It was opened to him by Silas Wantage, who grinned, and said: “It’s wonderful, so it is, the way you do keep coming to the house, sir, as though there hadn’t never been what you might call unpleasantness!”

“Desire Miss—” Ravenscar stopped. His grim mouth hardened. “Desire Miss Grantham to accord me the favour of a few words with her—alone!” he said.

Mr Wantage eyed him shrewdly, and stroked his chin. “Ay, but I’m not sure as Miss Deb is receiving visitors today,” he said.

“Take my message to her!” Ravenscar said fiercely.

Mr Wantage opened his eyes very wide at this, but apparently decided to obey. He showed Mr Ravenscar into the small parlour at the back of the hall, and left him there while he went to deliver his message to Miss Grantham.

Deborah was in her bedchamber, having just taken off her hat and her travelling-cloak. She was giving her aunt a lively description of her journey when Silas scratched on the door, but when she heard who was below, she hesitated, blushed, and said. “Very well, I will come down.”

“If you were to ask me, Miss Deb, I should have to tell you that if ever I saw a cove in the devil’s own temper I’ve seen it just now, when I opened the door to Mr Ravenscar,” Silas warned her.

“Oh, dear! He must have heard the news!” said Miss Grantham ruefully. “I did hope he would not mind so very much!”

“Maybe I’d better come with you,” suggested Wantage, who had not yet given up hope of enjoying a bout of fisticuffs with Mr Ravenscar.

“Certainly not! He cannot eat me, after all!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Mr Wantage darkly.

But Miss Grantham only laughed, and dismissed him, turning to arrange her hair in the mirror, and to straighten the fall of lace over her bosom. She then told her aunt she expected to be back directly, and went downstairs to the back-parlour.

Mr Ravenscar, who was standing staring out of the window, jerking his driving-gloves between his hands, swung round at her entrance, and looked across at her with wrath and the most bitter contempt in his face. “So!” he said bitingly. “Stand there, ma’am! Let me take a good look at you! You have tricked me finely, have you not?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I did trick you a little,” confessed Miss Grantham. “But it is not so very bad, after all!”

“I thought I had been mistaken in you! By God, the only mistake I made was in giving you credit for a little common honesty!” he flung at her. “You are a cheating baggage, ma’am!”

Do not put on that air of outraged innocence, I beg of you! A drab from the stews would have scorned to behave as you have! I came to take a look at you, knowing you for the jade you are! You have a beautiful face, I will grant, and you are false to the bottom of your heart—if heart you possess!”

Miss Grantham blinked and gasped under this hail of words, and could only stammer: “Are you m-mad? If I deceived you, at least I have done nothing to provoke you to such anger as this! It may not be a brilliant match for Adrian, and I own he is a trifle young to be setting up his establishment, but you will see how well it will answer!”

“No, that I shall not!” he retorted. “Mine is one foot that will not cross the threshold, be sure!”

“Oh, this is nothing but the stupidest prejudice!” she exclaimed. “I warn you, you had better not talk to Adrian in this vein, if you value his regard for you, for he is as deep in love as can be, and will very likely call you out for saying such things of his wife!”

“His wife!” he ejaculated bitterly. “My God, his wife!”

Miss Grantham came forward into the middle of the room. “I see no reason for all this scorn,” she said. “You are angry because you were hoodwinked, but that was as much Adrian’s doing as mine. Do not think to come browbeating me, Mr Ravenscar! I will not bear such treatment! And if you dare to call me by one more vile name I will hit you! As for the bills, and the mortgage which you were so obliging as to send me, you shall have them back, and you shall be paid every penny!”

“Yes! By Mablethorpe!” he said, with a short laugh. “I thank you, ma’am, I want none of them back! But if Mablethorpe had known the full story, do you think that he would have married you? Do you?”

Miss Grantham stood as though turned to stone, colour flooding her cheeks as the sense of his words dawned upon her.

He did not fail to mark this flush, and said: “I am happy to see that you can blush, ma’am! I had not thought it possible!”

A pulse throbbed in Miss Grantham’s throat; her eyes narrowed to slits of light; she made a strong effort to control her voice, and managed to say: “And how, may I ask, did you know that I had married Mablethorpe?”

“I have this instant met him. He told me himself. It may interest you to know, ma’am, that a week ago I was told that you had been seen traveling northward with your maid beside you in the chaise, and my cousin riding as escort. The fool that I was I would not believe that you could have been base enough to persuade that boy into eloping with you! I assumed him to be accompanying you merely to your destination, to protect you upon the journey! But today I learned the truth. I should have known better than to expect honest dealing from a wench out of a gaming-house!”

If Miss Grantham had been red before, she was now as white as her lace. “You should be grateful to me for having enlarged your experience! But I would remind you, Mr Ravenscar, that I told you when I had you in my power that I should marry your cousin when I chose!”

“I have not forgotten! I remember something else which you said upon that occasion, and which will prove as true a prophecy! You promised to ruin him! You did so when you let him put his ring upon your finger!”

Miss Grantham thrust her left hand into the folds of her skirt. “You will be sorry that you ever dared to speak to me in these terms!” she said through her teeth. “There is nothing I will not do to punish you! I have never been so sorry that I was not born a man! I would kill you if I could! I disliked you at first setting eyes on you: I have learned to detest you!”

“And I thought I had learned to love you, ma’am!” he said. “You do not understand the meaning of that word, but when you have squandered Adrian’s fortune, as I make no doubt you will do soon enough, you may reflect that had you played your cards more cleverly you might have had my wealth to spend, and my name to call your own! You stare! Is it possible that you did not guess it, ma’am? So clever as you are you yet failed to snare a richer prize than Adrian! A much richer prize, Miss Grantham! Take that thought to bed with you, and may you dream of it often! For myself, I count myself fortunate to have escaped so narrowly from the toils of a harpy!”

