April Lady

‘No, but it was a desperate thing to do, Dy, and it quite cut up my peace. I can’t but wonder what next you may do, which puts me in high fidgets. Because –’

‘Gammon!’ interrupted Dysart. ‘Why, I wasn’t even going to take Letty’s trinkets! What’s more, this is all humdudgeon! You wouldn’t have cared a button for losing your jewels – now, would you?’

‘N-no, but –’

‘And you’d have been devilish thankful not to have recognized me, if I’d handed over the dibs to you next day. And it’s my belief,’ pursued the Viscount relentlessly, ‘that you’d have taken good care not to have asked me how I’d come by them!’

Stricken, she said: ‘Oh, Dy, I am sadly afraid that that is true! It is the most mortifying reflection, too!’

‘Stuff!’ said the Viscount contemptuously. ‘Now, there’s no need for you to sit there looking as blue as a razor, Nell! I don’t mean to leave you in the lurch, I promise you. I’ve got one or two capital notions in my head, but I can’t raise the wind all in a trice, so it ain’t a bit of use fretting like a fly in a tar-box, and wanting to know every time you see me what I’ve been doing! Give me a week, and see if I don’t have the business blocked at both ends!’

She regarded him in some apprehension. ‘What notions have you in your head, Dy?’

‘Never you mind!’ he replied crushingly. ‘One notion I’ve got is that the less you know about it the better!’

Her apprehension grew; she said: ‘I won’t tease you, but I think I would rather know!’

‘Yes, I daresay, but you can’t expect me to pull you out from under the hatches if you turn maggotty every time I hit on a scheme,’ said the Viscount. ‘And that’s just what you would do, for you seem to me to be regularly betwattled!’

‘I am very sorry!’ she said humbly. ‘I do try to take it with composure, but it is excessively hard to do so when one is in such affliction, Dy! Every time I hear the door-knocker I think it may perhaps be Lavalle, coming to demand her money from Cardross, and alarm suspends all my faculties!’

‘Now, don’t be such a goosecap, Nell!’ recommended the Viscount, putting his arm round her shoulders and giving her a slight hug. ‘She won’t do that. Not for a week or two, at all events. You may depend upon it she knows, if you don’t, that it must take you a little while to raise the ready. Ay, and unless she’s as big a greenhead as you are yourself, which it stands to reason she can’t be, she knows you will pay her,’ he added shrewdly. ‘All she meant to do was to frighten you into paying down the dust as soon as possible. She’ll give you a week’s grace at the least, and very likely longer. When does Cardross come back to town?’

‘On Monday, I think. I am not perfectly sure, but he said that he would be away for a se’ennight.’ Nell was silent for a moment, and then said, turning her face away: ‘I quite dread his coming, and that is more lowering than all the rest!’

He was spared the necessity of answering her by Letty’s coming back into the room at that moment. She was wearing her hat, and a light shawl, draped gracefully across her elbows; and she had come merely to take leave of Nell, and to inform her that she should send the carriage back immediately from her aunt’s house, in case her sister should be needing the services of the coachman. She pointedly ignored the Viscount, but kissed Nell’s cheek very affectionately, and told her not to dream of sending the carriage to fetch her away from Bryanston Square, since her aunt would undoubtedly provide for her safe return.

‘All that finery just for an aunt?’ said Dysart, critically surveying her. ‘I must say, that’s a deuced fetching bonnet!’

Becoming aware of his existence, Letty raised her brows as haughtily as she could, and said in freezing accents: ‘You are too kind, sir!’

‘Silly chit!’ said Dysart indulgently.

Her eyes flashed, but Nell intervened hastily, before she could again cross swords with her incorrigible tormentor. ‘You look charmingly,’ she assured her, edging her towards the door. ‘I will come and see you into the carriage. Will you be warm enough, do you think, with only that shawl?’

‘No, I daresay I shan’t be,’ Letty replied candidly, ‘but it is so dowdy to wear a pelisse!’ She paused in the hall to draw on her gloves, and said in a brooding tone: ‘I don’t wish to distress you, Nell, but I think Dysart is the most odious, uncivil person I ever met!’

Nell laughed. ‘Yes, indeed! I am sure you must. The thing is, you see, that because you are my sister he treats you as though you were his as well.’

‘My brother has a great many fault

s, but he doesn’t use me in that fashion!’

‘No, for he is so much older than you. If you had had one of your own age you wouldn’t be such a goose as to let Dy put you in a miff,’ Nell said, smiling.

‘I am excessively thankful that I have not one, and I assure you, Nell, I feel for you!’

‘Thank you! Mine is a hard case indeed,’ Nell said, her eyes brimful of amusement. ‘You nonsensical creature! There, don’t take me in aversion as well! Good-bye: you will say everything from me to your aunt that is proper, if you please. I fear she may hold me to blame for your neglect of her, but I hope she may give me credit for sparing you to her today.’

She spoke lightly, but she was very sensible of Mrs Thorne’s claims on Letty. Cardross, believing that Letty’s faults were to be laid at the poor lady’s door, might wish to detach her from that household, but Nell could never bring herself to promote this object. Indeed, she had more than once suggested to Letty that she should pay her aunt a morning visit. It did not surprise her to learn that Mrs Thorne thought herself ill-used, for she too thought that Letty showed sadly little observance to one who had stood to her in place of her mother. She would, in fact, have been very much surprised had she known that so far from begging her niece to visit her that morning Mrs Thorne had not the smallest notion that she was to receive this treat, and had gone out with her daughter Fanny on a tour of the silk warehouses.

It was Miss Selina Thorne who awaited Letty; and as soon as she saw the carriage draw up outside the house she came running down from the drawing-room to greet her, which she did with every manifestation of surprise and delight, whispering, however, in a very dramatic way, as she kissed her: ‘Have no fear! All is safe!’

She then said, for the benefit of the servant who had admitted Letty into the house: ‘How glad I am I didn’t go with Mama and Fanny! Come upstairs, love: I have a hundred things to tell you!’

She was a fine-looking girl, a little younger than Letty, but very much larger. Beside her exquisite cousin she appeared over-buxom, a little clumsy, but she did not resent this in the least. She was as goodnatured as her mother, liked to think that she had a great deal of sensibility, and had so romantic a disposition that she was inclined to think real life wretchedly flat, and to fancy that she would have found herself very much more at home in one of Mrs Radclyffe’s famous novels. Having swept Letty up to the drawing-room, she shut the door, and said, lowering her voice conspiratorially: ‘My sweetest life, such a morning as I have had! I thought we must be wholly undone, for Mama almost commanded me to go with her! I was obliged to prevaricate a little: I said that I had a headache, and so it passed off at last, though I was frightened almost out of my senses by her dawdling so much that it seemed she and Fanny would not be gone before you reached the house! How delightfully you look! Mr Allandale will be in raptures!’

‘If he doesn’t fail!’ Letty said. ‘I begged him most particularly to meet me here today, but it might not be possible, perhaps. If there is a press of business, you know, he might be detained all day at the Foreign Office. Only would he not have contrived to send me word?’