‘We’ll see that!’ said the Viscount grimly. ‘I’ll settle with him when I’ve settled with you! Had you chosen an honest man I would have stood aside, whatever it cost me, but this fellow—! No, by God! If you are determined to marry a fortune-hunter, Henry, let him be me! At least I love you!’

Shock bereft her of the power of speech; she could only gaze up into his face. He dragged her into his arms, and kissed her with such savagery that she uttered an inarticulate protest. To this he paid no heed at all, but demanded sternly: ‘Do you understand me, Henry? Give you up to Kirkham I will not!’

‘Oh, Alan, don’t give me up to anyone!’ begged Henrietta, laughing and crying together. ‘Oh, dear, how odious you are! Of all the infamous notions to—Alan, let me go! Someone is coming!’

The door opened. ‘Told you no good would come of it,’ said Mr Allerton, with gloomy satisfaction. ‘Not a trace of ‘em to be—’ He broke off, staring at his brother. ‘Well, upon my word!’ he said, mildly surprised.

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ exclaimed the Viscount.

‘Came with Hetty,’ explained Timothy. ‘Said it was a stupid thing to do, but she would have it we should overtake ‘em.’

‘Came with Hetty? Overtake—?’ repeated the Viscount. ‘In heaven’s name, what are you talking about?’

Mr Allerton raised his quizzing-glass. ‘You been in the sun, old fellow?’ he asked solicitously.

‘Timothy, he doesn’t know!’ Henrietta said. ‘That is not what brought him here! Alan, a dreadful thing has happened. Trix has eloped! I can’t think what made you suppose that I had! Timothy and I came in pursuit, and oh, I was so hopeful of catching them, but we can discover no trace of them!’

‘Quite true,’ corroborated Timothy, observing that the tidings had apparently stunned his brother. ‘Eloped with Jack Boynton. At least, that’s what she said.’

‘Are you mad?’ demanded the Viscount. ‘Trix is at home!’

‘Alas, Alan, she is not!’ said Henrietta. ‘She slipped out in the middle of the party, leaving a letter, which her maid gave me at midnight. She wrote that she had gone with Boynton to Gretna Green, but I very much fear that she was deceiving me, and that is not her destination.’

The Viscount, who had listened to this with an arrested expression on his face, drew an audible breath. ‘Most certainly she was deceiving you!’ he said, in an odd tone. ‘I see! The—little—cunning—devil!’

‘He is out, Hetty!’ said Timothy.

A rueful smile was quivering at the corners of the Viscount’s mouth. He paid no heed to this brotherly remark, but said: ‘Let me tell you, my love, that an hour after you had left Grosvenor Square, I also received a billet from Trix!’

‘You?’ said Henrietta incredulously.

‘Yes, I! It summoned me with the utmost urgency to join her in Mama’s dressing-room. There she disclosed to me that you had slipped out of the house, to elope to the Border with Kirkham. She said that you had bound her to secrecy, but that her conscience misgave her, and she felt it to be her duty to betray you to me.’

‘Oh!’gasped Henrietta. ‘The little wretch! She—she deserves to be flogged!’

‘Well, yes, I suppose she does,’ admitted the Viscount. ‘You cannot, however, expect me to flog her, for she has put me deep in her debt! Besides, you must own her strategy has been masterly!’

‘Abominable!’ scolded Henrietta, trying not to laugh.

‘Told you she was hoaxing you,’ said Timothy. ‘Good notion, as it chances. What I mean, is, if you are going to marry Hetty, Alan, we shall be all right and tight. The thing that’s worrying me is that you must have left home before the ball was over. Dashed improper, y’know! That dish-faced Grandduchess! Half the ton invited to have the honour of meeting her, and you walk off in the middle of the party!’

‘Well,’ said the Viscount impenitently, ‘they had the honour of meeting her, and I have the honour of asking Henry to be my wife, and so we may all be satisfied!’ He held out his hands as he spoke, and Henrietta put hers into them.

‘Yes, I dare say,’ said Mr Allerton, ‘but it ain’t the thing. What’s more,’ he added severely, ‘it ain’t the thing to kiss Hetty in a dashed inn parlour, and with me watching you, either!’

Night at the Inn

1

There were only three persons partaking of dinner at the inn, for it was neither a posting-house, nor a hostelry-much patronized by stage-coaches. The man in the moleskin waistcoat, who sat on one of the settles flanking the fireplace in the coffee-room, gave no information about himself; the young lady and gentleman on the other side were more forthcoming.

The lady had been set down at the Pelican after dusk by a cross-country coach. Her baggage was as modest as her appearance, the one consisting of a bandbox and a corded trunk; the other of brown curls smoothed neatly under a bonnet, a round cashmere gown made high to the neck and boasting neither frills nor lace, serviceable half-boots, and tan gloves, and a drab pelisse. Only two things belied the air of primness she seemed so carefully to cultivate: the jaunty bow which tied her bonnet under one ear, and the twinkle in her eye, which was as sudden as it was refreshing.

The gentleman was her senior by several years: an open-faced, pleasant young man whose habit proclaimed the man of business. He wore a decent suit of clothes, with a waistcoat that betrayed slight sartorial ambition; his linen was well-laundered, and the points of his shirt-collar starched; but he had tied his neckcloth with more regard for propriety than fashion, and he displayed none of the trinkets that proclaimed the dandy. However, the watch he consulted was a handsome gold repeater, and he wore upon one finger a signet-ring, with his monogram engraved, so that it was reasonable to suppose him to be a man of some substance.

He was fresh from Lisbon, he told the landlord, as he set down his two valises in the tap-room, and had landed at Portsmouth that very day. Tomorrow he was going to board a coach which would carry him within walking-distance of his paternal home: a rare surprise for his parents that would be, for they had not the least expectation of seeing him! He had been out of England for three years: it seemed like a dream to be back again.