Miss Grantham’s voice shook uncontrollably, and she was forced to grasp a chairback to steady herself. “Go!” she gasped. “Marry you? I would rather die in the worst agony you can conceive! Don’t dare—don’t dare to enter this house again! I wish I may never see you again as long as I live!”

“You cannot wish that more heartily than I do!” he retorted, and strode from the room.

Miss Grantham stayed where she was for a full minute, her breast heaving, and angry tears starting in her eyes. The-slam of the front-door recalled her to herself. She dashed a hand across her eyes, and rushed out of the room, straight upstairs to her bedchamber. Lady Bellingham was still seated there, but at sight of her niece’s ravaged countenance she almost jumped out of her chair, exclaiming: “Good God, my love, what is amiss?”

“That man!” choked Miss Grantham. “That devil!”

“Oh, heavens, you have quarrelled with Ravenscar again!” cried her ladyship. “Don’t tell me you have had him put in the cellar. I can’t bear it!”

“He shall never enter this house again!” stormed Miss Grantham. “He dared to think—he dared to think—Oh, I shall go mad!”

“I know you will, and it has been troubling me very much,” said her aunt. “I never knew you to behave so in all your life! What did he think?”

“He thought—oh, I cannot bring myself to speak of it! That is what he thinks me! I have never been so insulted! I wish I had called to Silas to fling him out of the house! If ever he dares to show his face here again that is what I shall do. I would like to boil him in oil! Nothing could be too bad for him, and if I could see my way to ruining him I would do it, and dance for joy!”

“But, Deb, what has he done?” wailed her aunt.

“He believes me to be the lowest kind of creature on this earth! He has insulted me in the worst way any—oh, go away, Aunt Lizzie, go away! And don’t let anyone come up to me, for I won’t see a soul!”

She looked so fierce that Lady Bellingham did not attempt to remonstrate with her, but tottered from the room, feeling: that her days were numbered. She heard the key turn in the lock behind her, and went downstairs to her boudoir, intending to recuperate her own strength by sipping hartshorn-and water, and lying down on the sofa, with her smelling-salts to hand.

She had barely settled herself comfortably, however, when Lucius Kennet walked into the room, saying cheerfully, “I hear that Deb has come home. Where is the darlin’?”

“Shut up in her room, and stark mad!” moaned Lady Bellingham.

. He stared. “The devil she is! Now, what ails her?”

“I don’t know. Ravenscar has been here, and she says she has never been so insulted in her life! I have never known her to be so angry! She could barely speak!”

“But what has the miserable spleen been saying to her at all?”

“It is no use asking me, for I don’t know, but I fear he must have made her an improper proposal. She says she would like to boil him in oil. But understand me, Lucius, if you help her to do any such thing you do not enter this house again!”

“Faith, I have a better way of punishing Mr Ravenscar than that! I wish you will inform Deb I am here, ma’am: I’ll tell her what will gladden her heart!”

“She said she would not see a soul, and you know what she is! Besides, she has locked the door. Do, I implore you, go away and leave me in peace! I am sure my head is like to split!”

“Ah, now, be easy, ma’am!” he said. “I’ll go, and maybe you’ll not be seeing me for a while, but I give you my word I have as pretty a revenge brewing for Ravenscar as even Deb could wish for! You may tell her so with my love—or maybe I’ll be writing her a note to raise her spirits.”

“Do anything you please, only go away!” begged her ladyship, closing her eyes, and making a feeble gesture towards the door.

Chapter 17

When Mr Ravenscar stalked inside his house, twenty minutes after he had flung out of the back-parlour in St James’s Square, he was still in a towering rage, which showed itself plainly in his scowling brow, and thinned lips. His butler, unwise enough to make an innocuous remark about the weather when he admitted him to the house, had his head bitten off for his pains, and retired, much shaken, to the nether regions, where he informed his colleagues that if the master had not been crossed in love he did not know the signs.

Mr Ravenscar, throwing his gloves on to one chair, and his long, drab coat across another, shut himself up in his library, and spent an hour pacing up and down its length, a prey to the most violent and confused emotions he had ever experienced. He did not know whom he was most furious with, himself or Miss Grantham, and was dwelling savagely on this quite unimportant problem when he discovered that his bitterest anger was directed against Mablethorpe. He realized that it would afford him considerable pleasure to be able to take his cousin by the throat, and to choke the life out of him. This discovery enraged him still further, and he told himself savagely that he was well rid of a mercenary, heartless, unprincipled baggage. This brought no relief to his feelings; and although the wanton smashing of a Sevres figure which he had always detested, and which some nameless fool had dared to place upon the mantelpiece, afforded him a momentary gratification, its beneficial effects did not prove to be lasting. He continued to pace the floor, torn between a desire to strangle Miss Grantham and throw her body to the dogs, and an equally strong desire to serve Mablethorpe in this way instead, and to think out a fitting punishment for Miss Grantham which would, in some mysterious manner, entail her remaining in his power for the rest of her life.

It was not to be supposed that this ferocity could endure for long. It wore itself out presently, leaving Mr Ravenscar with a sense of corroding disillusionment, and a conviction that life held nothing further for him. In this painful mood, he went upstairs to change his clothes for dinner, vouchsafing not one word to his valet (who, after one swift glance at his face, was thankful for this forbearance), and attending so little to what he was doing that he allowed himself to be assisted into a coat which he had decided on the previous night that he would never wear again.