“My dear ma’am, how can you ask? I am naturally cast into the greatest agitation by the very thought of having so onerous a burden thrust upon me! It is only civility that prompts me to say that I shall be charmed to take care of Lavinia.”

Mrs Grayshott smiled, and pressed her hand. “I knew I might depend on you. I don’t think she will be a trouble to you. What I do think—Abby, may I speak frankly to you?”

“If you please! Though I fancy I know what it is that you do think. Fanny?”

Mrs Grayshott nodded. “You know, then? I’m glad you’ve come home: I have been feeling a little anxious. Your sister is a dear kind creature, but—”

She hesitated, and Abby said coolly: “Very true! A dear kind nodcock! She seems to have fallen quite under the spell of this Calverleigh.”

“Well, he—he is very engaging,” said Mrs Grayshott reluctantly. “Only there is something about him which I can’t quite like! It is difficult to explain, because I haven’t any cause to take him in dislike. Except—” Again she hesitated, but upon being urged to continue, said: “Abby, no man could be blamed for falling in love with Fanny, but I don’t think that a man of principle, so much older than she is, would wish her—far less urge her!—to do what might easily set people in a bustle. His attentions are too particular to suit my old-fashioned notions. That makes me into a Bath quiz, I dare say, but you know, my dear, when a man of fashion and address makes a child of Fanny’s age the object of his attentions it is not to be wondered at that she should be dazzled into losing her head, or be easily brought to believe that the rules of conduct, in which she has been reared, are outmoded—quite provincial, in fact!”

Abby nodded. “ Such as the impropriety of strolling about the Sydney Gardens with him? Give me a round tale, ma’am!—Have there been other—oh, clandestine meetings?”

“I am afraid so. Oh, nothing of a serious nature, or that is generally known, or—or that you will not speedily put an end to! I might not have spoken to you, if that had been all, for it’s no bread-and-butter of mine, and I don’t relish the office of being your intelligencer, but I have some reason to think that it is not quite all, and am a great deal too fond of Fanny not to tell you that certain things I have learned from what Lavinia—in all innocence!—has let fall, I apprehend that this unfortunate affair may be rather more serious than I had at first supposed. To what extent Lavinia is in Fanny’s confidence I don’t know, and—I must confess—shrink from enquiring, because perhaps, if she thought I was trying to discover a secret reposed in her, she would fob me off, even prevaricate, and certainly, in the future, guard her tongue when she talked to me. That may seem foolish to you: the thing is she has been so close a companion to me, so open and trusting in her affection—” Her voice became suspended. She shook her head, saying, after a moment’s struggle: “I can’t explain it to you!”

“There is not the least need,” Abby responded. “I understand you perfectly, ma’am. Don’t fear me! I promise you I shan’t let Fanny so much as suspect that Lavinia betrayed her confidence. Let me be frank with you! I’ve every reason to suppose that Calverleigh is a fortune-hunter, and it has been made abundantly clear to me that Fanny believes herself to have formed a lasting passion for him. I don’t know if Calverleigh hopes to win my brother’s consent to the match, but I should very much doubt it. So in what sort is the wind? Does he hope to enlist my support? Is he indulging himself with a flirtation? Or has he the intention of eloping with Fanny?” Her eyes widened, as she saw the quick look turned towards her, and a laugh trembled in her throat. “‘My dear ma’am—! I was only funning!”

“Yes, I know, but—Abby, sometimes I wonder if our parents were right when they forbade us to read novels! It is all the fault of the Circulating Libraries!”

“Putting romantical notions into girls’ heads?” said Abby, smiling a little. “I don’t think so: I had a great many myself, and was never permitted to read any but the most improving works. I might be wrong, but I fancy that however much a girl may admire, or envy, the heroine of some romance, who finds herself in the most extraordinary situations; and however much she may picture herself in those situations, she knows it is nothing more than a child’s game of make-believe, and that she would not, in fact, behave at all like her heroine. Like my sister’s children, when they capture me in the shrubbery, and inform me that they are brigands, and mean to hold me to ransom!”

Her smile was reflected in Mrs Grayshott’s eyes, but she sighed, and said: “It may be so—I don’t know! But when a girl falls in love, and with—oh, with what they call a man of the town!—who is practised in the art of seduction—?”

“Well, I don’t know either,” said Abby, “but it occurs to me, ma’am, that your man of the town, assuming him to be in search of a fortune, would scarcely choose a girl four years short of her majority! Indeed, eight years short of it, because Fanny will not come into full possession of her inheritance until she is five-and-twenty. I’m not very well-informed in such matters, but would not that be rather too long to—to live on the expectation?”

“Is he aware of this?” Mrs Grayshott asked. “Does Fanny know it?”

Abby’s eyes, swiftly raised, held an arrested expression. She said, after a moment’s pause: “No. That is, the question has never arisen. I don’t know, but I should suppose she doesn’t. I see that it must be my business to enlighten Calverleigh—if it should be necessary to do so. Meanwhile,—”

“Meanwhile,” said Mrs Grayshott, with a significant smile, “Mr Dunston is advancing towards us, determined to wrest you from me, and so I shall take my leave of you! Don’t think me impertinent if I say how much I wish I could see you happily established, Abby!”

She moved away as she spoke, leaving the road open to the gentleman in the blue coat and Angola pantaloons, who came up, saying simply: “You have come back at last! Bath has been a desert without you.”

She turned this off with a laughing rejoinder; and, after enquiring politely how his mother did, and exchanging a little trivial conversation with him, said mendaciously that she saw her sister beckoning to her, and left him.

