Miss Trent agreed. She also thought that Courtenay’s disgust was considerably stronger than Lindeth’s, but this she did not say.

“And it was Sir Waldo that stopped her from going her length, and took her off to Bardsey, which I’ll be bound you were glad of, my dear, though whether it was what he wanted to do is another matter!”

The arch note in the good lady’s voice was unmistakeable. Miss Trent’s fine eyes turned towards her involuntarily, asking a startled question.

“Lor’, my dear, as if I was such a nodcock as not to know it’s you he’s got a preference for!” said Mrs Underhill, with a fat chuckle. “To be sure, I did think at first that he was making up to Tiffany, but for all I haven’t got book-learning I hope I’ve enough rum gumption to know he’s trying to fix his interest with you!”

“You are mistaken, ma’am—you must be mistaken!” stammered Ancilla.

“Well, that’s what I thought myself, when I first took the notion into my head,” conceded Mrs Underhill. “Not that I mean you ain’t genteel, as I hope I don’t need to tell you, for I’m sure anyone would take you for a lady of quality, such distinguished ways as you have, which even Mrs Mickleby has remarked to me more than once. But there’s no denying it isn’t to be expected that such a smart as Sir Waldo wouldn’t be looking a great deal higher if he was hanging out for a wife, for from what Mrs M. tells me he’s a gentleman of the first consequence, let alone being as rich as a new-shorn lamb, and has goodness knows how many fine ladies on the catch for him!”

“Ma’am!” interrupted Ancilla, in a stifled voice, “I am neither a fine lady, nor am I on the catch for Sir Waldo!”

“No, my dear, and well do I know it! I shouldn’t wonder at it if it was that which took his fancy. If you was to ask me, I should say that there’s nothing will make a gentleman sheer off quicker than the feel that he’s being hunted! Lord! the females that set their caps at Mr Underhill! Of course, he wasn’t a grand town beau, like Sir Waldo, but he was thought to be a great catch, and might have had his pick of all the girls in Huddersfield. And what must he do but set his fancy on me, just because I didn’t pay any more heed to him than I did to any of my beaux!”

Miss Trent, only too glad to encourage this divagation, said: “I don’t think that was why he set his fancy on you, ma’am, but I can readily believe that you had any number of beaux!”

“Well, I had,” admitted Mrs Underhill, gratified. “You wouldn’t think it, to look at me now, but, though it don’t become me to say so, I was used to be a very pretty girl, and had so many compliments paid me—But that’s not what I was wanting to say to you!”

Miss Trent, having learnt by experience that however far her employer might wander from the point she rarely lost sight of it, resigned herself.

“You won’t take it amiss when I tell you, my dear, that when I saw the look in Sir Waldo’s eyes whenever he had them fixed on you, which nobody could mistake, though I’d be hard put to it to describe it to you, if you was to ask me, it cast me into quite a quake, thinking that he was intending to give you a slip on the shoulder, as the saying is.”

“Dear ma’am, I am—I am very much obliged to you for your concern, but indeed you have no need to be in a quake!”

“No, that’s just what I think myself,” said Mrs Underhill, nodding wisely. “I’d have dropped a hint in your ear otherwise, you being so young, for all you try to gammon everyone into thinking you are an old maid! But, ‘no,’ I said to myself, ‘a libertine he may be’—not that I’ve any reason to suppose he is, mind!—‘but he ain’t making up to Miss Trent meaning nothing more than marriage with the left hand: not with her uncle being General Sir Mordaunt Trent, as he is!’ Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it?” She paused, eyeing Ancilla in some bewilderment. “Now, whatever have I said to throw you into whoops?” she demanded.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, ma’am!” Ancilla said, wiping her streaming eyes. “But it is so—so absurd—!”

“Exactly so! But don’t you tell me he ain’t making up to you, because I’m not as blind as a beetle, which I’d have to be not to see what’s going on under my nose!”

Ancilla had stopped laughing. She was rather flushed, and she said haltingly: “I think, ma’am—I think you refine too much on Sir Waldo’s gallantry. I am persuaded he has no other intention than to amuse himself with a little flirtation.”

Mrs Underhill’s face fell; but after thinking it over for a minute, she brightened, saying: “No, you’re out there, my dear. It’s Tiffany he flirts with, which, of course, he oughtn’t to do, but, lord, they all do it, even the Squire, and you can’t blame them, so pretty and saucy as she is! But he don’t look at her the way he looks at you—no, and he don’t talk to you as he does to her either! What’s more, if she ain’t in the room he don’t look up every time the door opens, hoping she’s going to come in!”

Her cool composure seriously disturbed, Ancilla said involuntarily: “Oh, Mrs Underhill, d-does he do so when—Oh, no! Surely not?”

“Lord bless you, my dear, of course he does!” replied Mrs Underhill, with an indulgent laugh. “And if it is you—well, often and often I’ve thought to myself that if he was to smile at me the way he does at you I should be cast into a regular flutter, as old as I am!”

Miss Trent felt her cheeks burning, and pressed her slim hands to them. “He—he has a very charming smile, I know!”

“I’ll be bound you do!” retorted Mrs Underhill. “Mark my words if we don’t have him popping the question before we’ve had time to turn round! And this I will say, my dear: I couldn’t be better pleased if you was my own daughter! Not that he’d do for Charlotte, even if she was old enough, which, of course, she isn’t, because, from all I can discover, he’s nutty upon horses, and well you know that she can’t abide ’em!”

