April Lady (23 page)

"Yes, and carry you there, if you don't instantly obey me!" he said, pulling the door open again. "Out!"

"For heaven's sake, Cardross!" expostulated Nell, in the liveliest dread that Letty would relapse into hysterics. "Do, pray, go away, and leave her to me! This is
my
room, and really you have no right to order Letty out of it!"

"You have an odd notion of my rights," he said grimly. "I don't question that she is more welcome in your room than I am, but you will own that I at least have the right to be private with you when I choose!"

She whitened, but said quietly: "Most certainly, and if it is the case that you wish to speak to me, shall we go into my dressing-room?"

"You need not put yourself to so much trouble!" declared Letty, trembling with anger. "I would not for the world, love, expose
you
to the sort of ill-usage
I
am compelled to suffer, and to spare you I will go!"

This very noble speech wiped the thunderous look from Cardross's face, and made him burst out laughing: an unlooked-for event which exacerbated Letty, but considerably relieved Nell. Letty, pausing only to inform her brother that his manners were as disgusting as his disposition was malevolent, swept out of the room, sped on her way by a recommendation to go and take a damper. Cardross then shut the door, saying: "Little termagant! I shall be sorry for Allandale, if ever she does marry him."

"She is very much overset by this news that he must leave England so soon," Nell replied excusingly. "One cannot but feel for her, and for my part— But I don't wish to tease you any more."

"Thank God for that! I have had as much as I can support in one day, I assure you. At breakfast, too!"

"I must say, I think that was a very foolish time to choose," admitted Nell.

"Very! But she would not have found me more persuadable at any other hour." He added, as she sighed: "Yes, I am aware of what your sentiments are, but I didn't come to enter into argument with you over this lamentable affair. What I did come for was to discuss with you what will be the wisest course to pursue now. We may be sure of one thing: until that regrettable young man is out of the country there will be no peace for either of us. I shall no doubt be subjected to endless repetitions of today's scene; and you, I suppose, will be obliged to sustain the exhausting role of confidante. Well, I know of no reason why you should be called upon to endure Letty's tantrums, so tell me frankly, if you please, if you would wish me to pack her off to Bath?"

"Upon no account in the world!" she said quickly. "Surely you were only funning when you made that threat?"

"I was, but I didn't then know that Allandale was to leave England so soon."

"No, no, don't think of it! It would be so dreadfully unkind to send her out of town when she has so little time left before Mr. Allandale sails! I am persuaded, too, that she would run away—perhaps to Mrs. Thorne, and you would very much dislike that. Only think how it would look!"

"If I know my Aunt Honoria, she would be given no chance to run away," he said, with a wry smile. "Don't imagine, however, that I wish to send her there! She's a tiresome little wretch, and when she starts brangling and brawling I could willingly wring her neck, but so much must be laid at the door of her upbringing that I can't feel she deserves quite such a fate as to be delivered up to that dragon of a female. But I don't wish you to be worn to a bone by her nonsense."

"Indeed I shan't be, and I beg you won't dream of sending her to Lady Honoria!
One
thing you may be sure of: you have no need to fear an elopement."

"No, very true!" he agreed. "Allandale's inability to support a wife must put that disaster beyond the range of possibility!"

"Yes, but that is not quite just, Cardross!" she said reproachfully. "He may be an ineligible match for poor Letty, but you cannot doubt that his principles are high, and his sense of propriety too great to allow of his entertaining the thought of an elopement, whatever might be his fortune!"

"His principles and his propriety may be as high as the moon, but I have no great opinion of his resolution!" Cardross replied. "Had that been on the same level he would never, as his affairs stand, have allowed his fancy for Letty to carry him to the length of applying to me for her hand! She can be an engaging little devil when she chooses, and I will own myself astonished if he is not being led about with a ring through his nose, like a performing bear. My dependence is all upon his straitened circumstances. We will keep Letty in London, then—and you won't blame me if she drives you to distraction!"

He left the room on these words, and after a discreet interval Miss Sutton returned to it, to complete, with lofty dignity, her task of presenting her mistress suitably coiffed and gowned for an appearance in the Chapel Royal.

In the event, Nell decided that the hour was too far advanced to admit of her making anything but an undesirably spectacular arrival at the Chapel Royal; and she presently dismissed her carriage, setting out on foot for the Grosvenor Chapel, which place of worship, though frequented by persons of ton, was hardly worthy of Miss Sutton's best efforts. She was accompanied by Letty, having coaxed that injured damsel to go with her in the hope that religious exercise would bring her to a more proper frame of mind. Unfortunately, the officiating cleric announced as the text for his sermon a verse from the Epistle to the Philippians.
"Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory"
he pronounced sonorously,
"but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves."
Nell felt Letty stiffen.

Nor was there anything in the discourse that followed to produce in either lady any thoughts suitable to the Sabbath. So apposite to the events of the morning was the sermon that Nell, far from being edified, was hard put to it to stifle a shocking fit of giggles; while Letty, swelling with wrath, could not afterwards be persuaded that Cardross had not suborned the blameless cleric into choosing a text aimed directly at herself.

