“My dear friend, I have no such notion in my head, so don’t curl your lip at me so contemptuously!”

“Not at you, simpleton!”

“At Conway? Oh, by all means, then! The truth is that I owe him nothing.”

“On the contrary!”

“Not even that, if you mean that he owes anything to me. I accepted the charge he laid upon me because it suited me to do so. If I hadn’t had Aubrey to think of I shouldn’t have done it, any more than I should have remained here one day after I came of age.”

“Then are you bent on protecting the fair name of Lanyon?” he enquired.

“Stuff! No, be serious, Damerel! you must know I don’t care a rush for fair names—witness my pleasure in your company! The scruple in my mind concerns Charlotte. Aubrey calls her sweetly mawkish, and so she is, but she doesn’t deserve to be made any more uncomfortable than she is already, poor little creature! Conway has done all he can to prejudice people against her, and for me to add the finishing touch to his work would be the outside of enough! She has done me no harm—indeed, she is morbidly anxious to defer to me! To such an extent that if Mrs. Scorrier were hors concours I should infallibly take upon myself her role, and spend the better part of my time reminding Charlotte that she is now mistress at Undershaw! So if I leave Undershaw I must contrive to provide myself with an unexceptionable excuse for doing so, and I must not remain in this neighbourhood. I always meant to go to London, but that was looking ahead to when Aubrey will be at Cambridge. A whole year ahead, and what’s to be done during that period has me in a sad puzzle. There must be excellent tutors to be found in London, yet I doubt whether Aubrey—”

“Leave Aubrey for a moment!” he interrupted. “Before I favour you with my opinion of your scheme of setting up an establishment in London—or York—or Timbuctu—tell me something!”

“Very well—but I haven’t asked you to give me your opinion of that!” she objected.

“You will have it, nevertheless. What has happened since I saw you last, Venetia, to overset you, and make you regard your removal from this place as a matter of sudden urgency?” Her eyes lifted quickly to his; he smiled, in loving mockery, and added: “I don’t want any stories about housekeepers or laundry-maids, my girl, and if you think you can hoax me you will have to learn that you are mistaken! What has that devil’s daughter done?”

She shook her head. “Nothing more than I told you. I never thought of hoaxing you, but only that I was perhaps refining too much upon something that was said—very likely with no other purpose than to vex me!”

“And what was said?”

She hesitated for a moment, before replying: “It concerned Aubrey. Mrs. Scorrier dislikes him quite as much as she dislikes me, I fancy—and I must own that he gives her good reason to do sol He is like a particularly malevolent wasp, which, do what you will, continually eludes your efforts to slay it. She brought it on herself, by being spiteful to me, but I’m not excusing him: he should not do it—it is most improper conduct!”

“Oh, confound the boy!” Damerel exclaimed, in quick exasperation. “I hoped I had scotched that pastime!”

She looked at him in surprise. “Did you tell him he must not?”

“No: merely that what he regarded as an agreeable form of relaxation exposes you to the full blast of that woman’s malice.”

“Then that accounts for it! You did scotch it, and I am truly grateful! During these past two days he has scarcely opened his lips in her presence. But either the mischief is done, or she resents his shutting himself up in his room, and joining us only at dinner-time—with a Greek chorus ringing so loudly in his ears that you may speak his name half-a-dozen times before he hears you! She can’t comprehend that, thinks he does it to be uncivil. Charlotte doesn’t like him either, but that’s because he says things she doesn’t understand, which makes her afraid of him. Unfortunately—she is embarrassed by his lameness, and always looks away when he gets up from his chair, or walks across the room.”

“I noticed that she did so when I met you in the park that day, and hoped she would speedily rid herself of the habit!”

“I think she tries to. But the thing is that it has provided Mrs. Scorrier with a pretext for saying what, I own, has quite sunk my spirits. She told me that Charlotte has a horror of deformity, which makes her wish that just now, when she is in a delicate situation, it might have been possible for Aubrey to visit friends. She did not phrase it as plainly as that, and perhaps I have allowed myself to be stupidly apprehensive.” His countenance had darkened; he said in an altered voice: “No. Far from it! If she was capable of saying that to you I would not bet a groat on the chance that she won’t say it to Aubrey himself, the first time he puts her in a rage.”

“That is what I’m afraid of, but could anyone be so infamously cruel?”

“Oh, lord, yes! This vixen, I daresay, would not, in cold blood, but I told you before, my innocent, that you are unacquainted with her sort. Women of unbridled passions are capable de tout! Let them but lose their tempers and they will say, and afterwards find excuse for, what, on another’s lips, they would condemn with sincere loathing!” He paused, scanning her face with eyes grown suddenly hard and frowning. “What else has she said to you?” he demanded abruptly. “You had much better tell me, you know!”

“Well, so I would, but surely you can’t wish me to repeat to you a list of malicious nothings?”

“No: spare me! That fling at Aubrey was all?”

“It was enough! Damerel, if you knew what tortures of self-hatred have been endured—never mentioned, only to be guessed at!—the shrinking from strangers, the dread of pity or such revulsion as Charlotte tries to hide—”

He broke in on her agitation, saying: “I do know. I think it unlikely that this woman would sink so low, unless offered extraordinary provocation, but the boy is abnormally sensitive. Shall I take him off your hands? I’ve told him already that he may remove to the Priory whenever he chooses. His reply was inelegant, but certainly did him credit. He was much inclined to snap my nose off: demanded if I was in all seriousness inviting him to run sly, leaving you to stand the shock! It seemed scarcely the moment to suggest to him that the shock would be less if he did run sly, but I can still do so, and will, if you tell me to. The only difficulty will be to conceal from him the real cause, and I expect I could overcome that.”

