“Yes, she has a great respect for her uncle,” the deceitful creature corroborated, without a blush.

The Countess had bid him drive out with Miss Mallow, and he intended doing so the next day, but alas his cousin had other plans for him. She was ordering new draperies for her Purple Saloon, and required his escort to the drapery shop. There was only one bolt of purple in the shop, but this by no means meant she only looked at it. She also had to consider red and blue and a dozen patterned ells before agreeing to the purple, while Dammler walked back and forth, drawing out his watch and calculating how quickly he could get her home if they left immediately. He knew he had missed his chance when they had been there an hour and a quarter. It was graphically illustrated when they at last went out into the street in time to see Prudence atop Ronald Springer’s curricle. She waved to them in a friendly manner.

“My, it is Springer, with that Mallow girl,” the Countess said. “Perhaps you shouldn’t take her out after all. Springer might take it amiss.”

This was the very phrase to ensure that Dammler would be at her door early the next morning and so he was, only to hear that she had gone off for the day to see Blaize Castle with Springer and a group of young people.

Help came from an unexpected quarter. To pay homage to her caller, and to show off her new purple drapes, the Countess would throw a party. Dammler was permitted to ask a few people under seventy, and he was not tardy in sending a note to the Mallows and Clarence. Unfortunately, the Dowager had the inspiration of including Springer, as well, but it could not be helped. The party was scheduled for three days hence, and the only sight Dammler had of Miss Mallow in the interim was to bow to her twice across the Pump Room in the mornings; the rest of the time he was kept busy.

The party, which the Dowager called a drum, was a major event in her life, and much discussed. “It is what the rackety crew nowadays call a rout,” she explained to Dammler. “Cards and conversation for the civilized members of the party, with a small parlour given over to dancing for the savages. I shall hire a fiddle.”

“And perhaps someone to play the pianoforte,” he suggested.

“No, no, Allan. It will be only a few country dances. A fiddle is what Papa always had.”

“Yes, but nowadays, Cousin…"

“Fiddle!” she said with a hard stare, and a fiddle it was.

The refreshments were to be equally antiquated and austere. Orgeat, lemonade and punch were to be the beverages. Not a mention of champagne, and the food was to be a frugal luncheon with no lobster or oysters or even roasted fowl. Dammler began to perceive the drum was an appalling idea, but the invitations were out and accepted before the full meagerness of the evening’s entertainment dawned on him. Decorations consisted of one palm tree rented from the floral shop, and an extra brace of candles lit in the main saloon, to show off the purple drapes.

The austerity of the whole was made more ludicrous by the degree of formality to be observed. Formal dress was called for, and she spoke of “a reception line,” to consist of the pair of them, to greet the guests as they arrived, thence to be handed over to the butler for announcing. She kept notes to help the Bath Journal write it up for the social column, and sent her distracted cousin on a dozen useless errands to arrange various details of the “orgy.” The only consolation Dammler could see in the scheme was that Prudence would see him in a new light-respectable, above reproach. She would see there was a serious, worthwhile side to his nature.

The great evening of the drum finally arrived. Lady Cleff decked herself out in a severe black gown, enlivened with a gray fall of Mechlin lace and a cameo for the night’s frolic. Dammler took up his post beside her in the doorway of the main saloon, wearing satin breeches, a black coat, and his most dazed expression. The majority of the guests, relicts like the Dowager herself, saw nothing absurd in the proceedings, but both Springer and later Miss Mallow were stunned. Prudence gazed in wonder to see Dammler playing his part in this charade, standing at attention with his aged relative, shaking hands with doddering old crones. She remembered him smiling and debonair at the opera, at Hettie’s ball, and at a hundred other gay places which existed for her only in imagination from his having mentioned them. She could hardly credit he was the same person. Formal wear being called for, she had worn a new gown of pale lilac, cut low in front, with lilacs at the bodice. Lady Cleff glared at her shoulders and lifted her lorgnette to Dammler as though to say, “What have we here?”

Prudence observed, and she too looked at Dammler with a question in her eyes. The first opportunity she had after the reception line broke up she said to him, “You should have warned me it was to be a mourning party and I would have worn black like everyone else. I feel a very peacock among the crows.”

“My cousin is old-fashioned, but even she, I am sure, does not expect a young lady to wear black to a drum.”

“Except perhaps to a “hum drum,” she replied, looking about the room, where everyone sat in silence. No one had yet gone to dance or play cards.

“You look lovely, Prudence,” he said, taking in every detail of her toilette.

“Oh thank you. My shoulders are much admired here in Bath, but I do wish I had brought a shawl, preferably black.”

Dammler felt a pulse of anger at this remark. “Who in Bath particularly admires them?”

“The gentlemen,” she answered pertly. “I can’t recall that I ever received a compliment on my shoulders from a lady.”

“I suppose ladies who wear immodest gowns lay themselves open to that sort of impertinence,” he said angrily.

She was too shocked to answer. Her gown she knew was beautiful and not immodest-certainly not to a person accustomed to London styles, as Dammler was. “You are hard to please, milord,” she said when she had her speech back. “You have upbraided me before for wearing grandmother’s gowns, but I hadn’t thought you would object to this.”

“I object to gentlemen making impertinent speeches to you, and I object to your inviting them.”

“I cannot think I invited this particular impertinence,” she said, and turned angrily away.

Luck was not with Dammler that evening. The first person to come up to Prudence was Springer, and the first words to leave his mouth were, “How stunning you look this evening, Miss Mallow. What a marvelous gown.”

