“If you can’t be comfortable without the assurance that you are doing your duty, let me tell you that my whole dependence is upon you—Mama!” Serena said, her voice prim, but irrepressible humour gleaming in her eyes. “If you are not to take me in charge, what is to become of me? I give you fair warning I won’t live with my Aunt Theresa, or with my Aunt Susan! And even I should hesitate to set up my own establishment without a respectable female to bear me company. Depend upon it, that would mean Cousin Florence! The Carlows and the Dorringtons would be as one in agreeing that the poor creature must be sacrificed.”

Fanny smiled, but said in a serious tone: “I can’t take you in charge, but I can be your chaperon, and although I am very silly I do think it would answer better than for you to be obliged to live with Lady Theresa, or even with Lady Dorrington. And if it is what you would like, dearest Serena, I cannot doubt that it is what your Papa would desire me to do, for he was fonder of you than of anyone.”

“Fanny, no!” Serena said, stretching out her hand impulsively.

“But it is not at all to be wondered at! You are so very like him. So I have quite made up my mind what I ought to do. Only I do hope that Papa will not order me, for it would be so very shocking to be obliged to disobey him!”

“He won’t do so. He must realize, though you do not that you are Lady Spenborough, not Miss Claypole! Moreover—” She stopped, but, upon receiving a look of inquiry, continued bluntly: “Forgive me, but I am persuaded neither he nor Lady Claypole will press you to return to them! With such a numerous family, and your elder sister still unwed—oh, no, they cannot wish for your return!”

“No! Oh, how very right you are!” exclaimed Fanny, her brow clearing. “Agnes, too, would so particularly dislike it, I daresay!”

There was no time for more. The doors were again opened, and a number of funereally clad gentlemen were ushered into the room.

The procession was led by the eldest, and certainly the most impressive of these. Lord Dorrington, whose girth had upon more than one occasion caused him to be mistaken for the Duke of York, was brother to the first Lady Spenborough and from having a great notion of his own importance, and a strong disposition to meddle in other persons’ affairs, had appointed himself to the position of doyen to the party. He came ponderously into the room, his corsets slightly creaking, his massive jowl supported by swathe upon swathe of neckcloth, and, having bowed to the widow, uttering a few words of condolence in a wheezing voice, at once assumed the task of directing the company to various chairs. “I shall desire our good Mr Perrott to seat himself at the desk. Serena, my love, I fancy you and Lady Spenborough will be comfortable upon the sofa. Spenborough, will you take this place? Eaglesham, my dear fellow, if you, and—ah—Sir William, will sit here, I shall invite Rotherham to take the wing-chair.”

Since only Mr Eaglesham attended to this speech, only he was irritated by it. Precedency having been cast overboard, he had entered the library in Lord Dorrington’s ample wake. He was as spare as his lordship was corpulent, and wore the harassed expression which, the unkind asserted, was natural to Lady Theresa Carlow’s consort. Having married the late Earl’s sister, he considered that he had a better right than Dorrington to assume the direction of affairs, but he knew no way of asserting it, and was obliged to content himself with moving towards a chair as far distant as possible to that one indicated by Dorrington, and by muttering animadversions against pretentious and encroaching old popinjays, which were as soothing to himself as they were inaudible to everyone else.

The first in consequence was the last to enter the room, the Marquis of Rotherham, saying: “Oh, go on, man, go on!” thrusting the attorney before him, and strolling into the library behind him.

His entrance might have been said to have banished constraint. The Lady Serena, never remarkable for propriety, stared incredulously, and exclaimed: “What in the world brings you here, I should like to know?”

“So should I!” retorted his lordship. “How well we should have suited, Serena! So many ideas as we have in common!”

Fanny, well accustomed to such exchanges, merely cast an imploring look at Serena; Mr Eaglesham uttered a short laugh; Sir William Claypole was plainly startled; Mr Perrott, who had drawn up the original marriage settlements, seemed to be suddenly afflicted with deafness; and Lord Dorrington, perceiving an opportunity for further meddling, said, in what was meant to be an authoritative tone: “Now, now! We must not forget upon what a sad occasion we are gathered together! No doubt there is a little awkwardness attached to Rotherham’s unavoidable presence here. Indeed, when I learned from our good Perrott—”

“Awkwardness?” cried Serena, her colour heightened, and her eyes flashing. “I promise you, I feel none, my dear sir! If Rotherham is conscious of it, I can only say that I am astonished he should choose to intrude upon a matter which can only concern the family!”

“No, I am not conscious of it,” responded the Marquis. “Only of intolerable boredom!”

Several pairs of eyes turned apprehensively towards Serena, but she was never a fighter who resented a knock in exchange. This one seemed rather to assuage than to exacerbate her wrath. She smiled reluctantly, and said in a milder tone: “Well! But what made you come, then?”

Mr Perrott, who had been engaged in spreading some documents over the desk, gave a little, dry cough, and said: “Your ladyship must know that the late Earl appointed my Lord Rotherham to be one of the Executors of his Will.”

That this intelligence was as unexpected as it was unwelcome was made plain by the widening of Serena’s eyes as she turned them, in a look compound of doubt and disgust, from Rotherham to the attorney. “I might have guessed that that was how it would be!” she said, turning aside in mortification, and walking back to her seat in the window-embrasure.

“Then it is a great pity you did not guess!” said Rotherham acidly. I might then have been warned in time to have declined the office, for which I daresay there could be no one more unsuited!”

