Cotillion

It would have been too much to have said that he did not recognize Miss Charing in her elegant apparel, but she had the satisfaction of knowing that he was certainly surprised. His brows went up; he stood looking keenly at her for several moments before he spoke; and then he crossed the room towards her, and said laughingly: ‘Accept my sincerest felicitations, Kitty! Upon my word, I had almost made my most formal bow to my cousin’s unknown, fashionable guest! What a fortunate dog you are, Freddy! Really, I can’t feel that I congratulated you sufficiently!’

Freddy, who had regarded his entrance with marked disfavour, said: ‘Well, it don’t signify. Devilish queer times you choose to go paying visits!’

‘Don’t I?’ agreed Mr Westruther, possessing himself of Kitty’s hands, and holding them so that he could look her up and down. ‘Charming, Kitty! You are as fine as fivepence! Were you guided by Freddy’s exquisite taste, or is this new touch all of your own devising?’

This bantering tone filled Miss Charing with a strong desire to slap him. Repressing so ungenteel an impulse, she replied affably: ‘Do you think I look well? I am so glad, but you should rather compliment Meg than Freddy.’

‘Then I do compliment Meg,’ he said, letting go her hands, and turning towards Lady Buckhaven. ‘Here you are, my little gamester! You came off all right.’

She took the slim packet he held out to her, and gave a delighted crow of triumph. ‘I knew it must win! I am very much obliged to you! Have I ruined you quite?’

‘Oh, run me off my legs! I must be rolled-up, or put a pistol to my head: I can’t decide which fate to choose.’

She laughed. ‘How sorry I am! Freddy, only fancy! There was a horse running today called Mandarin! And Jack laid me odds it would not win! So absurd of him, for how could it help but win, with my dear Buckhaven on his way to China?’

Freddy, who was inclined to view her sudden interest in the Turf with disapprobation, was just about to state his opinion in a few simple, brotherly words when he was interrupted by Miss Charing, who said, with a great deal of vivacity: ‘Oh, Jack, I must show you what Freddy has given me! See! Are they not pretty? The very ornaments above all others I so much wished for!’

Mr Westruther put up his glass to look at the earrings. Nothing could

have been blander than the tone he used to express his admiration of the trinkets, but Kitty was quick to perceive a flicker of surprise in his eyes, and was satisfied that whatever suspicions he might nourish she had at least puzzled him.

The tea-tray was brought in just then. Meg pressed Mr Westruther to stay long enough to drink a cup with them, and Mr Westruther, at his most provoking, said: ‘Do you think I dare? I have the oddest feeling that Freddy wishes me to go away. I had no notion of his being so strict a brother! My dear coz, I do trust that the queer times I choose for paying visits have not misled you into thinking that my intentions are dishonourable?’

‘Good gracious!’ cried Miss Charing, much diverted. ‘As though he could be so stupid! I am persuaded you might visit at any hour you pleased, and the only thing anyone would say is, Oh, it is only Jack!’

She then wished that she had held her tongue, for Mr Westruther smiled approvingly at her, and said: ‘Well done, Kitty!’

He then proceeded, to her discomfiture, to enquire when he must set about the task of buying his wedding-gift, and, when she told him that the date of the ceremony was not yet decided, said: ‘Ah, exactly so! I was forgetting! The engagement is not immediately to be announced, is it? I wish you will tell me why you are keeping it a secret! I have been racking my brain to hit upon the reason, without the smallest success!’

Mr Standen, somewhat to Kitty’s surprise, came unexpectedly to the rescue. ‘Measles,’ he said. ‘M’mother means to give a dress-party for Kit. Can’t do it now. Better to wait a few weeks.’

‘Of course!’ said Mr Westruther. ‘How could I be so bird-witted? And where do you mean to spend the honeymoon?’

‘We—we have not made up our minds!’ said Kitty.

‘Yes, we have,’ interpolated Freddy. ‘Going to Paris.’ He thought for a moment, and added: ‘Kit wishes to meet her French relations.’

‘My dear Kitty, why did you not tell me so?’ said Mr Westruther, quite shocked. ‘Had I had the least suspicion of this very natural desire—! But it is not too late, I believe, to rectify my omissions! I have reason to think that one of your French relations is even now in London. Let me assure you that I shall lose no time in bringing him to visit you! You will like him excessively—a man of the first rank and character, I am persuaded! Dearest Meg, I must tear myself away from you—positively I must! Past ten o’clock, and I pledged to present myself at the Rockcliffes’ not an instant later than half-past nine! I must obviously make haste, or I shall be guilty of unpunctuality. I kiss your hands, my charmer, and Kitty’s cheek. Oh, you have no occasion to blush, absurd child! Recollect that I was your first love—in your nursery-days, of course, so Freddy must not take umbrage!’

Her colour was indeed heightened, but she said, stammering a little: ‘Yes, indeed you w-were, but Freddy won’t take umbrage at that, for you are precisely a schoolgirl’s notion of what a romantic hero should be, Jack!’

The laughter was back in his yes. ‘A doubler!’ he said.

Her own gaze fell; she said hurriedly: ‘But tell me! Who is this relation of mine, pray?’

‘The Chevalier d’Evron. Rely upon me to make him known to you!’

A friendly nod to Freddy, and he was gone. Kitty said doubtfully: ‘Who can it be? I never heard of such a person, you know!’

‘If you ask me,’ said Freddy, in a mood of dark scepticism, ‘it’s a hum! Playing off his tricks, that’s what I thought!’

‘Why, whatever can you mean?’ cried Meg. ‘He said the Chevalier was a man of the first rank and character!’

‘Heard him,’ replied Freddy. ‘Might not have thought it was a bubble, if he hadn’t said that. Dashed smoky, that’s what it is! I know Jack! If this Chevalier of his is one of Kit’s relations, willing to lay you a monkey he turns out to be a dirty dish!’ He saw that he had alarmed and slightly offended Miss Charing, and added kindly: ‘No need to take a pet! Very likely thing to happen! Everyone has ’em in the family. We have. Well, you ask Meg if it ain’t so!’

‘Yes, very true!’ corroborated his sister. ‘And they always arrive, without the least warning, to spend a long visit just when one is giving a ton party!’

‘Under a cloud, and telling you there’s an execution in the house,’ nodded Freddy.