Upon their return to Grosvenor Square Nell found a note from Dysart awaiting her. No, the porter informed her: his lordship had not called in person, but had sent it by the hand of his groom. Nell bore it upstairs to her dressing-room to peruse it in private, but its contents were disappointing. The Viscount had scrawled no more than a couple of lines to say that he had received her warning, and would take care to keep out of Cardross's way. He remained her affectionate brother, Dysart. It was only by the exercise of all the resolution at her command that she was able to refrain from dispatching another letter to him then and there, reminding him of the urgency of her need. Lady Sefton called during the course of the afternoon, and stayed for an hour, uttering cryptic remarks, and peeping at Letty through her fingers as she did so in a roguish manner that caused that young lady to apostrophize her later as a nasty creature, which was unjust, since beneath her tiresome affectations she was the kindest of creatures. From having been acquainted with Mrs. Allandale for many years she was pretty well aware of the state of affairs in Grosvenor Square, but even Nell, who liked her, could not acquit her of having come to discover, if she could, any interesting circumstances which had not reached Mrs. Allandale's ears. Hardly had she departed than a much more unwelcome visitor arrived, in the person of Lady Cowper, who came with the ostensible object of begging dear Lady Cardross to lend her support to a charitable organization of which she herself was a leading patroness, but lost little time in trying to ferret out, in the most caressing way possible, all the details of Letty's romance. Nell was mortified indeed to realize that her lord's little sister had become one of the on-dits of London, and, glancing toward her, thought that she too looked to be rather struck. Lady Cowper, like all the Lambs, was possessed of a degree of charm that too often lured the unwary into reposing confidences in her which would later provide her with matter for her witty tongue; but her insinuating manners won her nothing from the two Merion ladies but a stoney stare from Letty, and from Nell a gentle civility that rebuffed all hints and enquiries, and caused her later to tell her numerous acquaintances that it was a sad pity that so beautiful a creature should be so insufferably insipid. As for her hostesses, no sooner had she taken herself off than they spent an agreeable half-hour abusing her, and in trying to decide whether her worst fault was cutting at people behind their backs, or paying visits in dresses trimmed with positively dirty lace.

The evening was enlivened by a spirited attempt made by Letty to convince her brother that in withholding her fortune from her he was guilty of embezzlement. He refused to be drawn into altercation, and even listened to her with great patience when, abandoning this unpromising line of attack, she expatiated on the manifold, if somewhat nebulous, advantages of life in Brazil, and the miseries she would undergo if separated by thousands of miles and an aeon of time from Mr. Allandale. He even tried to coax her into viewing her circumstances with rather more moderation, representing to her in a little amusement, but with a good deal of kindness, that two, or even three, years could hardly be thought an aeon of time; and that the possibility of Mr. Allandale's being snatched into marriage by a designing female of Portuguese extraction was too remote to be worthy of consideration. "Don't put yourself in this passion, my dear little sister!" he said, taking her hand, and giving it a squeeze. "You might be so very much worse off, you know! If I were the unfeeling tyrant you believe me to be, I should have told Allandale never to think of you again—and that is certainly what the world will say I should have done! I haven't said it, and I shall not. But you must not expect me to allow you, at seventeen, to throw yourself away on a young man who has neither birth nor position, and stands as yet only on the threshold of his career. I shan't do it, so stop coming to cuffs with me, like a good girl, and try to be a little wiser!"

She stared bleakly up into his face, her own very set. "You wouldn't talk so if you had ever loved anyone as I love Jeremy. You cannot know what it is to form a lasting passion!"

He dropped her hand. "You are mistaken," he said, in an even tone, and turned away from her to address some light commonplace to his wife.

Letty flushed vividly, and said: "I am not mistaken! You may think you have a heart, but you haven't! You don't like to be told that, but it's true!"

He said, over his shoulder: "Letty, you are not only becoming a dead bore, but you want manner as well as sense! Let me tell you that until you learn to behave with propriety you will make the worst wife imaginable for a diplomat!"

"Jeremy," said Letty, her bosom heaving, "thinks me
perfect!"

"Which," remarked Cardross, as she slammed herself out of the room, "gives me no very high idea of his understanding."

Nell smiled, but said only, as she rose from her chair: "I think I should follow her. She has been very low and oppressed all day, and you know how it is with her! When she is happy I never knew anyone whose spirits mounted so high, but they can be all dashed down in a minute, and then she knocks herself up with one of her fits of crying."

"I have very little patience to waste on such distempered freaks," he replied. "The truth is that she had been spoilt to death, and cannot endure to have her will crossed!"

"Oh, yes!" she agreed. "But you would not wish her to cry herself into a fever."

"Nonsense!" he said irritably, adding, however, after a frowning moment: "I don't wish her to wear
your
spirits down, at all events! I suppose she will make us endure weeks of sulks. There's no doing anything until Allandale has sailed, but how would it be if I took a house in Brighton, after all, instead of going home to Merion at the end of the season? Do you remember how cross she was when I refused to take her there? I had nothing but scowls from her for a full week! Well! Prinney's parties are not what I would choose for her, but if it would divert her to go there—?"

"Perhaps it would divert her a little," she answered. She raised her eyes, and added, after a moment's hesitation: "Not very much, however. I don't mean to vex you, Cardross, but I think you don't perfectly understand. You hope that Letty will forget Mr. Allandale, but she won't. You see, she
loves
him!"

"A child of her age! What does she know of the matter?" She coloured faintly, and managed to say, though not easily: "I was not very much older—when you offered for me."

His eyes turned towards her, an arrested expression in them. He did not answer her immediately, and when he did speak it was with a certain deliberation. "No. You were not, were you?" he said.

CHAPTER TEN

 
 
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The following
day was one of gloom, relieved only at nightfall, when the guests began to arrive for a loo-party. It began inauspiciously, with a further reminder from Madame Lavalle, which threw Nell into such a fever of apprehension that she could no longer forbear to plague Dysart, but sent round a letter to his lodgings immediately, imploring him either to tell her what she must do, or to negotiate a loan for her "with a respectable usurer". Hardly had this been dispatched than Martha came to her with a message from her mistress. Letty, it appeared, had awakened with a toothache, after a troubled night, and begged to be excused from accompanying her sister to North Audley Street, on a morning visit to the Misses Berry.