She deigned no reply, but averted her face, fixing her gaze once more upon the prospect outside. Her cousin, wearing his new dignities uneasily, was inspired by his evil genius to assume an air of authority, saying in a tone of reproof: “Such conduct as this is quite unbecoming, Serena! Now that the late unhappy event has made me head of the family I do not scruple to say so. I am sure I do not know what Lord Rotherham must be thinking of such manners.”

He brought himself under the fire of two pairs of eyes, the one filled with wrathful astonishment, the other with cruel mockery.

“Well, you can certainly be sure of that!” said Rotherham.

“For my part,” said Dorrington, in a peevish voice, “I consider it very odd in my poor brother, very odd indeed! One would have supposed—however, so it has always been! Eccentric! I can find no other word for it.”

This provoked Mr Eaglesham, swelling with annoyance, to point out to his lordship the very remote nature of his connection with the late Earl. There were others, he took leave to tell him, whose claims to have been appointed Executor of the Will were very much nearer than his. Lord Dorrington’s empurpled cheeks then became so alarmingly suffused that Spenborough said hastily that the appointment of Lord Rotherham was perfectly agreeable to him, whatever it might be to others.

“Obliging of you!” said Rotherham, over his shoulder, as he crossed the room to where Fanny was still standing nervously beside her chair. “Come! Why do you not sit down?” he said in his abrupt, rather rough way. “You must be as anxious as any of us, I daresay, to be done with this business!”

“Oh, yes! Thank you!” she murmured. She glanced fleetingly up at him, as she seated herself, faltering: “I am very sorry, if you dislike it. Indeed, I am afraid it may be troublesome to you!”

“Unlikely: Perrott will no doubt attend to everything.” He hesitated, and then added, in a still brusquer manner: “I should be making you speeches of condolence. Excuse me on that head, if you please! I am no great hand at polite insincerities, and give you credit for believing you cannot wish to figure as inconsolable.”

She was left feeling crushed; he walked away to a chair near the window in which Serena sat, and she, taking advantage of Sir William Claypole’s claiming his daughter’s attention at that moment, said: “You might give her credit for some natural sorrow!”

“Dutiful!”

“She was most sincerely attached to my father.”

“Very well: I give her credit for it. She will soon recover from such sentiments, and must be less than honest if she does not feel herself to have been released from a most unnatural tie.” He looked at her from under the heavy bar of his black brows, a satirical gleam in his eyes. “Yes, you find yourself in agreement with me, and don’t mean to admit it. If sympathizing speeches are expected of me, I will address mine to you. I am sorry for you, Serena: this bears hard on you.”

There was no softening either in voice or expression, but she knew him well enough to believe that he meant what he said. “Thank you, I expect I shall go along very tolerably when I have become—a little more accustomed.”

“Yes, if you don’t commit some folly. On that chance, however, I would not wager a groat. Don’t shoot dagger-looks at me! I’m impervious to ’em.”

“On this occasion at least you might spare me your taunts!” she said, in a low, indignant voice.

“Not at all. To spar with me will save you from falling into a green melancholy.”

She disdained to answer this, but turned again to look out of the window; and he, as indifferent to the snub as to her anger, took up a lounging position in his chair, and sardonically surveyed the rest of the company.

Of the six men present he gave the least impression of being a mourner at a funeral. His black coat, which he wore buttoned high across his chest, was at odd variance with a neckcloth tied in a sporting fashion peculiarly his own; and his demeanour lacked the solemnity which characterized the elder members of the party. From his appearance, he might have been almost any age, and was, in fact, in the late thirties. Of medium height only, he was very powerfully built, with big shoulders, a deep—chest, and thighs by far too muscular to appear to advantage in the prevailing fashion of skin-tight pantaloons. He was seldom seen in such attire, but generally wore top-boots and breeches. His coats were well-cut, but made so that he could shrug himself into them without assistance; and he wore no other jewellery than his heavy gold signet-ring. He had few graces, his manners being blunt to a fault, made as many enemies as friends, and, had he not been endowed with birth, rank, and fortune, would possibly have been ostracized from polite circles. But these magical attributes were his, and they acted like a talisman upon his world. His Belcher neckties and his unconventional manners might be deplored but must be accepted: he was Rotherham.

He was not a handsome man, but his countenance was a striking one, his eyes, which were of a curiously light grey, having a great deal of hard brilliance, and being set under straight brows which almost met. His hair was as black as a crow’s wing, his complexion swarthy; and the lines of his face were harsh, the brow a little craggy, the chin deeply cleft, and the masterful nose jutting between lean cheeks. His hands were his only beauty, for they combined strength with shapeliness. Any of the dandy set would have used all manner of arts to show them off: my Lord Rotherham dug them into his pockets.

Since Lord Dorrington and Mr Eaglesham showed no disposition to bring their acrimonious dialogue to an end, and Lord Spenborough’s polite attempt to recall them to a sense of their surroundings were not attended to, Rotherham intervened, saying impatiently: “Do you mean to continue arguing all day, or are we to hear the Will read?”

Both gentlemen glared at him; and Mr Perrott, taking advantage of the sudden silence, spread open a crackling document, and in severe accents announced it to be the last Will and Testament of George Henry Vernon Carlow, Fifth Earl of Spenborough.

As Serena had foretold, it contained little of interest to its auditors. Neither Rotherham nor Dorrington had expectations; Sir William Claypole knew his daughter’s jointure to be secure; and once Mr Eaglesham was satisfied that the various keepsakes promised to his wife had been duly bequeathed to her he too lost interest in the reading, and occupied himself in thinking of some pretty cutting things to say to Lord Dorrington.