She put out her hand, almost unconsciously, saying playfully, to hide her deeper feeling: “What a good friend you are, Wicked Baron! Where should we be in this pass without you? I know I might, if the worst came to the worst, send Aubrey to you. That thought, I promise you, saved me from distraction! In emergency I shouldn’t hesitate—were you ever before so scandalously imposed on?—but there’s no emergency yet—may never be, if Aubrey will but shut his ears to the things that are said merely to vex and sting. I don’t mean to impose on you unless I must!”

His hand had closed on hers, and he was still holding it, but in a clasp that struck her as being curiously rigid. She glanced enquiringly at him, and saw a strange look in his eyes, and about his mouth the bitter sneer that mocked himself. She must have betrayed bewilderment in her face, for the sneer vanished, he smiled, and said lightly, as he released her hand: “I defy anyone to impose on me! I should be glad to have Aubrey at the Priory. I like the boy, and certainly don’t consider him a charge, if that’s what’s in your mind. No one could accuse him of being a difficult guest to entertain! Let him come to me when you choose, and remain for as long as may suit you both!”

“Thus positively conferring a favour on you!” she said, laughing. “Thank you! It would not, I think, be for very long. Lady Denny tells me that Sir John has heard from Mr. Appersett that he means to return to us before the middle of next month. I suspect his cousin—who was so obliging as to offer to exchange with him after his illness—has no great fancy to spend the winter in Yorkshire! Mr. Appersett told me years ago that if ever I should wish to go away for a time he would readily give Aubrey house-room.”

“Then, Aubrey’s affairs being satisfactorily arranged, we will turn to your own, Admir’d Venetia! Are you serious when you talk of setting up your own establishment?”

“Yes, of course I am!”

“Then it is time someone took order to you!” he said grimly. “Leave nursery-dreams, and come to earth, my dear! It is not possible!”

“But it is perfectly possible! Don’t you know that I’m mistress of what Mr. Mytchett—he is our lawyer, and one of my trustees—calls a considerable independence?”

“I still tell you that it is not possible!”

“Good God, Damerel, you don’t mean to talk propriety to me, do you?” she exclaimed. “I warn you, you won’t easily convince me that the least impropriety attaches to a woman of my years choosing rather to live in her own house than in her brother’s! If I were a girl—”

“You are not only a girl, but a green girl!”

“Green I’ll allow, girl I will not! I’m five-and-twenty, my friend. I know it would be thought improper if I were to live alone, and though I think it nonsensical I don’t mean to outrage the conventions, I promise you. While Aubrey is at Cambridge I shall engage a chaperon. When he has taken his degree—well, I don’t know yet, of course, but I expect he will next become a Fellow, and remained fixed in Cambridge, in which event the likeliest chance is that I shall keep house for him there, for I shouldn’t think he would marry, should you?”

“God give me patience!” he ejaculated, spring up, and taking a hasty turn about the room. “Venetia, will you stop talking like a sapskull? Engage a chaperon! Keep house for Aubrey! Don’t forget to buy a stock of caps suitable for a dowager, or an ageing spinster, I do beg of you! Listen to me, you beautiful idiot! you’ve wasted six—seven—years of your life: don’t waste any more! What, for heaven’s sake, do you imagine would be the advantage in this house of yours? Who is to be your chaperon?”

“I don’t know: how should I? I had supposed that it must be possible to hire, as one would a governess, some lady in impoverished circumstances—a widow, perhaps—who would answer the purpose.”

“Then suppose it no longer! You might hire a score of widows, but not one to answer the purpose. I can picture this establishment! Where is it to be? In Kensington, I think, genteel and retired! Or perhaps in the wilds of Upper Grosvenor Place: just on the fringe of fashion! You will be dismally bored, my dear, I assure you!”

She looked a little amused. “Then I shall travel. I have always wanted to do that.”

“What, with an impoverished widow for escort, no acquaintance anywhere but in Yorkshire, and rather less knowledge of the world than a chit out of boarding-school? My poor innocent, when I think of the only friendships you would be likely to form under such circumstances I promise you my blood runs cold! It won’t do: believe me, I know what I’m talking about! To carry off such an existence as you propose you must needs be fabulously wealthy, and eccentric into the bargain! Wealth, my dear delight, would excuse your eccentricity, and open most doors to you. You might hire a mansion in the best part of town, furnish it with oriental magnificence, force yourself on the notice of the ton by indulging in expensive freaks, boldly send out invitation cards—you would meet with some rebuffs, and not a few cuts-direct, but—”

“Be quiet, you absurd creature!” she interrupted, laughing. “That’s not the life I want! How could you think I should?”

“I don’t think it. Are you going to tell me that you want the life you would most certainly lead under your own scheme? You will be more bored and more lonely than ever in your life, for I assure you, Venetia, without acquaintance, without the correct background, you had as well live on a desert island as in London!”

“Oh, dear! Then what am I to do?”

“Go to your Aunt Hendred!” he replied.

“I mean to do so—but not to stay. I shouldn’t like that— or she either, I fear. Nor would her house do for Aubrey.”

“Aubrey, Aubrey! Think for once of yourself!”

“Well, and so I do! You know, Damerel, I never thought I could bear to stay at Undershaw with another woman as its mistress, and now I’ve discovered that it would fret me very much to live under such conditions anywhere! And to live with my aunt and uncle, submitting to their decrees, as I should be obliged to do, recognizing their authority, would be unendurable, like finding myself back again in the nursery! I’ve been my own mistress for too long, dear friend.”