Miss Wendover, who had observed with satisfaction the presence of Mr Dunston in the Pump Room, sighed. Like Mrs Grayshott, she wished very much to see Abby happily established, and could think of no one who would make her a better husband than Peter Dunston. He was a very respectable man, the owner of a comfortable property situated not many miles from Bath; his manners were easy and agreeable; and Miss Wendover had it on the authority of his widowed mother, who resided with him, that his amiability was only rivalled by the elegance of his mind, and the superiority of his understanding. Such was the excellence of his character that he had never caused his mother to suffer a moment’s anxiety. One might have supposed that Abby, in imminent danger of dwindling into an old maid, would have welcomed the addresses of so eligible a suitor, instead of declaring she had never been able to feel the least tendre for men of uniform virtues.

She certainly felt none for Peter Dunston, but Miss Wendover was mistaken when she suspected, in moods of depression, that her dear but perverse sister had set her face against marriage. Abby was fully alive to the disadvantages of her situation, and she had more than once considered the possibility of accepting an offer from Mr Dunston. He would be a kind, if unexciting husband; he enjoyed all the comfort and consequence of a large house and an easy fortune; and in marrying him she would remain within reach of Selina. On the other hand, no romance would attend such a marriage, and Abby, who, in her salad days had declined the flattering offer made her by Lord Broxbourne, still believed that somewhere there existed the man for whom she would feel much more than mere friendly liking. She had once believed, too, that she was bound, sooner or later, to encounter him. She had never done so, and it had begun to seem unlikely that she ever would; but without indulging morbid repinings she was disinclined to accept a substitute who could only be second-best in her eyes.

At the moment, however, her mind was not exercised by this question, being fully occupied by the more important problem of how best, and most painlessly, to detach Fanny from the undesirable Mr Calverleigh. Mrs Grayshott was no tattlemonger; and since she had a great deal of reserve Abby knew that only a stringent sense of duty could have forced her to overcome her distaste of talebearing. What she knew, either from her own observation, or from the innocent disclosures of her daughter, she plainly thought to be too serious to be withheld from Fanny’s aunt. At the same time, thought Abigail, dispassionately considering her, the well-bred calm of her manners concealed an over-anxious disposition, which led her to magnify possible dangers. The tragic circumstances of her life, coupled as they were with a sickly constitution, had not encouraged her in optimism. Married to an officer of the Line, and the mother of three hopeful children, she had endured years of separation, always looking forward to a blissful reunion, until her dreams were shattered by the news of Captain Grayshott’s death, during the Siege of Burgos. This blow was followed, less than a year later, by the illness, and lingering death of her younger son, and the break-down of her own health, so that it was hardly surprising that she should be readier to foresee disaster than a happy outcome.

Not that she ever betrayed her lowness of spirit. If she could be brought to speak of her trials, which was seldom, and only to a few trusted friends, she said that she was by far more fortunate than many soldiers’ widows, because she had been supported throughout by her brother, of whose affection and generosity she could not speak without emotion. He was an East India merchant—but, as the highest and most antiquated sticklers in Bath acknowledged, a most gentlemanly person—and a bachelor, commonly said to be rolling in riches. Not only had he coaxed and bullied his sister into accepting an allowance from him which enabled her to establish herself with modest elegance in Edgar Buildings, but he had claimed the right to maintain his surviving nephew at Rugby, and his only niece at Miss Trimble’s select seminary in Bath. It was generally supposed that Oliver Grayshott was destined to be his heir, and although there were those who thought it rather too bad of Mr Balking to have sent his poor sister’s sole remaining son to India, it was almost universally agreed that she would have been culpably in the wrong had she refused to be parted from him.

She had not done so, and now, as several persons had foreseen from the outset, he was returning to her, if not at death’s door, at the best in a state of total collapse.

Abby, blessed with a cheerful mind, took a more optimistic view of Oliver’s case, but she did realize the anxiety which Mrs Grayshott must be feeling, and was inclined to think that the consequent agitation of her nerves might well have led her to exaggerate the strength of Fanny’s infatuation.

The following three days did nothing to promote such a comfortable notion. There could be no doubt that Fanny, dazzled by the attentions of a London beau, had plunged headlong into her first love-affair, and was ripe for any outrageous folly. Wholly unpractised in the art of dissimulation, her spasmodic attempts to appear unconcerned betrayed her youth, and might, under different circumstances, have amused Abby. But it was not long before Abby found much more to dismay than to amuse her. She was herself impulsive, often impatient of convention, and, in her girlhood, rebellious, but she had been reared far more strictly than Fanny, and it came as a disagreeable shock to her when she discovered that Fanny watched for the postman every day, and, at the first glimpse of his scarlet coat and cockaded hat, slipped out of the room to intercept the delivery of letters to the house. Never, at her most rebellious, had Abby dreamed of engaging in clandestine correspondence! Such conduct, if it were known, must sink Fanny below reproach.

Every feeling was offended; and had she not been tolerably certain, from Fanny’s downcast looks, that no letter from Mr Calverleigh had reached her she thought she must have abandoned caution, and taken the girl roundly to task. At first inclined to give Mr Calverleigh credit for propriety, a little quiet reflection made her realize that if marriage was indeed his object he would scarcely commit an act of such folly as to write letters to Fanny which would be more than likely to fall into the hands of her aunts. His aim must be to propitiate Fanny’s guardians; and in his dealings with Selina he had shown that he knew it. Abby thought that he had succeeded all too well. Selina had been very much shocked by the disclosures made to her, but she hoped, in a nebulous way, that perhaps, after all, they would be found to be untrue; and she was moved to what Abby considered an excess of sensibility by the spectacle of her niece running to look eagerly out of the window every time a vehicle drew up outside the house. “Poor, poor child!” she mourned. “It is so very affecting! I do not know how you can remain unmoved! I had not thought you so—so unfeeling,Abby!”