“It is very kind of you. I should not be troubling you at such an awkward time,” Nell said, shaking hands. “May I talk privately to you for a few minutes?”

“Oh, my dear! Yes, yes, to be sure you may! Go and see if Miss Fanny is dressed yet, Betty! I will ring for you when I want you back again. Set a chair for her ladyship before you go! Do, pray, be seated, Lady Cardross!” She herself sank back into the chair before the dressing-table, saying, almost before her maid was out of the room: “Tell me at once, my dear! When Thomas came to say that you were below, such a presentiment shot through me! And I can see by your face I was right!”

“I don’t know—I hope not! Mrs. Thorne, has Letty been with you today?”

“Oh, my goodness gracious me!” cried Mrs. Thorne, “if I didn’t know it! No, my dear, I haven’t seen Letty since she visited us last week. Don’t tell me she has gone off with young Allandale! Wait! where are my smelling-salts? Now tell me everything!”

Clutching the vinaigrette, and warding off a series of palpitations by frequently sniffing its aromatic contents, she managed to listen to the story Nell unfolded without succumbing to the various nervous ills which threatened to prostrate her. She was very much shocked, interrupting the tale with groans, and horrified ejaculations, but there was nothing she could do to help Nell, because she knew nothing. She had never encouraged Mr. Allandale: girls liked to flirt, and there was no harm in that; but when she had learnt that Letty considered herself engaged to a young man without a penny to bless himself with, and no prospects worthy to be mentioned, she had never been more upset in her life.

Nell was obliged to break in on her volubility, and to beg that Selina might be sent for. Mrs. Thorne was perfectly agreeable, but she could not think that Selina would be able to throw any light on the mystery of her cousin’s whereabouts. When she was told of the meeting that afternoon in Bond Street, she could scarcely be brought to believe that such a thing could have happened. “Selina going off to Bond Street! Oh, you don’t mean it, Lady Cardross! I never heard of such a thing! To be sure, girls aren’t kept so strict now as they were when I was young—why, not a step outside the house could I take unless my mother, or the governess was with me! And very irksome it was, I can tell you! I made up my mind I wouldn’t use my girls so, and nor I have, but as for letting any of them go jauntering about town without one of her sisters, or Betty, to go with her, that would be quite beyond the line! Good gracious, whatever would people say? It doesn’t bear thinking of, and if I find Martha was telling you the truth, which, however, it’s very likely she wasn’t, I declare Selina shall go to Miss Puttenham’s seminary, say what she will! It was what Mr. Thorne said she should do, when Miss Woodbridge left us, but she pleaded so hard against it—well, there! But that Martha would say anything! Depend upon it, my dear Lady Cardross, Selina knows no more than the man in the moon where her cousin may be!”

But when Selina presently came into the room it was evident even to her fond parent that she knew very well why she had been sent for. She was in fine feather, and perfectly ready to be martyred in her cousin’s cause. Hers had not been the chief role in the delightful drama, but she had been able easily to convince herself that without her self-abnegating offices the interested parties would by this time have been obliged to resign themselves to their equally disagreeable fates. Letty (if she did not go into a decline, and expire within the year) would have been ruthlessly forced into marriage with a titled Midas of evil disposition, at whose hands she would have suffered brutal ill-usage; and Mr. Allandale, unaccountably forgotten by his superiors, would have worn out his life in a foreign land, always carrying his lost love’s likeness next his heart, and dying (in circumstances of distressing neglect and anguish) with her name on his writhen lips.

Until she found herself confronting Nell, of whom she stood in a good deal of awe, this affecting story had seemed to her so probable as to border on the inevitable. She had several times rehearsed the elevating utterances she would make, if called upon to account for her actions; and in these scenes every effort made by Letty’s persecutors to drag from her the secret of her whereabouts failed. Sometimes she remained mute while the storm raged over her devoted head; but in general she was extremely eloquent, expressing herself with such moving sincerity that even such worldly persons as her father and Lord Cardross were often brought to see how false and mercenary were their ideas, and emerged from the encounter with changed hearts, and the highest opinion of her fearlessness, nobility, and good sense.

