He had met Evelyn abroad twice in the past two years, but he had only once visited England, to attend his father’s funeral. Lord Denville had died, quite suddenly, in the early spring of 1816; and since that date, some fifteen months previously, Lady Denville had not set eyes on her younger son. She thought at first that he had not altered at all, and said so. Then she corrected herself, and said: “No, that’s silly! You look older—of course you do! I am remembering how you were used to look, or trying to. The thing is, you see, that Evelyn is older too, so I’ve grown accustomed. You are still exactly like him, you know. Dearest, I wish you will tell me how it comes about that you’re here so suddenly! Have you brought home a dispatch? Do you carry dispatches, like officers?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” he answered gravely. “King’s Messengers are employed on that business. I’m here to attend to—to urgent private affairs.”

“Good gracious, Kit, I never knew you had any!” she exclaimed. “Oh, you’re trying to hoax me! Now, why?”

“But I have got urgent private affairs!” he protested. “You must know I have, Mama! I’ve become a man of substance, in fact: what you might call a well-breeched swell!”

“I shouldn’t call you anything so vulgar! Besides, it isn’t true.”

“How can you say so, when my godfather was so obliging as to leave his fortune to me?” he said reproachfully.

“Is that what you mean? But it isn’t a fortune, Kit! I wish it were—and I must own I thought it would be, for Mr Bembridge was always said to be very well to pass, only it turns out to be no such thing, and he was possessed merely of what Adlestrop, detestable creature, calls a competence. Poor man! I dare say it was not his fault, so you mustn’t blame him!”

“I don’t! A pretty easy competence, Mama!”

“A competence,” stated her ladyship, with conviction, “cannot be described as easy! You are talking like Adlestrop, and I wish you will not!”

Kit was aware that the family’s man of business had never been a favourite with his mother, but these embittered references to him seemed to call for explanation. “What’s Adlestrop done to offend you, Mama?” he asked.

“Adlestrop is a—Oh, let us not talk about him! Such a screw, and so malignant! I can’t think why I mentioned him, except that he told me, when Mr Bembridge died, that there was no occasion for you to come home, because there are no estates in question, or anything you might be obliged to attend to yourself—nothing but those detestable Funds, whatever they may be—and pray don’t tell me, Kit, for you might as well talk gibberish! I perfectly understand that they are holy, and must on no account be touched; and, for my part, I would never invest my money in anything so stupid!”

“Of course you wouldn’t!” agreed Kit. “It would never stay in your purse long enough to be invested in anything!”

She considered this for a moment, and then sighed, and said: “No; that’s true! It is the most lowering reflection. I have frequently tried to cultivate habits of economy, but I don’t seem to have the knack of it. None of the Cliffes have! And the dreadful thing is, Kit, that such habits only lead to waste!”

He gave a shout of laughter, but, although her eyes twinkled sympathetically, she said earnestly: “Yes, but they do! I purchased a cheap gown once, because Papa cut up stiff over one of Celeste’s bills, but it was so horrid that I was obliged to give it to Rimpton, without once wearing it! And when I gave orders for an economical dinner Papa got up from the table, and went straight off to the Clarendon, which is quite the most expensive hotel in London! Yes, you may laugh, but you have no experience of such matters. I assure you, the instant you begin to practise economy you will find yourself spending far more than ever you did before you embarked on such a ruinous course!”

“No, shall I? Perhaps I had better sell out of the Funds immediately, and start wasting the ready!”

“Nonsense! I know very well you haven’t come home to do that! So what has brought you home, dearest? I’m persuaded it wasn’t to look after these prodigious affairs of yours, so don’t try to bamboozle me!”

“Well—not entirely,” he admitted. He hesitated, colouring a little, and then said, meeting her look of inquiry: “To own the truth, I took a notion into my head—stupid, I dare say, but I couldn’t be rid of it—that Evelyn is in some sort of trouble—or just botheration, perhaps—and might need me. So I made my prodigious affairs serve as a reason for wanting leave of absence. Now tell me I’m an airdreamer! I wish you may!”

She said instead, in a marvelling tone: “Do you still get these feelings, both of you? As though one’s own troubles were not enough to bear!”

“I see: I am not an airdreamer. What’s amiss, Mama?”

“Oh, nothing, Kit! That is to say—well, nothing you can cure, and nothing at all if Evelyn returns tomorrow!”

“Returns? Where is he?”

“I don’t know!” disclosed her ladyship. “No one knows!”

He looked startled, and, at the same time, incredulous. Then he remembered that when she had first seen him, and had mistaken him for Evelyn, she had sounded disproportionately relieved. She was not an anxious parent; even when he and Evelyn were children their truancies had never ruffled her serenity; and when they grew up, and failed to return to the parental home at night, she had always been more likely to suppose that she had forgotten they had told her not to look for them for a day or two than to wonder what accident could have befallen them. He said in a rallying tone: “Gone off upon the sly, has he? Why should that cast you into high fidgets, Mama? You know what Evelyn is!”

“Yes, I dare say I shouldn’t even have noticed that he wasn’t here, at any other moment! But he assured me, when he left London, that he would return within a sennight, and he has been away now for ten days!”

“So—?”

“You don’t understand, Kit! Everything hangs upon his return! He is to dine in Mount Street tomorrow, to be presented to old Lady Stavely, and she has come up from Berkshire particularly to make his acquaintance. Only think how dreadful if he were to fail! We shall be at fiddlestick’s end, for she is odiously starched-up, you know, and I collect, from something Stavely said to me, that already she doesn’t like it above half.”

