To her seething anger, he appeared to consider this quite dispassionately for a moment or two. “No, I couldn’t have helped him to a Gretna Green marriage,” he decided.

“This is something indeed! No doubt, if I had not frustrated that crazy scheme, you would now be posting north to do it yourself!”

“What I should be doing at this moment, if you had not wrecked everything with your damned meddling, would be thanking God for deliverance!” he returned trenchantly. “What I thought to find here was Emily playing Juliet to Gerard’s Romeo! His heroics may not appeal to me, but they are just the thing to put a little spirit into her! All she needed to make her cry off by the time her mother sent her here, was someone to support her! The fool that I was, I believed I could rely on you to scotch what you must have seen was the worst marriage ever! Very free you are with your condemnations of what I did, you shrew! Reserve some of your censure for your own behaviour! Instead of telling the chit she had better go hang herself than cling like a damned limpet to a man you knew would make her a hellish husband, you did all you could to persuade her I had all the amiable qualities which no one knows better than you I have not! By the time Gerard burst in on me, I knew you were failing me, but that you were ranged on the side of the Laleham harpy I never dreamed! What was in that red head of yours, my sweetest scold? Spite?”

Quick as a flash she struck at him, but he was quicker still, and caught her wrist in mid-air. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’ll hit me when I choose to let you, and at no other time, Serena! Why did you try to push me into that marriage? Answer me, damn you!”

“I never pushed you into anything!” she replied pantingly. “Wiser men than you have fallen in love with pretty featherheads! You to talk to me of spite! It never entered my head that you had offered for Emily because you wanted to be revenged on me, and hoped I should be hurt! You have gone your length, Rotherham! I may be every one of the things you are so obliging as to call me, but the only thought I had was to save you from the humiliation of being twice jilted! You may let me go: I would not touch you, any more than I would touch a toad!”

He laughed. “Wouldn’t you? We’ll see that! Now, you listen to me, my girl! There’s nothing I should like better than to continue quarrelling with you, but thanks to your well-meant but cork-brained efforts on my behalf the tangle is now past unravelling, and must be cut! When I’ve done that, I’ll come back, and you may revile me to your heart’s content!”

“Don’t you dare set foot inside this house again!” she said.

“Try if you can keep me out!” he advised her, and let her wrist go, and strode out of the room, a little too quickly for Lybster, hovering in a disinterested fashion in the narrow hall. “What a rare day’s entertainment for you!” he said sardonically.

“I beg your lordship’s pardon?” said Lybster, the picture of bewildered dignity.

“You may well! Inform Lady Spenborough that I shall be dining here tonight!”

“Yes, my lord.”

Serena was in the doorway, her eyes flashing green fire. “You will on no account admit Lord Rotherham into this house, Lybster!”

“No, my lady,” said Lybster, moving to the street door, and opening it for Rotherham.

Serena turned towards the stairs. Fanny, on the first landing, whisked herself back into the drawing-room, and softly closed the door. “There! You heard what she said!” she whispered to Major Kirkby.

“Yes, and I heard what he said,” he replied.

Serena’s hasty steps sounded outside. Fanny looked anxiously towards the door, but Serena passed on, and up the next flight. “Oh, dear, I fear she is in one of her rages!” said Fanny. “What shall I do? Oh, what a dreadful day this is!”

He smiled. “No, I think not, love. If I were you, I would do what I am going to do: retire to change for dinner!”

“Hector, you don’t mean to leave me to dine with those two, she cried,” aghast.

“Not I! Do you think I have no interest in the outcome of this battle? I too am dining with you, my love!” he said.

23

Admitted into Mrs Floore’s house, Rotherham had barely time to hand his hat to the butler before a door opened at the back of the hall, and Lady Laleham came out, dressed in all the elegance of figured silk and lace, and wreathed in smiles. “Ah, dear Lord Rotherham!” she pronounced. “I knew you might be depended upon to call again! Such a sad mischance that you should have found no one at home when you came this afternoon! But you must not blame us, you know, for you forgot to tell Emily which day you meant to arrive in Bath! I hope I see you well?”

“My health, I thank you, ma’am, is excellent. I cannot, however, say as much for my temper, which has been exasperated beyond anything which I am prepared to endure!” he replied, in his harshest voice.

She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm, in a fleeting gesture of sympathy. “I know,” she said, considerably to his surprise. “Will you come into the morning-room? You will, I know, forgive my mother for not receiving you: she is elderly, and, alas, not capable of exertion!”

“The person I wish to see, Lady Laleham, is not your mother, but your daughter!”

“Exactly so!” she smiled, preceding him into the morning-room. “And here she is!”

He strode into the room, and paused, looking grimly at his prospective bride. She was standing beside a large wing-chair, one trembling hand resting on its back, her eyes huge in her white face, and her breathing uneven. She looked very young, very pretty, and very apprehensive, and she showed no disposition to come forward to greet her betrothed until her mother said, in a voice of honeyed reproof: “Emily dear!” After that, she advanced, and said: “How do you do?” putting out her hand.

“Effusive!” said Rotherham. “You must not behave as though I were your whole dependence and delight, you know!”

“She is a little tired,” explained Lady Laleham, “and she has been a very silly, naughty child, which she knows she must confess to you.”

His eyes went to her face, an arrested expression in them.

“L-Lady Serena said I n-need not t-tell, Mama!”

