‘You frightened him!’ said Nan reproachfully. She found that she was being surveyed from head to foot by a lady with an arctic eye and contemptuously smiling lips, and glanced enquiringly at Sir Charles.
‘So this,’ said Lady Almeria, ‘is your schoolgirl!’
Sir Charles, only too well aware of the impression likely to be created by Miss Massingham’s hat, sighed, and prepared to embark on what was (as he ruefully admitted to himself) an improbable explanation of his circumstances.
‘Sir Charles is my brother, ma’am!’ said Miss Massingham, coming helpfully to the rescue.
Lady Almeria’s lip curled. ‘My good girl, I am well acquainted with Sir Charles’s sister, and I imagine I need be in no doubt of the relationship which exists between you and him!’
‘Be silent!’ Sir Charles snapped. He put Duke into Nan’s free arm. ‘Go back into the parlour, Nan! I will be with you directly,’ he said, smiling reassuringly down at her.
He closed the parlour door upon her, and turned to confront his betrothed. That he was very angry could be seen by the glint in his eyes, but he spoke with studied amiability. ‘Do you know, Almeria, I never knew until today how very vulgar you can be?’ he said.
The Lady Almeria then lost her temper. In the middle of the scene which followed, her brother walked into the inn and stood goggling. His intellect was not quick, and it was several minutes before he could understand anything beyond the appalling fact that his sister, whose uncertain temper had chased away many a promising suitor, was engaged in whistling down the wind a bridegroom rich beyond the dreams of avarice. He looked utterly aghast, and seemed not to know what to say. Sir Charles, who had been refreshing himself with a pinch of snuff, shut his box, and said: ‘The lady in question, Stourbridge, as I have already informed Almeria, is a schoolgirl, whom I am escorting to London.’
‘Well, then, Almeria – !’ said his lordship, relieved.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ said Almeria. ‘I have seen the creature!’
‘I should be loth to offer you violence, Almeria,’ said Sir Charles, ‘but if you again refer to that child in such terms I shall soundly box your ears!’
‘You forget, I think, that I am not unprotected!’
‘Stourbridge?’ said Sir Charles. ‘Oh, no, I don’t forget him! If he cares to call me to book I shall be happy to answer him!’
At this point, Lord Stourbridge, who wished to come to fisticuffs with Sir Charles as little as he wished to expose his portly person to that gentleman’s deadly accuracy with a pistol, attempted to remonstrate with his sister. A glance silenced him; she said furiously: ‘Understand, Sir Charles, that our engagement is at an end! I shall be obliged to you if you will send the necessary notice to the Gazette!’
He bowed. ‘It is always a happiness to me to obey you, Almeria!’ he said outrageously.
6
Rejoining Miss Massingham in the parlour, he found her conscience-stricken. ‘Who was that lady, sir?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Why was she so very angry?’
‘That, my child, was the Lady Almeria Spalding. If you are ready to go –’
‘Lady Almeria! Are – are you not engaged to her?’
‘I was engaged to her!’
‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘What have I done? Did she cry off because of me?’
‘She did, but as we are not at all suited to one another I shall not reproach you for that. Foisting a repellant mongrel on me, however, which whined the better part of the night, is another matter; while as for your conduct in Marlborough –’
‘But – but don’t you care that your engagement is broken?’ she interrupted.
‘Not a bit!’
‘Perhaps
she will think better of it, and forgive you,’ suggested Nan, in a somewhat wistful tone.
‘I am obliged to you for the warning, and shall insert into the Gazette the notice that my marriage will not take place the instant I reach London,’ he said cheerfully.
‘It is very dreadful, but, do you know, sir, I find I cannot be sorry for it!’
‘I am glad of that,’ he said, smiling.
‘She did not seem to me the kind of female you would like to be married to.’