“Doesn’t like what above half?” interrupted Kit, quite bewildered. “Who is she, and why the deuce does she want to make Evelyn’s acquaintance?”

“Oh, dear, hasn’t Evelyn told you? No, I dare say there has been no time for a letter to reach you. The thing is that he has offered for Miss Stavely; and although Stavely was very well pleased, and Cressy herself not in the least unwilling, all depends upon old Lady Stavely. You must know that Stavely stands in the most absurd awe of her, and would turn short about if she only frowned upon the match! He is afraid for his life that she may leave her fortune to his brother, if he offends her I must say. Kit, it almost makes me thankful I have no fortune! How could I bear it if my beloved sons were thrown into quakes by the very thought of me?”

He smiled a little at that. “I don’t think we should be. But this engagement—how comes it about that Evelyn never so much as hinted at it? I can’t recall that he mentioned Miss Stavely in any of his letters. You didn’t either, Mama. It must have been very sudden, surely? I’ll swear Evelyn wasn’t thinking of marriage when last I heard from him, and that’s no more than a month ago. Is Miss Stavely very beautiful? Did he fall in love with her at first sight?”

“No, no! I mean, he has been acquainted with her for—oh, a long time! Three years at least.”

“And has only now popped the question? That’s not like him! I never knew him to tumble into love but what he did so after no more than one look. You don’t mean to tell me he has been trying for three years to fix his interest with the girl? It won’t fadge, my dear: I know him too well!”

“No, of course not. You don’t understand, Kit! This is not one of his—his flirtations!” She saw laughter spring into his eyes, tried to keep a solemn look in her own, and failed lamentably. They danced with wicked mirth, but she said with a very fair assumption of severity: “Or anything of that nature! He has outgrown such—such follies!”

“Has he indeed?” said Mr Fancot politely.

“Yes—well, at all events he means to reform his way of life! And now that he is the head of the family there is the succession to be considered, you know.”

“So there is!” said Mr Fancot, much struck. “What a gudgeon I am! Why, if any fatal accident were to befall him I should succeed to his room! He would naturally exert himself to the utmost to cut me out. I wonder why that should never before have occurred to me?”

“Oh, Kit, must you be so odious? You know very well—”

“Just so, Mama!” he said, as she faltered, and stopped. “How would it be if you told me the truth?”

2

There was a short silence. She met his look, and heaved a despairing sigh. “It is your Uncle Henry’s fault,” she disclosed. “And your father’s!” She paused, and then said sorrowfully: “And mine! Try as I will, I cannot deny that, Kit! To be sure, I thought that when your Papa died I should be able to discharge some of my debts, and be perfectly comfortable, but that was before I understood about jointures. Dearest, did you know that they are nothing but a take-in? No, how should you? But so it is! And, what is more,” she added impressively, “one’s creditors do know it! Which makes one wonder why they should take it into their heads to dun me now that I am a widow, in a much more disagreeable way than ever they did when Papa was alive. It seems quite idiotish to me, besides being so unfeeling!”

He had spent few of his adult years at home, but this disclosure came as no surprise to him. For as long as he could remember poor Mama’s financial difficulties had been the cause of discomfort in his home. There had been painful interludes which had left Lady Denville in great distress; these had led to coldness, and estrangement, and to a desperate policy of concealment.

The Earl had been a man of upright principles, but he was not a warm-hearted man, and his mind was neither lively nor elastic. He was fifteen years older than his wife, and he belonged as much by temperament as by age to a generation of rigid etiquette. He had only once allowed his feelings to overcome his judgement, when he had succumbed to the charm of the lovely Lady Amabel Cliffe, lately enlarged from the schoolroom to become the rage of the ton, and had offered for her hand in marriage. Her father, the Earl of Baverstock, was the possessor of impoverished estates and a numerous progeny, and he had accepted the offer thankfully. But the very qualities which had fascinated Denville in the girl offended him in the wife, and he set himself to the task of eradicating them. His efforts were unsuccessful, and resulted merely in imbuing her with a dread of incurring his displeasure. She remained the same loving, irresponsible creature with whom he had become infatuated; but she lavished her love on her twin sons, and did her best to conceal from her husband the results of her imprudence.

The twins adored her. Unable to detect beneath their father’s unbending formality his real, if temperate, affection, they became at an early age their mama’s champions. She played with them, laughed with them, sorrowed with them, forgave them their sins, and sympathized with them in their dilemmas: they could perceive no fault in her, and directed their energies, as they grew up, to the task of protecting her from the censure of their formidable father.

Mr Fancot, therefore, was neither surprised nor shocked to discover that his mother was encumbered by debt. He merely said: “Scorched, love? Just how does the land lie?”

“I don’t know. Well, dearest, how can one remember everything one has borrowed for years and years?”

That did startle him a little. “Years and years? But, Mama, when you were obliged to disclose to my father the fix you were in—three years ago, wasn’t it?—didn’t he ask you for the sum total of your debts, and promise that they should be discharged?”

“Yes, he did say that,” she answered. “And I didn’t tell him. Well, I didn’t know, but I’m not trying to excuse myself, and I own I shouldn’t have done so even if I had known. I can’t explain it to you, Kit, and if you mean to say that it was very wrong of me, and cowardly, don’t, because I am miserably aware of it! Only, when Adlestrop wrote down everything I said—”