But in these scenes the other members of the cast spoke the lines laid down for them; in real life they said things so very different as to throw everything quite out of joint. In the event, Selina pronounced only one of her rehearsed speeches. Asked by her mother if she knew what had become of Letty, she clasped her hands at her breast, and declined to answer the question. She then invited the two ladies to threaten her as much as they chose, to do with her what they would; but warned them that they would find it impossible to force her to betray her cousin.

Mrs. Thorne should then have conjured her daughter on her obedience to divulge the truth; instead, and with a lamentable lack of histrionic ability, she begged her irritably not, for goodness sake, to start any of her play-acting; and before Selina could recover from this set-back Nell completed her discomfiture by saying in a tone of grave reproof: “Indeed, Selina, you must not make-believe over this, for I am afraid it is much more serious than you have any idea of.”

After that, there could be no recapturing the dramatic flavour of the piece. Selina did say that she wouldn’t tell anything, but even in her own ears this sounded very much more sulky than noble; and when Mrs. Thorne, heaving herself out of her chair, declared her intention of hailing her immediately before her papa, who would know how to deal with such impertinence, instead of behaving like a heroine, she collapsed into frightened tears.

It took a little time to drag the whole story out of her and the effect of her revelations on Mrs. Thorne was severe enough to make Nell feel profoundly sorry for the poor lady. She was so much stunned by the discovery that when she had believed Selina to have gone under the escort of her maid to a dancing-class, or a music-lesson, that abandoned damsel had been setting forth by stealth for the most fashionable quarter of the town, alone, and for the purpose of aiding and abetting her cousin in conduct that, if it were to become known, would disgrace them both for ever in the eyes of all persons of ton, that she could do nothing but reproach Selina, and wonder how she came to have a daughter so lost to all sense of propriety. It was left to Nell to question Selina, which she did with a gentle coldness that overawed her far more than did her mother’s scoldings.

Letty had sold the necklace to Catworth on the day that she had gone with her cousin to choose a wedding-gift for Fanny. They had dismissed the carriage outside the Pantheon, telling the coachman to call for them at Gunter’s, in Berkeley Square, considerably later in the day. After purchasing a couple of thick veils, they had set out in a hack for Cranbourn Alley, having discovered the existence of the firm of Catworth and Son through the simple expedient of asking the jarvey on the box to recommend them a jeweller not patronized by persons of quality. While Letty had transacted her business with the younger Catworth, Selina had remained in the hack, because the jarvey, when instructed to wait outside the shop, apparently suspecting them of trying to give him the slip, had expressed a strong wish of being paid off then and there.

After the sale of the necklace, only one thing was needed for an elopement, and that was the bridegroom, who was then still out of town.

At this point, Mrs. Thorne exclaimed: “Never tell me Allandale was ready to take her with no more than two thousand pounds!”

“My dear ma’am, you cannot suppose that Mr. Allandale was a party to such a thing!” Nell said.

“No, he wasn’t,” corroborated Selina. “Letty said she would tell him she had it from her godfather, in case he should think she ought not to have taken the necklace.”

The two girls had met that afternoon by prearrangement, and as soon as Martha had been got rid of, which was done because Letty wished, with rare consideration, to protect her from blame, they had purchased such necessities as Letty had been unable to pack in her bundle, and brought them to Bryanston Square, to be bestowed in an old cloak-bag belonging to Papa. Finally, Letty had departed in a hackney for Mr. Allandale’s lodging in Ryder Street. “But you won’t catch them,” Selina said, with a last flicker of defiance, “because that was hours ago, and you may depend upon it they are many miles away by now!”

This seemed all too probable to Mrs. Thorne, sinking back in her chair with a groan of dismay, but Nell was more hopeful. When Selina had been dismissed to bed, with the promise of bread and water for her supper, an interview with Papa on the morrow, and incarceration for an unspecified length of time in a Bath seminary for young ladies, she rose to her feet, saying that she would go at once to Ryder Street.

“But what is the use, my dear?” wailed Mrs. Thorne. “You heard what that wicked child of mine said! They’re off to Gretna Green, depend upon it!”

“I cannot credit it! No doubt that was Letty’s plan, but I shall own myself astonished if it was Mr. Allandale’s. Oh, he would not do such a thing! I am quite confident he would not!”