Miss Trent gave a shaky laugh. “Yes, indeed I know it. But—Dear Mrs Underhill, pray don’t say any more! You mustn’t encourage me to—to indulge ridiculous dreams! Sir Waldo knows exactly how to make himself very—very agreeable to females, and, I daresay, has broken many hearts. I am determined he shall not break mine! To suppose that he—a matrimonial prize of the first stare!—would entertain for as much as one moment the notion of contracting so unequal a match ...” Her voice failed; she recovered it again to say, with an attempt at a smile: “You won’t speak of this to anyone, I know!”

“Certainly not!” said Mrs Underhill. “But don’t you behave missish, my dear, and start hinting him away because you think you ain’t good enough for him! That’s for him to decide, and you may depend upon it that a man of five- or six-and-thirty knows what will suit him. It would be a splendid thing for you, let alone making the Squire’s lady and Mrs Banningham as mad as fire!”

On this invigorating thought she took her departure, leaving Miss Trent to her own reflections.

It was long before she fell asleep that night. Mrs Underhill’s blunt words had forced her to confront the truth she had hitherto refused to acknowledge: she had been in love with the Nonesuch for weeks.

Like a stupidly romantic schoolgirl, she thought, dazzled by the aura of magnificence that hung about a Top-of-the-Trees Corinthian, and foolishly endowing him with heroic qualities because he had a handsome face and splendid figure, rode and drove his high-couraged horses with such effortless mastery, and bore himself with an unconscious assurance which cozened ninny hammers like herself into thinking he was a demigod. Not that she was quite as idiotish as that, of course. She could scarcely help admiring his appearance, but she had not fallen in love with his face, or his figure, and certainly not with his air of elegance. He had considerable charm of manner, but she decided that it was not that either. She thought it might be the humour that lurked in his eyes, or perhaps his smile. But Lindeth had a delightful smile too, and she was not in the least in love with him. In fact, she didn’t know why she loved the Nonesuch, but only that from the moment of first setting eyes on him she had felt so strong an attraction that it had shocked her, because he was clearly the exemplar of a set of persons whom she held in abhorrence.

Caution warned her not to place overmuch reliance on what Mrs Underhill had said. Far better than Mrs Underhill did she know how very unlikely it was that a man of Sir Waldo’s eligibility, who could look as high as he pleased for a wife and must be thought to be past the age of contracting a rash engagement, should entertain the smallest intention of offering marriage to an obscure female who had neither consequence nor any extraordinary degree of beauty to recommend her. On the other hand, the things he had said to her that day, before they had parted at the gates of Staples, seemed to indicate that he had something other than mere flirtation in mind. If that had been all he sought she could not conceive why her inferior situation should chafe him, or why, if he had not been sincere, he should have told her that it did. Pondering the matter, she was obliged to own that she knew very little about the art of flirtation; and hard upon this thought came the realization that she knew very little about Sir Waldo either. He had shown himself to be most truly the gentleman, never above his company, nor betraying his boredom, and never seeking to impress the neighbourhood by playing off the airs of an exquisite. As for exerting an evil influence over his young admirers, she had it on the authority of the Squire that his coming to Broom Hall had done them all a great deal of good. Together with their extravagant waistcoats and their monstrous neckcloths they had abandoned such dare-devil sports as Hunting the Squirrel or riding their cover-hacks up the stairs of their parents’ houses: the Nonesuch never wore startling raiment, and he let it be seen that he thought the Dashes and the Neck-or-Nothings not at all the thing. So instead of rushing into wild excesses as a result of his coming amongst them, the youthful aspirants to Corinthian fame (said the Squire, with a chuckle) had now run mad over achieving what their hero would think a proper mode.

It was possible, however, that in his own element Sir Waldo might show another side to his character. Not for a moment did Ancilla believe that he would lead greenhorns astray; but she was bound to acknowledge that for anything she knew his path might be littered with wounded hearts. She could not doubt that he was a master of the art of flirtation; and she was only too well aware of his fatal fascination. She decided that her wisest course would be to put him out of her mind. After reaching this conclusion she lay thinking about him until at last she fell asleep.

Upon the following day she was driven over to Colby Place in Mrs Underhill’s smart new barouche to enquire after Elizabeth. Charlotte had been her companion designate, but as soon as Tiffany heard of the scheme she said that it was exactly what she had been meaning to do herself, and very prettily begged Miss Trent to grant her a place in the carriage. Forthright Charlotte, who suffered from few illusions, instantly cried off, saying that she preferred to bear Mama company at home than to occupy the forward seat in the barouche. So Tiffany went with Miss Trent, looking a picture of lovely innocence in a gown of sprig muslin, and a charming hat of chip straw, tied under her chin with blue ribbons. A parasol protected her complexion from the sun; and upon the forward seat reposed a basket of grapes. These were an offering from Mrs Underhill, whose succession-houses were the envy of her acquaintances; but Miss Trent, labouring under even fewer illusions than Charlotte, would not have hazarded a groat against the chance that Tiffany would not present them as the fruits of her own solicitude. Any doubts she might have cherished were dispelled by that damsel’s disarmingly naive explanation.

“So no one could think I was unkind to poor Lizzie, could they? and also, Ancilla, I have invited Patience to go with us to Leeds on Friday, because she wants to purchase new gloves and sandals for the Colebatches’ ball next week, just as I do, and was in quite a puzzle to know how to manage, on account of Mrs Chartley’s being laid up with one of her colicky disorders!”

“That was kind of you, Tiffany!” said Miss Trent admiringly.

“Well, I think it was,” said Tiffany. “For there’s nothing so uncomfortable as having a third person in one’s carriage! It means you will be obliged to sit forward—But I knew you wouldn’t care a button!”