The landlord, a burly, rubicund man with a smiling countenance, entered into the exile’s excitement with indulgent good humour. Young master was no doubt come home on leave from the Peninsula? Not wounded, he did hope? No, oh, no! Young master had not the good fortune to be a soldier. He was employed in a counting-house, and had no expectation of getting his transfer from Lisbon for years. But—with offhand pride—he had suddenly been informed that there was a place for him at headquarters in the City, and had jumped aboard the first packet. No time to warn his parents: he would take them by surprise, and wouldn’t they gape and bless themselves at the sight of him, by Jupiter! He had meant to have put up at the Swan, in the centre of the town, but such a press of custom had they that they had been obliged to turn him away. The same at the George: he hoped he was going to be more fortunate at the Pelican?

The landlord, gently edging him into the coffee-room, reassured him: he should have a good bedchamber, and the sheets well aired, a hot brick placed in the bed, and a fire lit in the grate. The gentleman from Lisbon said: ‘Thank the Lord for that! I have had my fill of tramping from inn to inn, I can tell you! What’s more, I’m devilish sharp-set! What’s for dinner?’

He was promised a dish of mutton and haricot beans, with soup to go before it, and a dish of broccoli to accompany it. He rubbed his hands together, saying boyishly: ‘Mutton! Real English mutton! That’s the dandy! That’s what I’ve been longing for any time these three years! Bustle about, man!—I could eat the whole carcase!’

By this time he had been coaxed into the coffee-room, a low-pitched apartment, with shuttered windows, one long table, and an old-fashioned hearth flanked by high-backed settles. On one of these, toasting her feet, sat the young lady; on the other, his countenance obscured by the journal he was perusing, was the man in the moleskin waistcoat. He paid no heed to the newcomer; but the lady tucked her toes under the settle, and assumed an attitude of stiff propriety.

The gentleman from Lisbon trod over to the fire, and stood before it, warming his hands. After a slight pause he observed with a shy smile that these November evenings were chilly.

The lady agreed to it, but volunteered no further remark. The gentleman, anxious that all the world should have a share in his joy, said that he was quite a stranger to England. He added hopefully that his name was John Cranbrook.

The lady subjected him to a speculative, if slightly surreptitious, scrutiny. Apparently she was satisfied, for she relaxed her decorous pose, and said that hers was Mary Gateshead.

He seemed much gratified by this confidence, and bowed politely, and said how do you do? This civility encouraged Miss Gateshead to invite him to sit down, which he instantly did, noticing as he did so that a pair of narrow eyes had appeared above the sheets of the journal on the opposite settle, and were fixed upon him. But as soon as his own encountered them they disappeared again, and all he could see, in fat black print, was an advertisement for Pears’ Soap, and another adjuring him to consider the benefits to be derived from using Russia Oil regularly on the hair.

Searching his mind for something with which to inaugurate a conversation, Mr Cranbrook asked Miss Gateshead whether she too had found the Swan and the George full.

She replied simply: ‘Oh, no! I could not afford the prices they charge at the big inns! I am a governess.’

‘Are you?’ said Mr Cranbrook, with equal simplicity. ‘I am a clerk in Nathan Spennymore’s Counting-house. In the ordinary way I can’t afford ‘em either, but I’m very plump in the pocket just now!’ He patted his breast as he spoke, and laughed, his eyes dancing with such pride and pleasure that Miss Gateshead warmed to him, and invited him to tell her how this delightful state of affairs had come about.

He was nothing loth, and while the man in the moleskin waistcoat read his paper, and the landlord laid the covers on the table, he told her how he had been sent out to Lisbon three years ago, and what it was like there—very well in its way, but a man would rather choose to be at home!—and how an unexpected stroke of good fortune had befallen him, and he was to occupy a superior place in the London house. He didn’t know why he should have been chosen, but Miss Gateshead might imagine how he had jumped at the chance!

Miss Gateshead suggested that the promotion might be a reward for good service, which made Mr Cranbrook blush vividly, and say that he was sure it was no such thing. In haste to change the subject, he enquired after her prospects and destination. Miss Gateshead was the eldest daughter of a curate with a numerous progeny, and she was bound for her first situation. Very eligible, she assured him! A large house, not ten miles from this place; and Mrs Stockton, her employer, had graciously promised to send the gig to the Pelican to fetch her in the morning.

‘I should have thought she might have sent a closed carriage in this weather,’ said John bluntly.

‘Oh, no! Not for the governess!’ Miss Gateshead said, shocked.

‘It may rain!’ he pointed out

She laughed. ‘Pooh, I shan’t melt in a shower of rain!’

‘You might take a chill,’ insisted John severely. ‘I don’t think Mrs Stockton can be at all an amiable person!’

‘Oh, do not say so! I am in such a quake already, in case I do not give satisfaction!’ said Miss Gateshead. ‘And there are nine children—only fancy!—so that I might be employed there for years!’

She seemed to regard this prospect with satisfaction, but Mr Cranbrook had no hesitation in favouring her with his own quite contrary views on such a fate.

The landlord came in, bearing the leg of mutton, which he set down on a massive sideboard. His wife, a decent-looking, stout woman in a mob-cap, arranged various removes on the table, bobbed a curtsy to Miss Gateshead, and asked if she would care for a glass of porter, or some tea.

Miss Gateshead accepted the offer of tea, and, after a moment’s hesitation, untied the strings of her bonnet, and laid this demure creation down on the settle. Her curls, unconfined, showed a tendency to become a trifle wayward, but, rather to John’s disappointment, she rigorously smoothed them into decorum.