Dammler did not hear the rest of the speech, but he heard that, and he knew that Prudence knew it, too, which irked him. He hurried after them, and by a dexterous bit of maneuvering toward two chairs, he got Prudence to himself. "I'm sorry about that,” he said, quite humbly. “My nerves are a bit on edge.”

“It’s no wonder, if this is the way you’ve been spending your time.” She looked around the room at this spectacle that was called a party and suddenly laughed at the incongruity of Dammler's being here. “Are we permitted to speak aloud, or should I be whispering?” she asked.

“You may speak, but don’t laugh-just smile.”

“A pity Uncle hadn’t brought his paints. It looks as if he would have a roomful of models, not moving a muscle the whole night long.”

“It may not be a gay party, but you must own it is eminently respectable,” he pointed out.

“Must the two be mutually exclusive?”

“At one of my cousin’s drums, I’m afraid so. Shall we dance?”

“By all means, if it gives us an excuse to leave this wake. But we daren’t go alone. How do we get permission, and five or six chaperones?”

“I’ll speak to Lady Cleff.”

The Countess duly announced dancing for the youngsters, and Prudence went with Dammler to the tiniest dancing parlour she had ever been in. The marquis took her arm, with a jealous glance at Springer, who followed close behind them.

“If there are to be more than six couples in here, we will enjoy an indecent degree of intimacy,” Prudence said.

“Certainly I plan to enjoy it,” Dammler answered, before he set a guard on his tongue.

“Oh, ho, your celibacy is getting to you. You will be in pinching the dowagers before the night is over, and breaking your thumbs on their stays.”

This talk bordered on the edge of what Dammler had decided to avoid. He knew his own propensity to talk too freely and feared from the permissible levity he would sink into indecency. “I don’t think so, Miss Mallow,” he said rather stiffly. “We are to lead off.”

Little conversation was possible during the country dance, and at its end they changed partners. Mr. Springer was waiting for Prudence. She fared better than Dammler, who was obliged to partner a Miss Milligan who taught at a local lady’s seminary. She regaled him with an often-repeated tale of woe regarding a vicious girl who had spread lies that she was beat at school. They then changed partners again, and at the end of three dances the fiddler required a rest, and a glass of beverage that looked depressingly like pure lemonade.

Dammler found his way across the room to Prudence’s side. “Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“About as much as you were with Miss Milligan. I gathered from your consoling expression she was telling you ‘the lie’.”

“An unfortunate incident,” he allowed, still on his best behaviour. Prudence had hoped for a little frivolity from him to dilute the tedium of the evening, and raked her mind for something to get him started.

“This is quite a change from your regular evenings out in London,” she essayed.

It was not a successful gambit, being the very topic he wished to avoid. “A less mixed company,” he admitted cautiously.

“I should say so. What possessed you to go along with this? You.are like a fish out of water.”

“I hope I know how to behave in any company.”

“I hope so, too, but I doubt your staying power. You must confess a rolling drunkard or a nice vulgar Cit would liven us up no end."

"I don’t know why you think I dislike being in respectable company.”

“Oh, Dammler, what are you up to?” she asked in honest bewilderment. “Next you will be saying you never had such a fine time.”

“I can honestly say there is nowhere I would rather be,” he told her with a glowing eye that somewhat mitigated his strange behaviour earlier. From his look there seemed little doubt why he enjoyed the party.

“And nothing you would rather be drinking than a glass of orgeat, I suppose?” she parried, accepting a fluted glass of the almond-flavoured drink. Springer and Miss Milligan joined them, and ruined the promising chat

“Delicious punch,” Miss Milligan complimented the host. “I do believe your aunt has put a drop of wine in it.”

“Possibly a drop,” Dammler agreed.

“Delicious. How lovely to be out in such charming company. Very lively we are become in Bath these days. I really should not stay late. I must be in the classroom tomorrow at eight-thirty as usual. No rest for the wicked. But I shall leave early.”

“Do you have a drive home, ma’am?” Springer asked, thinking to make an early exit himself from the dull drum.

“Lady Cleff sent her carriage for me, and it will take me home. So very kind of her.”

“I will be happy to take you, and I must leave early myself,” Springer continued.

After more talk, the fiddler scraped his bow and the dancing resumed. No party ever extended beyond midnight at Lady Cleff’s home. When Miss Milligan spoke of leaving early, she meant eleven o’clock, but as the sparse food was served at that hour, she stayed to partake of it, and got her wrap at eleven-thirty.

“May I give you a lift home, Miss Mallow?” Springer asked.

“Miss Mallow will be returning with her mother,” Dammler told him.

“Thank you, Ronald. I shall wait for Mama,” Prudence added in a kinder tone.

He was charged to deliver two other ladies home, and the party was in a fair way to breaking up.

“Your friend has some peculiar notions-offering to take you home,” Dammler said aside to Prudence.

“You would have done the same-about two hours earlier-had your situations been reversed,” she replied. “And I should have gone with you, too.”

Her last phrase pleased him, and he thawed sufficiently to say, “It was bad, wasn’t it?”

“No, Dammler. It was horrid. And horrid of me to say so, too, but then I hope I don’t have to keep up a good face to you.”

“At least I was in your company for one evening. That made it worthwhile to me.”

Yes, pretty fine speeches, Prudence thought. “But what is to prevent you from being in my company as much as you wish? And so well chaperoned, too, that I could not pester you with my unsuitable conversation, or lure you with my immodest gown. Next time don’t feel you require your cousin plus a bishop and two judges. Lady Cleff will always be sufficient to keep me in line.”