“No, no!” Kit protested.

“But, Chacely, did you think he wouldn’t?” asked one of the other gentlemen.

At this, the third gentleman added his mite to this badinage. It was evident that no suspicion that they were roasting Kit, and not Evelyn, crossed their minds: a circumstance which made Lady Denville say, when the door was shut upon them: “You see, Kit! I told you how it would be! I dare say that Newlyn and Sir John Streatley have been acquainted with you since you were in short coats, and if they never guessed the truth you may be easy!”

“I am not at all easy,” he retorted. “But as for you, love, I wonder how you dare address me as “wicked one”! Mama, you are incorrigible! Who the devil is that mooncalf you’ve enslaved?”

Her infectious ripple of laughter broke from her. “Isn’t he ridiculous, poor boy? But one must be kind to him: you see, he is a poet!”

“Ah, that, of course, explains everything!” said Kit cordially. “I expect you are his inspiration?”

“Well, just at present I am,” she acknowledged. “It won’t last—in fact, I think that at any moment now he will fall desperately in love with some chit—probably quite ineligible!—and forget that I ever existed. Which, I must own, will be in one way a great relief, because it is dreadfully tedious to be obliged to listen to poetry, even when it has been composed in one’s honour. But in another—oh, Kit, you won’t understand, but to be three-and-forty, and still able to attach foolish boys, is such a comfort!”

“Mama, you must never make such an admission again! No one would believe you to be a day older than three-and-thirty—if as much!”

This was true, but Lady Denville, after considering the matter, said: “No, but one must be reasonable, Kit, and everyone must know I can’t be a day younger than three-and-forty, when all the world knows that you and Evelyn are four-and-twenty! It is the most lowering reflection! But never mind that! What happened tonight, in Mount Street? I was in such a fret of anxiety all the evening I left my party early!”

“Oh, was that the reason? I must tell you that I was knocked acock when I perceived that the sumptuous chair being carried down the street before midnight was yours!”

“Yes, I don’t think I have ever left a party so early before—particularly when I was winning!” she said naively.

“No, were you? But I was very much shocked, Mama! What has become of your most handsome cavaliere servente? How comes it about that he permitted another—four others!—to squire you home tonight? Don’t tell me his passion has waned!”

She went into another ripple of laughter. “Oh, poor Bonamy! How can you be so unfeeling as even to think of his walking all the way from Albemarle Street? He must have dropped dead of an apoplexy, had he made the attempt! As for his passion, I have a melancholy suspicion that I share it with his cook: he was boring on for ever tonight about a way of serving teal with poivrade sauce! Now, stop funning, and tell me what happened at your party!”

“Oh, a very handsome dinner, and the company—er—the pink of gentility! Not quite in my style, perhaps, but certainly of the first respectability!”

“Were they excessively fusty?” she said sympathetically. “I did warn you that they would be!”

“You did, but you did not warn me, dear Mama, that two of the number are acquainted with Evelyn!”

“No! Who, Kit?”

“Mr Charles Stavely, who appears to be—”

“Oh, him!” she interrupted. “Very likely he may be, but so slightly that it is not of the least consequence!”

“Very true, but if Evelyn doesn’t return in time to save me from Lucton I shall be totally undone. Is he one of Evelyn’s bosom-bows?”

“Young Lucton? Good gracious, no! You don’t mean to say that he was invited to the party?”

“That is precisely what I do mean to say, Mama! Furthermore, I apprehend that Evelyn has entered into some sort of an undertaking with him. What it may be I haven’t the least guess, and something seems to tell me that you haven’t either.”

She shook her head. “No, indeed! How excessively awkward for you!”

“Yes, isn’t it?” he agreed. “Particularly when one considers that he is coming to visit me tomorrow—to learn what is my decision! That’s what I call having a wolf by the ears!”

“Most vexatious!” she said sunnily. “But there’s no need to be in a worry, dearest! Perhaps Evelyn will have returned—or Fimber may know what it is that stupid creature wants. And if he doesn’t know, Brigg will say that you are not at home. I see no difficulty in evading Lucton.”

“No, love, I’ve no doubt of that! But not even my abominable twin could agree to receive a man on a matter of business and then say that he was not at home!”

“But, Kit, how foolish of you!” she said reproachfully. “You should have fobbed him off!”

“So I might have, if it had not been made very plain to me that he thinks himself pretty ill-used at having been fobbed off for over ten days already. Oh, well, I dare say I shall be able to brace it through! What has me in a far worse worry is that Miss Stavely has asked me to visit her tomorrow morning, to resume an interrupted discussion she had with Evelyn, on the day that he proposed to her.”

“Now, that is tiresome!” she exclaimed, dismayed.

“Very much more than tiresome, Mama. It’s one thing to masquerade as Evelyn at a party, but quite another to receive Miss Stavely’s confidence under false pretences.”

“I see what you mean,” she agreed, wrinkling her brow. “But very likely you are making a piece of work about nothing! I should be astonished to learn that she has anything of a very confidential nature to say to Evelyn, because she is not at all well-acquainted with him, besides having a great deal of reserve. Depend upon it, it will prove to be nothing to cause you embarrassment. Indeed, the more I think about it the more positive I feel that it can only be a triviality, because Evelyn said nothing to me about having been interrupted. And, what is more, Kit, if he had thought that Cressy had something of importance to say he would not have left London without seeing her again!”

“She seemed to think it was he who had something important to say. He appears to have told her that he had a stipulation to make.”

