The elderly lady made a faint clucking noise, but although she looked frightened she did not seem to be surprised by this unconventional greeting. She said: “Oh, Mr. Penicuik! At such a time—such a delicate occasion—!”

“Kitty!” interrupted Mr. Penicuik. “Throw that Fish out of the room!”

The elderly lady uttered a protesting shriek; Miss Charing, however, pushed her gently but inexorably over the threshold, saying: “I told you how it would be!” She then closed the door, favoured the company with a wide-eyed and thoughtful gaze, and advanced into the middle of the room.

“Good girl!” approved Mr. Penicuik. “Sit down!”

“Take this chair!” urged Lord Biddenden.

“You will be comfortable here, my dear Kitty,” said the Reverend Hugh, indicating the chair from which he had risen at her entrance.

Not to be outdone, Lord Dolphinton gulped, and said: “Take mine! Not comfortable, but very happy to— Pray take it!”

Miss Charing bestowed a small, prim smile upon her suitors, and sat down on a straight chair by the table, and folded her hands in her lap.

Miss Charing was a rather diminutive brunette. She had a neat figure, very pretty hands and feet, and a countenance which owed much to a pair of large, dark eyes. Their expression was one of candour and of innocence, and she had a habit of fixing them earnestly (and sometimes disconcertingly) upon the face of any interlocutor. She had a slightly retrousse nose, a short upper-lip, a decided chin, and a profusion of dusky curls, which were dressed in the demure style which found favour in the eyes of her guardian and her governess. She wore a round robe of green cambric, with a high waist and long sleeves, and one narrow flounce. A small gold locket was suspended round her throat by a ribbon. It was her only ornament. If Lord Biddenden, a man of fashionable inclinations, felt that a few trinkets and a more modish gown would have improved her, it was plain that his brother surveyed her modest appearance with approbation.

“Well, Kitty,” said Mr. Penicuik, “I’ve told these three what my intentions are, and now they may speak for themselves. Not Biddenden, of course: I don’t mean him, though I don’t doubt he’d speak fast enough if he could. What brought him here I don’t know!”

“I expect,” said Miss Charing, considering his lordship, “he came to bring Hugh up to the mark.”

“Really, Kitty! Upon my word!” ejaculated Biddenden, visibly discomposed. “It is time you learned to mend your tongue!”

Miss Charing looked surprised, and directed an enquiring glance at Hugh. He said, with grave kindness: “George means that such expressions as ‘up to the mark’ are improper when uttered by a female, cousin.”

“Ho!” said Mr. Penicuik. “So that’s what he meant, is it? Well, well! Then I’ll thank him to keep his nose out of what don’t concern him! What’s more, I won’t have you teaching the girl to be mealy-mouthed! Not while she lives under my roof! I have quite enough of that from that Fish!”

“I must observe, sir, that my cousin would be perhaps well-advised to model her conversation rather upon Miss Fishguard’s example than upon that set her by—I conjecture —Jack,” returned Hugh, pointedly enunciating each syllable of the governess’s name.

“Gammon!” said Mr. Penicuik rudely. “It ain’t Jack’s example she follows! It’s mine! I knew how it would be: I shan’t get a wink of sleep tonight! Damme, I never knew a fellow turn my bile as you do, Hugh, with that starched face of yours, and your prosy ways! If I hadn’t made up my mind to it that—Never mind that! I did make it up, and I won’t go back on my word! Never have, never will! However, there’s no reason for Kitty to be in a hurry to decide which of you she’ll have, and if she takes my advice she’ll wait and see whether—Not that either of ’em deserves she should, and if they think they can keep me dangling on their whims they will very soon discover their mistake!”

With these suddenly venomous words Mr. Penicuik once more tugged at the bell-rope, and with such violence that it was not surprising that not only the butler, but his valet as well, appeared in the Saloon before the echo of the clapper had died away. Mr. Penicuik announced his determination to retire to the library, adding that he had had enough of his relations for one day, but would see them again upon the morrow, unless—as was more than probable—he was then too ill to see anyone but the doctor. “Not that it’ll do me any good to see him!” he said. He uttered a sharp yelp as he was hoisted out of his chair, cursed his valet, and cast a malevolent look at Lord Biddenden. “And if I were to sleep all night, and wake up without a twinge of this damned gout, I still wouldn’t want to see you, George!” he declared.

Lord Biddenden waited until he had been supported out of the room before observing, with a significant look: “It is not difficult to understand what has cast him into this ill-humour, of course!”

“Didn’t invite you,” said Dolphinton, showing his understanding.

“Oh, hold your tongue!” exclaimed Biddenden, quite exasperated. “My uncle must be in his dotage! A more ill-managed business—”

“Ill-managed indeed,” said Hugh. “There has been a want of delicacy which must be excessively disagreeable, not to you, but to our cousin here!”

“She is not our cousin!”

“My dear brother, we have thought of her as our cousin ever since she was in her cradle.”

“Yes, I know we have,” said Biddenden, “but you heard what my uncle said! She’s not!”

Hugh said arctically: “That was not what I meant. I am happy to be able to say that such a suspicion has never crossed my mind.”

“Coming it rather too strong, Hugh!” said Biddenden, with a short laugh.

“You forget your company!” said Hugh, allowing annoyance to lend an edge to his voice.

Recollecting it, Lord Biddenden reddened, and cast an apologetic look at Kitty. “I beg your pardon! But this business has so much provoked me—! Done in such a scrambling way—! However, I do not mean to put you to the blush, and I am sure we have all of us been in such habits of easy intercourse that there is no reason why you should feel the least degree of mortification!”

“Oh, no, I don’t!” Kitty assured him. “In fact, it is a thing I have wondered about very often, only Hugh told me he was persuaded it could be no such thing. Which, I must own, I was very glad of.”

