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’enight.” 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 faults, 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 good-natured 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 head-ache, 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?”

Miss Thorne was strongly of the opinion that the violence of Mr. Allandale’s feelings would outweigh all other considerations. She drew Letty to the window, to watch for his arrival, for she had formed the intention of running down to admit him into the house before he could advertize his presence to the servants by knocking on the door. “For it would be fatal if Mama were to discover that he had been here! If her suspicions were aroused, depend upon it, she would instantly go to your brother, for she likes the connection as little as he does. She was talking about it only yesterday, calling it a shockingly bad match, and wondering that Mr. Allandale should be so encroaching! I kept my eyes lowered, and my thoughts locked in my bosom, but you may guess how I felt, on hearing such words from one whom I had believed to be all sensibility! Oh, my dearest Letty, I vowed to myself that if any exertion on my part could save you from the misery of being sacrificed to pride and consequence it should not be lacking!”

Letty thanked her, but said in a more practical spirit that since it was very unlikely that Cardross would listen to her advice there was really nothing that she could do to achieve this noble end. Miss Thorne, who had embraced with enthusiasm the role of go-between so suddenly thrust upon her, was daunted. Upon reflection, she was obliged to own that the ways in which a young lady in her seventeenth year could aid a pair of star-crossed lovers were few. In the fastness of her bedchamber it was possible to weave agreeable romances in which she played a leading and often heroic role. “Noblest of girls! We owe it all to you!” declared Mr. Allandale, having been joined in wedlock to Letty upon the eve of her marriage to a nobleman of dissolute habits (chosen for her by her brother), by a clergyman smuggled into the house at dead of night through the agency of her devoted cousin. In these romances, Selina overcame all difficulties by ignoring them, but in the cold light of day she was not so lost in dreams as to be unable to perceive that in a world depressingly humdrum certain insurmountable obstacles stood in the way of her ambition, not the least of which was Mr. Allandale himself. Though Letty would perceive in a flash the beauty of the marriage-scene in a dim room lit by a single branch of candles held up by her cousin, it would probably take a great deal of persuasion to induce the ardent lover to lend himself to such an improper proceeding. As for the indispensable cleric, not the wildest optimist could suppose that the Reverend William Tuxted, who happened to be the only clergyman with whom Selina was well acquainted, could be suborned by any means whatsoever into performing his part in the affair.

Melancholy though they were, these considerations had not the power to depress Selina for long. Letty’s love affair might not attain the heights of drama, but it was still a very romantic story; and there was comfort in the thought that without her cousin’s assistance she would have been hard put to it to have contrived a clandestine meeting with her suitor. Selina’s good offices had not been required to promote her elder sisters’ espousals; and nothing, in her opinion, could have been more insipid than Maria’s marriage to Mr. Thistleton unless it were Fanny’s betrothal to Mr. Humby: an event which had taken place on the previous evening. Neither lady had encountered the least opposition, each gentleman being possessed of a genteel fortune, and a situation in life which made him a very eligible suitor. Fanny’s betrothal was perhaps more tolerable than Maria’s, Mr. Humby having been unknown to the Thornes until he began to dangle after her. This, it must be allowed, was less deplorable than Maria’s marriage to John Thistleton, whom she had known all her life; but Miss Selina Thorne was going to think herself pretty hardly used if Fate did not provide for her a dashing lover of such hopeless ineligibility as must assure for her the most determined parental opposition, accompanied by persecution, which she would bear with the greatest heroism, and culminating in an elopement. Pending the appearance on the horizon of this gentlemen, she was prepared to throw herself heart and soul into Letty’s cause. She found no difficulty in crediting Cardross with all the attributes of a tyrant; and if Mr. Allandale’s propriety seemed at first to indicate that there was little hope of his engaging on any desperate action she soon decided that this was the expression not of an innate respectability, but of interesting reserve.

She was giving Letty an account of the degrading congratulations which had greeted the news of Fanny’s betrothal when she caught sight of Mr. Allandale approaching the house. She at once put her plan into execution, flying with such swift feet down the stairs that she reached the front door considerably in advance of him, and found herself inviting only the ambient air to come in and fear nothing. However, Mr. Allandale soon arrived; and from having rehearsed (though involuntarily) her speech of welcome she was able to improve on it. “I knew you would not fail!” she uttered. “I will lead you to her immediately. Do not fear that you will interrupted! Not a soul knows of your coming! Hush!”

Mr. Allandale, already surprised to find the front door being held open by one of the daughters of the house, blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?” he said.

“Do not speak so loud!” she admonished him. “The servants must not suspect your presence.”

“But how is this?” he demanded. “Is not Mrs. Thorne at home?”

“No, no, you have nothing to fear!” she assured him. “She and my sister are gone into the City. If they should return, you may depend on me to warn you of their approach!”

“I should not be here,” he said, looking vexed. “It is quite improper for me to be visiting the house in Mrs. Thorne’s absence.”

She was somewhat daunted by this prosaic attitude, but she made a gallant recover. “This is no time to be considering the proprieties!” she said earnestly. “Your case is now desperate, and strive though she may to support her spirits under this crushing blow, my cousin is in the greatest affliction! You must come to her immediately!”