. Well, to continue our respective histories, each of us eloped with an heiress – or, rather, attempted to do so.'

'But you were in love with Celia! You didn't care for her fortune!' she interpolated swiftly.

'No, nor was I nine-and-twenty. I'm in love with you, and I don't care for your fortune.'

'You need not tell me that! Besides, I haven't a fortune. Not like Fanny! I think you would call it an independence, perhaps, or an easy competence.'

'Well, that's one objection disposed of: no one would be able to say that I married you for your fortune.'

'You wouldn't care if they did!' she said shrewdly.

'No, but you would.' There was a good deal of amusement in his eyes as they rested on her face. 'Just what do you imagine I've been doing during the past twenty years, dear innocent?'

'I don't know. How should I? You have never told me!'

'I'll tell you now. I've been making my fortune, of course.'

She laughed. 'So now you are a nabob! How stupid of me not to have guessed it!'

An odd smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. 'Just so!' he said. 'You aren't even interested, are you?'

'Well, no!' she confessed. 'Except that I did think you were perhaps a trifle purse-pinched, and I collect that this isn't the

case, which I'm glad of, for your sake.'

'Thank you,' he said meekly.

'You know, if you were a rich nabob, your nephew might look to you rather than to Fanny to rescue him from his embarrass ments,' she said.

'Not unless he was touched in his upper works! That would be rainbow-chasing, my dear!'

She smiled, but her own words had recalled her overriding anxiety to her mind. She drew her hand away, which had been resting snugly in his clasp, and gave a sigh. 'Wouldn't you do it, if it lay within your power? No, I suppose you wouldn't. Isn't there anything you might do to save my poor Fanny?'

'I thought it wouldn't be long before we came back to your poor Fanny. You are determined to embroil me in her affairs, aren't you?'

'Don't be vexed with me!' she begged. 'It is so very important! Perhaps you couldn't do anything, but you might be able to – if not for Fanny's sake, for mine?'

'Yes, well, let us now emerge from this pretty fairy-story!' he said, with a touch of astringency. 'If you imagine that I have the smallest desire to receive your hand as a reward for having performed a difficult task to your satisfaction you're beside the bridge, my child! I've no fancy for a reluctant wife. I want your love, not your gratitude.'

'I didn't say that!' she faltered. 'Indeed, I didn't!'