“A stipulation? What in the world can he have been thinking of? He must have taken leave of his senses! Unless—” She broke off, her eyes widening. Then she said: “I know what he was going to say, and I am very glad he was interrupted, for I told him he was on no account to do so. He is set on us all living together, which I have no intention of doing, because such arrangements very rarely answer. It was used to be quite the thing, you know, and I always thought it such a fortunate circumstance that your papa’s parents were both dead when I married him. If Cressy brings the matter up, say that you have changed your mind, or have forgotten, or that she misunderstood you!”

“I can hardly do that, Mama,” he objected. “It is clearly not what Evelyn would say.”

“It is what I say!” she replied spiritedly. “I mean to give him a very severe scold—and if you look at me in that odiously quizzy way I shall give you one too! Tell me about old Lady Stavely! Did she frighten you?”

“She wanted to do so, but I tried the effect of giving her a civil set-off, which answered very well.”

Lady Denville was awed. “Kit, how brave ofyou!”

“Yes, wasn’t it? But, there, Mama! you know me! Pluck to the backbone!”

She laughed. “Well, I should never have dared to do such a thing!”

“You must make the attempt: she’ll bullock you if you don’t!”

“Oh, I mean to keep out of her way! She came to London to make your acquaintance, and now that she has done so I dare say she will return to Berkshire within a day or two!” returned her ladyship blithely.

“You’re out, love!” said Kit, grinning wickedly at her. “She remains in London until next month, when she means, according to what Lady Ebchester told me, to go to Worthing for the summer, taking Cressy with her. She charged me with a message for you: you are to visit her one morning!”

“No!” she ejaculated, in the liveliest horror. “Kit, you’re shamming it!”

“I am not. Those were her very words.”

“Oh, you abominable creature! Why didn’t you tell her I was sick—gone into the country—anything? She never liked me—indeed, when Stavely was dangling after me she did her utmost to dissuade him from making me an offer! Not that there was the least necessity, for your grandfather would never have countenanced the match when so many far more flattering offers were being made for me! Oh, Kit, how could you subject me to such an ordeal? She will annihilate me!”

“No such thing! You have only to bear in mind that Evelyn is a matrimonial prize of the first water, and that will give you an immeasurable feeling of superiority!”

But Lady Denville, while agreeing that Evelyn might look as high as he chose for a bride, refused to be comforted. She informed Kit that when a redoubtable old lady had known one from the cradle such considerations counted for nothing. She added tragically, gathering the shimmering folds of her cloak about her, as she prepared to mount the stairs: “I have it on the best authority that she described me once as a pretty widgeon! And when she looks at me, in that beady way of hers, I shall feel like a widgeon!”

“But a very pretty one!” her son reminded her.

“Yes, but much she will care for that!” replied her ladyship. She paused on the half-landing, to add: “And don’t put yourself to the trouble of telling me that I am of higher rank than she is, because she won’t care for that either!”

On these embittered words, she resumed her progress up the stairs. He caught up with her as she reached the second floor, and told her in shocked accents that if she meant to go to bed without kissing him good night he would be unable to sleep a wink. That made her give a choke of laughter; and when he pointed out to her that the ordeal awaiting her was as nothing when compared to the ordeal to which he had been subjected, she melted completely, saying: “No, indeed! My poor darling, you may rely on me to lend you all the support I can! There is nothing I would not do for either of my beloved sons!”

Embracing her with breath-taking heartiness, he mastered a quivering lip, thanked her gravely, and parted from her on the best of terms.

Fimber was waiting for him in his own room. As he eased him out of Evelyn’s longtailed coat, he asked, in the voice of one to whom the answer was a foregone conclusion, if anyone had recognized him. Upon being told that no one had, he said: “It was not to be expected that anyone would, sir. When you passed out of my hands this evening the thought crossed my mind that even I should not have known that you were not his lordship. You are, if I may say so, the spit of him, Mr Christopher!”

Questioned about Mr Lucton, he said austerely: “A very frippery young gentleman, sir—what one might term a mere barley-straw!”

“You may term him anything you please,” said Kit, stripping off his neckcloth, “but do you know what was the proposal he made to my brother, to which he expected an answer within a day?”

After a frowning pause, during which Fimber divested Kit of his waistcoat, he said: “No, sir, his lordship made no mention of it to me. But from what I know of Mr Lucton I would venture the guess that he may have been wishful to sell his lordship one of his hunters.”

“Who wants to purchase a hunter at this season?” demanded Kit sceptically. “Not my brother!”

“No, sir; as you say! But his lordship is known to be very good-natured: one who finds it difficult to say no; and Mr Lucton is frequently in Dun territory. We will discover what Challow may know about the business, when he comes for orders tomorrow morning. I should inform you, Mr Christopher, that I have taken it upon myself to apprise Challow of what has occurred here. I trust you will think that I did right.”

“Much you’d care if I didn’t!” observed Kit. “It’s to be hoped that he does know what Lucton expects of my brother! If he doesn’t I shall find myself lurched!”

But Challow, presenting himself on the following morning, did not fail his harassed young master. He was a stocky individual, with grizzled hair, and the slightly bowed legs of one bred from his earliest youth to the saddle. He had taught the twins to ride their first ponies, had rescued them from innumerable scrapes, besides putting his foot down on some of their more dangerous exploits; and while his public demeanour towards them was generally respectful, he treated them, in private, as if they were the schoolboys he still thought them. He greeted Kit with a broad grin, responded to an invitation to tip a mauley by grasping the hand held out to him, and saying: “Now, that’s enough, Master Kit! How often have I told you to mind your tongue? A nice thing it would be if her ladyship was to hear you using such vulgar language! And who’d bear the blame? Tell me that!”