“We are very much indebted to Lady Serena, my love,” Lady Laleham returned smoothly, “but you will allow Mama to know best what you should do.” She met Rotherham’s fierce stare with perfect coolness, a faint smile on her painted lips. “The poor child is afraid that you will be very angry with her, Lord Rotherham, but I have assured her that where there is full confession there must always be forgiveness, particularly when it is accompanied by deep repentance.”

The wretched Emily, perceiving that her betrothed was looking like a thundercloud, began to feel faint. But Rotherham was not thinking about her. He was seeing the ground being cut from beneath his feet by a stratagem which he recognized, in a cold fury, to be masterly. And he could think of no way to prevent Emily from casting herself upon his mercy. Out it all came, in halting, shamefaced sentences from Emily, skilfully embroidered by her mother. She had thought he was very angry with her, when she had received his letter; he had stayed away from her for so long that she feared he no longer loved her; Gerard had told her such dreadful things that she had taken fright. But Lady Serena had come to the rescue just when she was wishing she had not done such a wicked thing; and Lady Serena had assured her that she had nothing to fear from Lord Rotherham. So she had come home and had been crying her eyes out ever since because she was so very, very sorry. Finally, would he forgive her, and believe that she would never do it again?

He became aware that she had finished speaking, and saw that her eyes were fixed on his face in a look of painful inquiry. He said abruptly: “Emily, do you love Gerard?”

“Oh, no!” she said, and there was no mistaking the sincerity in her voice.

No way of escape there. There was only one way out, and that was to play the outraged lover, and repudiate the engagement It could not be done. To push her into flinging that handsome diamond ring he had given her in his face was one thing; to push her into eloping with his ward, and then to round on her, was quite another. He wondered what pressure her mother had brought to bear to make her so anxious to marry him. She was no longer thinking of riches and position. If he could get rid of Lady Laleham, he might be able to reach an understanding with Emily—if she was capable of understanding anything, which she did not look to be.

“I think it would be as well if we talked this over alone,” he said.

Lady Laleham had no intention of allowing this. Unfortunately, Emily’s terror of him was greater than her dread of her mother, and she gave him no support, but shrank towards Lady Laleham.

At which moment the door opened, and a startling vision surged into the room. “I thought as much!” said Mrs Floore ominously. “And who gave you leave to entertain guests in my house, Sukey?” She retained her clutch on Mr Goring’s supporting arm, and added: “No, you stay here, Ned! There’s nothing that’s happened here this day you don’t know, and a true friend you’ve been, like your father would have been before you!”

Rotherham, with difficulty withdrawing his eyes from the magnificence before him, glanced at Lady Laleham. What he saw in her face afforded him considerable solace. Fury and chagrin were writ large in it, and beneath these emotions, unless he much mistook the matter, fear. So this was the mysterious grandmother about whom he had quizzed Emily on his first meeting with her! He bent his penetrating stare upon her again, as she settled herself in the chair of her choice, and directed Mr Goring to pull forward a footstool.

Mrs Floore was doing justice to the occasion in a staggering gown of lustring, with tobine stripes of a rich ruby, and a quantity of floss trimming. This splendid robe was draped over panniers, fashionable in her youth, and was worn over an underdress of satin. A medley of brooches adorned the low-cut corsage, and round her short neck she had clasped several strings of remarkably large pearls. A turban of ruby silk and tinsel was embellished with a cluster of ostrich plumes, and from the lobes of her ears hung two large rubies.

“That’s right,” nodded Mrs Floore, shifting the position of the stool a trifle with one red-heeled and buckled shoe. “Now let me take a look at this precious Marquis I’ve heard so much about!”

Lady Laleham, with an unconvincing smile pinned to her mouth, murmured to Rotherham: “Dear Mama is quite an eccentric!”

“I’m not an eccentric, and I’m not deaf!” said her dear Mama sharply. “I’m a plain woman that came of good merchant stock, which, though I may not have your fine-lady airs and graces, my dear, I’ve got more sense than to be ashamed of! And another thing I’ll tell you is that you’d do better to introduce this Marquis to me than to stand there biting your lips, and wondering what he must be thinking of your ma! He can think what he likes, and if Emma means to marry him—which, however, isn’t by any means a settled thing!—the sooner he gets used to her grandma the better it will be for him!”

“How do you do?” said Rotherham, slightly bowing, his tone indifferent, but his eyes keenly surveying this amazing old lady.

She gave him back stare for stare, taking him in from the heels of his boots to the crown of his black locks. “Good gracious, you’re a regular blackamoor!” she exclaimed. “Well, they say handsome is as handsome does, but from all I can make out, my lord, you haven’t done very handsome yet.”

“You must not mind Mama: she is so droll!” said Lady Laleham.

“It’ll be more to the point if I don’t mind him,” observed Mrs Floore, who was clearly in a belligerent mood. “You must excuse me staring at you, my lord, but I never did see such peculiar eyebrows! Now, I shouldn’t wonder at it, Emma, my pet, if half the time you thought he was scowling at you it was nothing but the way his eyebrows grow, which he can’t help, though, of course, it’s a pity.”

Rotherham kept his countenance set in its forbidding lines. At any other moment, he would have exerted himself to please Mrs Floore, for he was strongly attracted to her; but since her attitude appeared to be hostile he saw in her his one hope of salvation, and began to consider how best to annoy her.

“Dear Mama,—you know that Emily wished to see Lord Rotherham in private!” said Lady Laleham. “Don’t you think, perhaps—”