“Well, upon my word!” said Lord Biddenden, torn between diversion and disapproval. “Hugh told you, did he? So much for your fine talking, my dear brother! No suspicion, indeed! I wonder you will be for ever trying to humbug us all! You should not be talking of such things to Hugh, my dear Kitty, but I shall say nothing further on that head! No doubt you have a comfortable understanding with him, and I am sure I am glad to know that this is so!”

“Well, I knew it would be useless to ask poor Fish,” said Kitty naïvely, “so I spoke to Hugh, because he is a clergyman. Has Uncle Matthew told you that I am not his daughter?”

She turned her eyes towards Hugh as she spoke, and he replied, a little repressively: “You are the daughter of the late Thomas Charing, Kitty, and of his wife, a French lady.”

“Oh, I knew my mother was French!” said Kitty. “I remember when my Uncle Armand brought my French cousins to see us. Their names were Camille and André, and Camille mended my doll for me, which no one else was able to do, after Claud said she was an aristo, and cut her head off.” Miss Charing’s eyes darkened with memory; she added in a brooding tone: “For which I shall never forgive him!”

This speech did not seem to augur well for the absent Captain Rattray’s chances of winning an heiress. Lord Biddenden said fretfully: “My dear Kitty, that must have been years ago!”

“Yes, but I have not forgotten, and I shall always be grateful to my cousin Camille.”

“Ridiculous!”

Hugh interposed, saying: “It is you who are ridiculous, George. However, I must agree with you that my uncle has shown a lack of delicacy in this affair which renders the present situation distasteful to any person of refinement. I am persuaded that it would be more agreeable to our cousin if you and Dolphinton were to withdraw into some other apartment.”

“I daresay it would be more agreeable to you,” retorted his lordship, “and I should be very glad to oblige you, but if you imagine that I am going to bed at seven o’clock you are the more mistaken!”

“There is not the smallest necessity for you to go to bed. Really, George—!”

“Oh, yes, there is!” said his lordship, with considerable acerbity. “No doubt my uncle has a very comfortable fire built up in the library, but if there is one in any other room in the house I have yet to discover it!”

“Well, there is one in his bedchamber, of course,” said Kitty. “And, if you did not object to sitting with Fish, there is a fire in the schoolroom. Only I daresay you would not like it very much.”

“No, I should not!”

“And poor Dolph wouldn’t like it either. Besides, he wants to say something,” pursued Kitty, who had been observing with an indulgent eye the spasmodic opening and shutting of Lord Dolphinton’s large mouth.

“Well, Foster, what is it?” said Hugh encouragingly.

“I won’t go with George!” announced Dolphinton. “I don’t like George. Didn’t come to see him. Oughtn’t to be here. Wasn’t invited!”

“Oh, my God, now we are back at that!” muttered Biddenden. “You might just as well take yourself off to bed, Dolphinton, as remain here!”

“No, I might not,” returned Dolphinton, with spirit. “I ain’t a married man! What’s more, I’m an Earl.”

“What has that to say to anything, pray? I wish you will—”

“Important,” said Dolphinton. “Good thing to marry an Earl. Be a Countess.”

“This, I collect, is a declaration!” said Biddenden sardonically. “Pretty well, Foster, I must say!”

“Are you being so obliging as to make me an offer, Dolph?” enquired Miss Charing, in no way discomposed.

Lord Dolphinton nodded several times, grateful to her for her ready understanding. “Very happy to oblige!” he said. “Not at all plump in the pocket—no, not to mention that! Just say—always had a great regard for you! Do me the honour to accept of my hand in marriage!”

“Upon my word!” ejaculated Biddenden. “If one did not know the truth, one would say you were three parts disguised, Foster!”

Lord Dolphinton, uneasily aware of having lost the thread of a prepared speech, looked more miserable than ever, and coloured to the roots of his lank brown locks. He cast an imploring glance at Miss Charing, who at once rose, and went to seat herself in a chair beside him, patting his hand in a soothing way, and saying: “Nonsense! You said it very creditably, Dolph, and I perfectly understand how it is! You have offered for me because your Mama ordered you to do so, haven’t you?”

“That’s it,” said his lordship, relieved. “No wish to vex you, Kitty—really very fond of you!—but must make a push!”

“Exactly so! Your estates are shockingly mortgaged, and your pockets are quite to let, so you have offered for me! But you don’t really wish to marry me, do you?”

His lordship sighed. “No help for it!” he said simply.

“Yes, there is, because I won’t accept your offer, Dolph,” said Miss Charing, in a consoling tone. “So now you may be comfortable again!”

The cloud lifted from his brow, only to descend again. “‘No, I shan’t,” said his lordship wretchedly. “She’ll take a pet. Say I must have made poor work of it.”

“What astonishes me,” said Biddenden, in an aside to his brother, “is that my Aunt Augusta permitted him to come here without her!”

“Didn’t want to,” said Dolphinton, once more startling his relatives by his ability to follow the gist of remarks not addressed to himself. “Uncle Matthew said he wouldn’t let her cross his threshold. Said I must come alone. I didn’t object, only she’ll say I didn’t do the thing as she told me. Well, I did! Offered for you—said I was an Earl—said I should be honoured! Won’t believe it, that’s all!”

“Oh, don’t distress yourself!” said Biddenden. “We three are witnesses to testify to your having expressed yourself with all the ardour and address imaginable!”

“You think I did?” said Dolphinton hopefully.

“Oh, heaven grant me patience!” exclaimed his cousin.

“Indeed, you stand in need of it!” said Hugh sternly. “You may be quite easy, my dear Foster: you have done just as my aunt bade you. I believe I may say that no persuasions of hers could have prevailed upon our cousin to have changed her nay to yea.”