Mr Calverleigh, smiling at her, said: “Good girl!” which made her giggle, and told Abby to go and put on her bonnet. He added a recommendation to bring a tippet, or a shawl, with her.

“So that you may be easy!” he said, addressing himself to Selina “I don’t think she will take cold, if she wraps herself up well, and if it should come on to rain we can always find shelter, you know.”

He then engaged Fanny in idle conversation, while Selina sought in vain for further reasons why Abby should not drive out with him.

When Abby came back into the room, suitably attired for the expedition, Selina made a last attempt to convince her that she was running the gravest risk of contracting a heavy cold, if not an inflammation of the lungs, but Fanny, giving Abby an impulsive kiss, interrupted her very rudely, saying: “Fiddle! It is the finest day we have had for weeks! I’ll come and tuck you up in quantities of shawls, Abby!”

“Thank you!” Abby said, laughing. “I fancy one will be enough! Goodbye, Selina: there is no need for you to be in a fidget, I promise you.”

Mr Calverleigh watched her go out of the room, and turned to take leave of Selina. “Don’t worry!” he said. “I shall take great care of her.”

Five minutes later, leaving Fanny waving farewell on the doorstep, he drove off at a smart trot, and said darkly: “Indian manners, my dear!”

Abby chuckled. “Rag-manners! Poor Selina!”

“I was afraid you might yield to her entreaties.”

“No. I hoped I might see you again. It was so uncomfortable—saying goodbye as we did. I never told you about Fanny, either. We—we won’t discuss that other matter, for there is nothing to be said, and I know you won’t distress me by trying to persuade me, will you?”

“No, no, I won’t try to persuade you!” he promised.

This ready acquiescence was unexpected, and not altogether welcome; but after a few moments Abby said, with determined cheerfulness: “Stacy did mean to elope with Fanny, you know. She told me the whole. If she hadn’t contracted influenza, heaven knows what might have happened! But she did, and while she was laid up we had the most amazing stroke of good fortune befall us!”

He laughed. “No, did you?”

“Yes, for who should arrive in Bath but a rich widow! Fabulously rich, by all accounts! I never saw her myself, but I believe she is quite young, and very pretty. And she put up at the White Hart!”

“No!”

“Yes! With a companion, and a maid, and a footman—oh, and a courier as well! You wouldn’t have believed it!”

“Oh, wouldn’t I!” said Mr Calverleigh.

“And she hadn’t been there for a day before Stacy was busy fixing his interest with her! Would you have thought it possible?”

“Not only possible, but certain.”

“Well, I must say I didn’t, when I first heard of it. I never supposed him to be as—as shameless as that!”

“My odious nephew, I regret to say, is entirely shameless.”

“He must be. I can’t help pitying the widow, for I think she must have found him out. She left Bath quite suddenly, and although I was excessively thankful that Stacy did attach himself to her, it must have been very painful for her.”

“Set your mind at rest, my love! It wasn’t at all painful for her.”

“You can’t know that!” objected Abby.

“Oh, yes, I can!” he retorted. “I sent her here!”

“You?” she gasped.

“Yes, of course. Didn’t you guess it? I rather thought you would.”

“Good God, no! But who was she? How did you contrive to send her to Bath? And what a shocking thing to do! Exposing her to—Miles, it was monstrous! How can you laugh?”

“You shouldn’t make me laugh. My precious pea-goose, I hired her to bamboozle Stacy! As far as I can discover, her performance was most talented—though she seems to have broken down a trifle before she rang down the final curtain. As to who she is, I really don’t know, except that she was at onetime an actress.”

Miss Abigail Wendover, having digested this information said, in accents of stern disapproval: “I collect, sir, that she is not a—a respectable female?”

“Let us rather say, ma’am, that you are unlikely to meet her in the first circles.”

“You seem to have done so!”

“No, no, not in the first circles!”

Her dimple quivered, but she suppressed it. “And are you very well acquainted with her?” she enquired politely.

“Oh, no! I only met her once—to rehearse her in her role, you know. Dolly found her for me. Dolly was Mrs Clapham’s companion. I was extremely well acquainted with her—some twenty years ago,” he explained outrageously. “She used to be known as the Dasher, and a very dashing little barque of frailty she was! She is now engaged in—er—a different branch of the profession, and has become alarmingly tonnish. However, she consented, at an extortionate price, to take part in my masquerade. In fact, she insisted on doing so. She never could resist a spree.”

“You,” said Abby, in a shaking voice, “are the most disreputable person I have ever encountered!”

“Well, that’s not saying much! Except for my odious nephew, I don’t suppose you’ve encountered any disreputable persons at all.” He turned his head, and added: “You never knew me in my disreputable days, Abigail. They are all in the past.”

Her eyes fell. After a minute, she said: “It must have cost you a great deal, I fear. The masquerade, I mean. When I asked you to rescue Fanny, I never intended—”

“Oh, I had an axe of my own to grind as well!” he assured her.

