Amanda raised her brilliant eyes to Lady Hester’s gentle gray ones, and suddenly smiled. The effect of this upon the assembled gentlemen caused Lady Widmore’s already high colour to deepen alarmingly. Mr. Theale, who had been regarding the youthful beauty with the eye of a dispassionate connoisseur, sighed soulfully; the Earl’s indignant stare changed to one of reluctant admiration; and Lord Widmore was moved to adjust his neckcloth, throwing out his narrow chest a little. However, as he caught his wife’s fulminating eye at that moment, he was speedily recalled to a sense of his position, and altered a somewhat fatuous smile to a frown.

“An awkward situation indeed!” agreed Lady Widmore, subjecting Amanda to a critical scrutiny. “But you have your abigail with you, I must suppose!”

“No, because she fell ill, and, besides, there was no room for her in the curricle,” replied Amanda, with aplomb.

“In the curricle?” exclaimed Lord Widmore, looking very much shocked. “Driving with Ludlow in a curricle, without some respectable female to chaperon you? Upon my soul! I do not know what the world is coming to!”

“Now, don’t talk like a nick-ninny, Cuthbert!” begged his uncle. “Damme if I see what anyone wants with a chaperon in a curricle! If it had been a chaise, it would have been another matter, of course.”

“If Miss Smith was travelling in Sir Gareth’s charge, sir, she had no need of her abigail to take care of her,” interposed Hester, her tone mildly reproving.

“No,” said Amanda gratefully. “And I had no desire to go with him, either, and am very well able to take care of myself!”

“You have had your hands full, I collect!” Lady Widmore said, putting up her sandy brows at Sir Gareth.

“Not at all!” he retorted. “I have had a charming companion, ma’am!”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that!”she said, with a laugh. “Well, child, I suppose I had best take you upstairs! You will wish to change your dress before dinner. I daresay they will have unpacked your trunk by now.”

“Yes,” said Amanda doubtfully. “I mean—that is—” She stopped, blushing, and looking imploringly towards Sir Gareth.

He responded at once to this mute appeal, saying, with the flicker of a reassuring smile: “That is the most awkward feature of the whole business, isn’t it, Amanda? Her trunk, ma’am, I must suppose to be at Oundle, for it was despatched by carrier yesterday. We could find room only for a couple of bandboxes in my curricle.”

“Despatched yesterday?” said the Earl. “Seems an odd circumstance, then, that these relations of hers shouldn’t have kept their engagement to meet her! What the devil should she send her trunk for, if she didn’t mean to follow it?”

“That, sir,” said Sir Gareth, quite unshaken, “is what makes us fear some mischance.”

“I expect it has been delayed,” said Lady Hester. “How vexing! But not of the least consequence.”

“Lord, Hetty, what an addle-brained creature you are! If it ain’t of any consequence, it ain’t vexing either!”

“How silly of me!” murmured Hester, accepting this rebuke in an absentminded way. “Will you let me take you upstairs, Miss Smith? Don’t put yourself about, Almeria! I will attend to Miss Smith.”

Amanda looked rather relieved; and Sir Gareth, who had moved to the door, said, under his breath, as Hester paused beside him to let her guest pass before her out of the room: “Thank you! I knew I might rely on you.”

She smiled a little wistfully, but said nothing. He closed the door behind her, and she paused for a moment, looking at Amanda, and blinking as though in an attempt to bring that enchanting face into focus. Amanda gave her back stare for stare, her chin well up, and she said, in her shy, soft voice: “How very pretty you are! I wonder which room Mrs. Farnham has prepared for you? It must be wretchedly uncomfortable for you, but pray don’t heed it! We will think just what should be done presently.”

“Well,” said Amanda, following her to the staircase, “for my part, I can see that it is most uncomfortable for you to be obliged to receive me when I haven’t an evening-gown to wear, and as for Sir Gareth, it is all his fault, and he told you nothing but the most shocking untruths, besides having abducted me!”

Hester paused, with her hand on the banister-rail, and looked back, startled. “Abducted you? Dear me, how excessively odd of him! Are you quite sure you are not making a mistake?”

“No, it is precisely as I say,” replied Amanda firmly. “For I never set eyes on him before today, and although at first I was quite deceived in him, because he looks just like all one’s favourite heroes, which all goes to show that one shouldn’t set any store by appearances, I now know that he is a most odious person—though still very like Sir Lancelot and Lord Orville,” she added conscientiously.

Lady Hester looked wholly bewildered. “How can this be? You know, I am dreadfully stupid, and I don’t seem able to understand at all, Miss Smith!”

“I wish you will call me Amanda!” suddenly decided that damsel. “I find I cannot bear the name of Smith! The thing is that it was the only name I could think of when nothing would do for Sir Gareth but to know who I was. I daresay you know how it is when you are obliged, on the instant, to find a name for yourself?”

“No—that is, I have never had occasion—but of course I see that one would think of something very simple,” Hester replied apologetically.

“Exactly so! Only you can have no idea how disagreeable it is to be called Miss Smith, which, as it happens, was the name of the horridest governess I ever had!”

Utterly befogged, Hester said: “Yes, indeed, although—You know, I think we should not stay talking here, for one never knows who may be listening! Do, pray, come upstairs!”

