‘Well, that’s where you’re fair and far off,’ he told her severely. ‘I’ve got all my toggery waiting for me at the Golden Lion here, and a chaise hired to bring me on to Brent House. Yes, and when I think that I never planned anything so carefully in my life, only to have it overset because nothing would do for you but to show how clever you are by screeching that you knew me, I have a dashed good mind to wash my hands of the whole business!’
‘Good God, dear boy, mustn’t say things like that!’ intervened Mr Fancot, considerably shocked. ‘I know you don’t mean it, but if anyone else heard you –’
‘Well, there isn’t anyone else to hear me,’ said the Viscount snappishly, walking away to where his groom was holding his horse.
Mr Fancot, feeling that it behoved him to make his excuses for him, pressed up to the carriage, and bowed again to its dimly seen occupants, saying confidentially: ‘He don’t mean what he says when he gets in a miff – no need to tell you so! I know Dy, you know Dy! He won’t buckle!’
‘Mr Fancot,’ said Nell, almost overcome by mortification, ‘I am persuaded I have no need to beg you not to tell anyone why Dysart tried to hold me up tonight!’
‘I shouldn’t dream of it!’ Mr Fancot assured her earnestly. ‘Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me! Well, it stands to reason they couldn’t, because, now I come to think of it, I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’ she repeated incredulously.
‘Forgot to ask him,’ he explained. ‘Well, I mean to say – no business of mine! Dy said, Come and help me to hold up m’sister’s carriage! and I said, Done! or some such thing. Nothing else I could say. Dashed inquisitive to be asking him why, you know!’
At this moment Dysart called impatiently to him, so he made his bow, and went off. Nell sank back into her corner of the carriage, exclaiming: ‘Thank heavens! I was ready to sink!’ She became aware of her footman awaiting orders, and said hastily: ‘Tell James to drive on, if you please! His lordship was – was just funning!’
‘I should think he must believe his lordship to be out of his mind,’ observed Letty, as the carriage moved forward. ‘Why did he do it, Nell?’
‘Oh, for a nonsensical reason!’
‘Very likely! But what nonsensical reason?’
‘I wish you will take a leaf out of that absurd Fancot’s book, and not ask inquisitive questions!’
‘I daresay you do, but I shan’t! Come, now, you sly thing!’
‘No, pray don’t tease me!’ Nell begged.
‘Oh, very well! I wonder what Giles will say to it?’ said Letty, all sprightly innocence.
‘Letty! You wouldn’t – !’
‘Not if I were in your confidence, of course!’ replied Letty piously.
‘Really, you are the most unscrupulous girl!’ declared Nell.
Letty giggled. ‘No, I am not, for I never betray secrets! I shan’t rest till I know this one, I warn you, for I cannot conceive what was in Dysart’s head, unless he was just knocking up a lark, and that I know he was not.’
‘Well, pray don’t think too badly of him!’ Nell said, capitulating.
But Letty, listening entranced to Nell’s story, did not think at all badly of Dysart. She said handsomely that he had far more wit than she had ever guessed, and was much inclined to join him in blaming Nell for not having held her peace. ‘For if only you had pretended not to recognize him everything would now be in a fair way to being settled. And you can’t deny that if you had truly not known him you wouldn’t have cared a button for your jewels. I suppose you might have guessed how it was, when he brought you the money, but that wouldn’t have signified!’
‘How can you say so? My peace would have been utterly cut up! I must have told Cardross – yet how might I have done so, when already he thinks Dy too – too rackety? Oh, it would have been worse than anything!’
‘I declare you are the oddest creature!’ Letty exclaimed. ‘For my part, I think you should have sold some of your jewels, and I don’t wonder at it that Dysart is out of all patience with you! I suppose you may do what you choose with what is your own!’
She continued arguing in this strain until Brent House was reached; and when Dysart presently joined his sister, in something very like a fit of the sullens, did much to restore him to good-humour by heartily applauding his ingenuity, commiserating him on the mischance which had brought his scheme to nothing, and abusing Nell for having such stupid crotchets. For once they found themselves much in sympathy, but when the Viscount said that if Nell made such a piece of work over a little necessary deception she had better screw up her courage and tell Cardross she was under the hatches again, agreement was at an end between them. Letty strongly opposed this suggestion. In her experience, Cardross, in general so indulgent, was abominably severe if he considered one had been extravagant; and if confronted by debts (however inescapable) he became positively brutal. She spoke with feeling, her last encounter with her exasperated brother still vivid in her mind. ‘Only because I purchased a dressing-case, which every lady must have, and desired him in the civilest way to pay for it, for how could I do so myself on the paltry sum he allows me for pin-money – he sent it back to the shop! I was never so mortified! And, would you credit it, Dysart? – he promised me that if I again ran into debt he would send me down to Merion in charge of a strict governess! A governess – !’
The Viscount was not much impressed – and, indeed, he would have been still less impressed had he been privileged to set eyes on the necessary adjunct to a lady’s comfort in question. A handsome piece of baggage, that dressing-case, with every one of its numerous cut-glass bottles fitted with gold caps, embellished with a tasteful design in diamond-chips. It had made the second footman, a stout youth, sweat only to carry it up one pair of stairs; and when it was flung open it had quite dazzled the eyes of all beholders. It had dazzled Cardross’s eyes so much that he had closed them, an expression on his face of real anguish.
‘That has nothing to say to anything. I daresay he thought it not the thing for you,’ said the Viscount, with unconscious shrewdness. ‘But everyone knows court dresses cost the deuce of a lot of money, and I shouldn’t wonder at it if –’
‘When Giles discovered that Nell was so monstrously in the wind he said such things as cast her into the greatest affliction!’
‘Were you there?’ demanded the Viscount suspiciously.
‘No, I was not there, but I saw her directly afterwards, and she was quite overset! She cried in the most affecting way, and ever since she has been subject to fits of sad dejection. If you abandon her, it will the most abominable thing I ever heard of!’