“Oh!” she said doubtfully. “Well,—” She stopped suddenly, recognizing a landmark. “Good gracious, we are on the London road! Where are we going?”

“Reading,” he replied.

“Reading?” she echoed blankly. “Don’t be so absurd! It must be sixty miles away!”

“Sixty-eight.”

She laughed. “Just a gentle drive, to exercise the horses! Seriously, where are we going?”

“I am perfectly serious.”

“Oh, are you, indeed?” she retorted. “And we shall be back in good time for dinner, no doubt!”

“No my darling, we shall not,” he said. “We are not going back at all.”

She stared incredulously at him. “Not—Miles, stop bantering me! It is too ridiculous! You cannot suppose I’m such a ninny as to believe we could drive all the way to Reading in a curricle-and-pair!”

“Oh, no, of course I don’t! We are only going as far as to Chippenham in the curricle. My post-chaise is waiting there, to carry us the rest of the way.”

She still felt that he must be trying to hoax her, but she began to be uneasy. “And what do we do when we reach Reading?” she asked.

“We get married, my very dear.”

“Have you run mad?” she demanded.

“Well, I don’t think so!”

“Miles—Miles, you are joking me, aren’t you?”

“I promise you I was never more in earnest. I can’t show it to you at the moment, but I have a special licence in my pocket.”

“Oh, how dare you?” she gasped. “Stop at once! If you think I am going to elope with you—”

“No, no!” he said. “This isn’t an elopement! I’m abducting you!”

She tried to speak, but dared not trust her voice.

“I thought it would be the best thing to do,” he explained.

That was too much for her self-control; for the life of her she could not help bursting into laughter. But when she managed to stop laughing, she said: “Oh, do, please, take me home! How could you think I would consent to such a shocking thing?”

“My dear girl, you don’t consent to an abduction! You consent to an elopement, and I knew you wouldn’t do that.”

“You told me once that you thought an unwilling bride would be the very devil!” she reminded him.

“If I had thought that you were unwilling you wouldn’t be sitting beside me now,” he replied.

“But I am unwilling! Miles, I won’t—I can’t! Oh, I believed you understood!”

“I did. You said you wouldn’t marry me for a great many reasons which were most of them quite idiotish, but you also said that you couldn’t seek your own happiness at the cost of Selina’s and Fanny’s. Well, you have the right to make a sacrifice of yourself, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let you sacrifice me!”

After a moment’s stricken silence, Abby said remorsefully: “I never thought of that! Would it—would it be—?”

“Yes,” he said. “It would!”

“Oh, if only I knew what I ought to do!” she cried wretchedly.

“You don’t, but I do. So don’t argue with yourself any more! You haven’t any choice in the matter, you know. That’s why I’ve forcibly carried you off. It makes it much easier for you, don’t you think?”

“Miles, you are the most impossible, disgraceful—Only think what a scandal there would be!”

“What, you don’t imagine that any member of your family would breathe a word about it, do you? No, no! The marriage was private, of course! I expect James will think of some excellent reason for that.”

“James! He will utterly disown me!”

“No hope of that,” he said. “I daresay he may hold off for a few months to save his dignity, but it won’t be for long. You, my loved one, little though it interests you, are about to become an extremely wealthy woman. You are also going to become the mistress of Danescourt.”

“Danescourt? But doesn’t that belong to Stacy?”

“No, it belongs to me: I’ve bought it from him. I am taking you there tonight. It’s in a deplorable state, but I threw an army into it last week to put it into some kind of order, and told our old housekeeper to hire some servants, so I hope you won’t find it too uncomfortable. We won’t stay there above a day or two, but I want you to inspect it, and decide what you wish for in the way of curtains and things of that nature. Where would you like to go after that?”

She said helplessly: “I don’t know. Oh, this is too fantastic! For heaven’s sake, take me home! Only think of poor Selina!”

“Nothing would prevail upon me to take you home. You may write a note to poor Selina from Chippenham: I’ll send it by a post-boy: but you are not going to see her again until you are firmly riveted, my girl, and it is too late for her to cling round your neck!”

“But what will she do?” said Abby distractedly.

“She will in all probability find a substitute for you in Miss Butterbank,” he replied calmly. “What’s more, they will deal extremely together. Fanny, I daresay, will go to your sister in London. By the by, do you wish for a London house?”

“No, of course I don’t! Miles, do you realize that I haven’t even a toothbrush?”

“Do you know, I believe you’re right?” he said. “And I thought I had remembered everything! What a fortunate thing that you mentioned it! We must buy one in Reading.”

“Have you had the audacity to—Oh, you are too abominable! I won’t marry you! I will not! Take me home!”

Mr Miles Calverleigh brought his horses to a halt at the side of the road, and turned, and smiled at her. “Tell me that that is what, in your heart,you want me to do, and I will!”

She looked into his eyes, and what she saw in them made her pulses race.

“Tell me, Abby!”

“You may be able to abduct me,” said Abby, with dignity, “but you can’t force me to tell lies!... Miles! there’s a coach coming, and a man staring at us over the hedge! For heaven’s sake—!”