‘Good God, cousin, you can’t do that!’ said Mr Hethersett, shocked.
‘If I went in our own chaise, and you were so very obliging as to go with me?’ she urged. ‘It may be hours before Giles returns, and then –’
‘Well, upon my soul!’ ejaculated the Viscount, rising with such hasty violence as to overset his chair. ‘If that don’t beat all hollow!’ He seized his sister by the shoulders, and shook her. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ he demanded. ‘Go off in a chaise with that fellow? Not while I’m here to stop you!’ He rounded suddenly on Mr Hethersett, an ugly look on his face. ‘What damned cajolery have you been playing off on her?’ he said fiercely.
‘For the lord’s sake, Dysart, go and dip your head in a bucket!’ begged Mr Hethersett.
‘Oh, listen!’ Nell said sharply, her face turned towards the door.
A quick stride was heard approaching; the door was flung open, and Cardross stood on the threshold. There
was a hard, anxious look on his face, and he had not stayed to put off his long, many-caped driving coat. His eyes swept the room, and found his wife. He went quickly forward, totally ignoring the rest of the company, saying in a shaken voice which she hardly recognized: ‘Nell! Thank God! Oh, my darling, forgive me!’
‘Giles! Oh, no! it was all my fault!’ she cried, casting herself into his arms. ‘And it is much, much worse than you know! Letty has gone with Mr Allandale!’
‘Damn Letty!’ he said, folding her close. ‘You have come back to me, and nothing else is of the smallest consequence!’
Mr Hethersett, averting his eyes with great delicacy from the passionate embrace being exchanged, began to polish his quizzing-glass; the Viscount stared in thunderstruck silence; and Mr Fancot, after blinking at the extraordinary spectacle offered him, rose carefully to his feet, and twitched his friend’s sleeve. ‘Think we ought to be taking leave, Dy,’ he said confidentially. ‘Not the sort of party I like, dear boy! Go for a toddle to the Mutton-walk!’
‘Damned if I will!’ replied Dysart. ‘I want a word with Cardross, and I’m going to have it!’
Recalled to a sense of his surroundings, Cardross looked up. Flushing a little, he let Nell go. ‘By all means, Dysart: what is it?’
‘I’ll tell you in private,’ said the Viscount, in whom the effects of his potations were beginning to wear off.
‘Well, I don’t know why you should suddenly wish to be private!’ said Nell, with unusual asperity. ‘When you have been saying the most abominable things without the least regard for anyone, even the hackney coachman! Besides trying to call poor Felix out in the most insulting way! Oh, Giles, pray tell him he must not do so!’
‘But why in the world should he wish to?’ asked Cardross, startled, and considerably amused.
‘Silly clunch saw her ladyship coming away from Allandale’s lodging with me, and would have it that it was my lodging,’ said Mr Hethersett tersely, responding to the laughing question in his cousin’s eye.
‘Oh, that’s the tale is it?’ said the Viscount. ‘Well, it won’t fadge! Didn’t think to tell me that, did you? Why not? That’s what I want to know! Why not?’
‘Because you were a dashed sight too ripe to attend to a word anyone said to you!’ replied Mr Hethersett, with brutal frankness.
‘And in any event there was no need for you to behave in such an outrageous way, Dy,’ interpolated Nell severely. ‘Even if it had been Felix’s house, which it might as well have been, because I had the intention of calling on him, on account of my not knowing the number of Mr Allandale’s. Only, by good fortune, he chanced to be coming out just as I was paying off the hack.’
‘Yes, you have that mighty pat, haven’t you, my girl?’ said Dysart. ‘And I daresay you think it makes all right! Well, it don’t! Pretty conduct in a female of quality to be paying calls on every loose fish on the town, I must say! In a common hack, too! Well, that may suit your notions of propriety, Cardross, but it don’t suit mine, and so I’ll have you know!’
‘Dy, how can you be so absurd?’ protested Nell. ‘No one could possibly think poor Mr Allandale a loose fish!’
‘Dash, it, cousin!’ exclaimed Mr Hethersett indignantly.
‘My dear Dysart, do let me assure you that I honour you for such feelings, and enter into all your ideas on the subject!’ said Cardross. ‘You may safely leave the matter in my hands.’
‘That’s just what it seems to me I can’t do!’ retorted Dysart. ‘Yes, and that puts me in mind of another thing I have to say to you! Why the devil don’t you take better care of Nell? Did you get her out of a silly scrape? No, you didn’t! I did! All you did was to put it into her head you thought she only married you for your fortune, when anyone but a gudgeon must have known she’s too big a pea-goose to have enough sense to do anything of the kind. So when she finds herself under the hatches she daren’t tell you: I have to pull her out of the River Tick! A pretty time I had of it! Why, I even had that fellow Hethersett hinting it was my fault she was being dunned for some curst dress or other!’
Mr Hethersett blushed. ‘Misapprehension! Told you so at the time!’
‘Well, it was my fault!’ said Dysart furiously. ‘I daresay if I hadn’t borrowed three centuries from her you wouldn’t have had to snatch her off Jew King’s doorstep, but how was I to know it would put her in the basket? Besides, I’ve paid it back to her!’
‘Nell, my poor child, how could you think – Did I frighten you as much as that?’ Cardross said remorsefully.
‘No, no, it was all my folly!’ she said quickly. ‘I thought that shocking bill from Lavalle had been with those others, only it wasn’t, and when she sent it me again it seemed as though I couldn’t tell you! Oh, Dysart, pray don’t say any more!’
‘Yes, that’s all very well, but I am going to say something more! I’ve a pretty fair notion of what your opinion of me is, Cardross, but I’ll have you know that it was not I who prigged that damned necklace of yours!’
‘Eh?’ ejaculated Mr Hethersett, startled.