She then led Amanda to the upper hall, where they were met by her abigail, a middle-aged woman of hostile aspect, whose devotion to her mistress’s interests caused her to view Amanda with suspicion and dislike. The news that Sir Gareth Ludlow had arrived at Brancaster with a regular out-and-outer on his arm had rapidly spread through the house; and Miss Povey knew just what to think of beauties who possessed no other luggage than a couple of bandboxes, and travelled unattended by their abigails or governesses. She informed Lady Hester that the Blue bedchamber had been prepared for the Young Person: an announcement that brought Lady Hester’s eyes to her face, a tiny frown in them: “What did you say, Povey?” she asked.

The tone was as gentle as ever, but Miss Povey, permitting herself only the indulgence of a sniff, lost no time in altering her phraseology. “For the young lady, I should say, my lady.”

“Oh, yes! The Blue bedchamber will be just the one. Thank you: I shan’t need you any longer.”

This dismissal by no means pleased the handmaiden. On the one hand, she was extremely reluctant to wait upon Amanda, and would, indeed, have bitterly resented a command to do so; but, on the other, she was agog with curiosity. After a brief struggle with her feelings, she said: “I thought, my lady, being as how Miss hasn’t brought her own abigail, she would like me to dress her hair, and that.”

“Yes, presently,” said Hester. “And perhaps, since Miss Smith’s trunk has gone to Oundle, you could bring that pink gown of mine to her room.” She smiled diffidently at Amanda, adding: “Should you object to wearing one of my dresses? I think it would become you, for it is too young for me, and I have not worn it more than once.”

“No, not at all. In fact, I shall be excessively obliged to you,” replied Amanda warmly. “For the only other gown I have with me is another morning one, and I daresay it will be odiously crumpled. And this one is very dirty, through my having walked a great distance in it, besides being in the carrier’s cart, though I took the greatest care to wrap my cloak round me.”

“Muslin seems to pick up the dirt so easily!”agreed Hester, accepting the carrier’s cart as the merest commonplace. “But Povey will wash and iron it for you to wear again in the morning.”

With these calmly uttered words, she led Amanda into her allotted bedchamber, firmly closing the door on her scandalised abigail.

The bandboxes had been unpacked, and Amanda’s few possessions disposed in the appropriate places. That damsel, after a comprehensive survey of the apartment, awarded it her approval, adding candidly: “And Sir Gareth was quite right: I do like you very much, ma’am, though I quite thought I should not!”

“I am so glad,” murmured Hester. “Do let me untie the strings of your hat!”

“Yes,” said Amanda, submitting to this, “but I must warn you, because I never tell lies to people I like, that I do not at all wish to visit an Earl!”

“I expect you have been brought up on revolutionary principles,” said Hester wisely. “I do not, myself, know very much about it, but I believe that many people nowadays—”

“Oh, no! But the thing is that I particularly wish to establish myself in the sort of situation from which one’s relations are bound to rescue one. And if it had not been for Sir Gareth I daresay I might have done it. I was never so taken-in! He said he would take me to Huntingdon, where I had every expectation of being hired as a chambermaid at the George,—at least, that is what I thought he said he would do, only I soon discovered that it was all a hoax—and then, when he had lured me into his curricle, he brought me here instead!”

Lady Hester, quite bewildered by this recital, sat down a little weakly, and said: “I don’t think I perfectly understand, Amanda. I expect it is because I am being stupid, but if you could tell it all to me from the start I am persuaded I shall. But not, of course, if you don’t wish! I don’t care to ask you questions, for there is nothing more disagreeable than to be obliged to listen to questions, and scoldings, and good advice.” Her sudden smile, which betrayed a gleam of shy mischief in her eyes, swept across her face. “You see, I have suffered from that all my life.”

“Have you?” said Amanda, surprised, “But you are quite old! I mean,” she corrected herself hastily, “you—you are not under age! I wonder you should not tell people who scold you to go about their business.”

“I am afraid I have not enough courage,” said Hester ruefully.

“Like my aunt,” nodded Amanda. “She has no courage, either, and she lets Grandpapa bully her, which puts me out of all patience, because one can always get one’s own way, if only one has resolution.”

“Can one?” said Hester doubtfully.

“Yes, though sometimes, I own, one is forced to take desperate measures. And it is of no use to tease oneself about propriety,” she added, with a touch of defiance, “because it seems to me that if you never do anything that is not quite proper and decorous you will have the wretchedest life, without any adventures, or romance, or anything!”

“It is very true, alas!” Hester smiled at her again. “But not for you, I think.”

“No, because I have a great deal of resolution. Also I have made a very good plan of campaign, and if you will faithfully promise not to try to overset it, I will tell you what it is.”

“I shouldn’t think I could overset anyone’s plans,” said Hester reflectively. “Indeed, I promise I won’t try!”

“Or tell those other people?” Amanda said anxiously.

“My family? Oh, no!”

Reassured, Amanda sat down beside her, and for the second time that day recounted the tale of her adventures. Lady Hester sat with her hands lightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed wonderingly on the animated little face beside her. Several times she blinked, and once a little trill of laughter was surprised out of her; but she did not make any comment until Amanda reached the end of her recital, and then she only said: “How very brave you are! I hope you will be able to marry your Brigade-Major, for I am sure you must have been made to be a soldier’s wife. I should think, you know, that your grandfather would give his consent if only you could be content to wait for a little while longer.”

“I have waited a very long time already, and now I am determined to be married, so that I can accompany Neil to Spain,” stated Amanda, looking mulish. “I daresay you think it is very wrong of me, and that I ought to obey Grandpapa, and so it may be—only I don’t care for anything except Neil, and I won’t go meekly home, whatever anyone says!”

This was uttered very challengingly, but all Hester said was: “It is very difficult to know what would be the best thing to do. Do you think, perhaps you should send for Neil?”