“You are too severe,” interposed Serena, with a good deal of meaning in her voice.

“Well, so I would,” said his sister, “but now the girls have taken the notion into their heads it is very hard to know what to do. It is a great pity they can’t dance at Claycross, but with only Elphin and Gerard between the three of them, that won’t answer. As long as there are no waltzes or quadrilles I daresay Silchester would not object to Caroline’s going. Elphin will he there, after all, and if the company should be too mixed he must dance with his sister.”

“An evening of rare pleasure for both,” commented Rotherham.

A stifled giggle made him glance down at the enchanting face beside him. A look, half of mischief, half of consternation was cast up at him. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” gasped Emily, in a frightened undervoice.

“Not at all! When I choose to be witty I like to receive just acknowledgment. Do you mean to go to this Assembly?”

“Oh, I don’t know! I do hope—but I’m not precisely out yet, and perhaps Mama won’t permit me.”

“What is the significance of being precisely out?”

“Don’t quiz her!” said Serena, perceiving that she was at a loss to know how to answer. “She will be precisely out when she has been presented. When is it to be, Emily?”

“In the spring. Mama will give a ball!” she said, in an awed tone. “At least,” she added naively, “it is Grandmama really, only she won’t come to it, which I think is a great shame.”

Rotherham looked amused, but before he could probe into the mystery of this speech, which Serena feared was his intention, his notice was claimed by Lady Laleham, seated on his left hand.

“What do you say, Lord Rotherham? Your sister and I find that we share the same scruples, but I fancy I have hit on a scheme to make it unobjectionable for our giddy young people to attend the Assembly. Do you not agree that if we make up our own party between us it will solve the problem?”

“Certainly,” he replied.

With this unenthusiastic assent she was satisfied, and began at once to engage Lady Silchester’s co-operation.

Rotherham turned again to Emily, and found her face upturned, quite pink with excitement, her eyes sparkling. “Oh, thank you!” she breathed.

“Are you so fond of Assemblies?”

“Yes, indeed! That is to say, I don’t know, for I was never at one before.”

“Not being precisely out. Do you live in Quenbury?”

“Oh, no! At Cherrifield Place! Don’t you know it? You came by it this morning!”

“Did I?”

“Yes, and Mama knew it must be you, because of the crest. We were at the gate, meaning only to walk into the village, but Mama said we would come here instead, because there was a recipe she wished to give Lady Spenborough.”

“Providential!”

She was puzzled, and, scared by the satirical note in his voice, was stricken to silence. Serena, a trifle unsteadily, said: “Well, I hope you will enjoy the Assembly, and have a great many partners.”

“Within the limits of exclusiveness,” interpolated Rotherham, meeting her eye.

She frowned at him, knowing him to be quite capable of saying something outrageous enough to be understood by his innocent neighbour. Fortunately, since he met the frown with a bland look she knew well. Lady Laleham, having achieved her object, now judged it to be good tactics to take her leave. Her carriage was called for, and she bore her daughter off, well pleased with the success of her morning’s campaign.

“I never meet that woman but I smell the shop,” observed Lady Silchester calmly. “I wish I may not be her dear Augusta Silchester hereafter!”

“You are well served for having been fool enough to have mentioned the Assembly,” said her brother.

“Very true. I shall have the headache, and send Caroline with Cordelia.”

“I believe she knew you were here, and that is why she came!” declared Fanny, very much ruffled.

“She did!” Serena said, her eyes dancing. “That absurd child let the secret out in the most innocent fashion imaginable! How I contrived to keep my face I don’t know! Well for her Mama was not attending!”

“A pretty little dab of a girl,” said Lady Silchester. “Not enough countenance, but she’ll take very well, I daresay. Dark girls are being much admired just now. Depend upon it, her mother means her to go to the highest bidder. They say Laleham is pretty well at a standstill.”

“What I want to know,” said Rotherham, “is why Grandmama won’t be at the ball which she is to give.”

“I was in dread that you would ask her!” Serena said.

“I shall discover it at the Assembly, when you are not there to spoil sport.”

“You will not go to the Assembly!” she exclaimed incredulously.

“Certainly I shall.”

“Having a taste for being toad-eaten?” she quizzed him.

“No, for Miss Laleham’s artless conversation!”

“Ah, she won’t gratify you! You have frightened her away!”

“She must be lured back to hand.”

“No, no, it would be too bad of you! You might wake expectations in Mama’s bosom, moreover!”

“Irresistible! I shall come out on the side of my niece and my wards, and you will hear next that I am not by half as disagreeable as they had supposed.”

She laughed, but could not believe him to be serious. However, the next visitor to the Dower House was Mrs Monksleigh, who drove over from Claycross on Christmas Eve, and disclosed that the Assembly scheme was now a settled thing. “I own, I thought it would come to nothing, and so I warned the girls. I’m sure I was never more astonished than when Rotherham said he saw no harm in it, and as for Susan, she was ready to drop! I expected he would have given her one of his set-downs, but he was perfectly amiable!”

Mrs Monksleigh was the relict of a military man, who had left her with six children and a competence judged by his family to be respectable, and by her, inadequate. She was a very goodnatured woman, but having, unfortunately, less than common sense, she had never been able to teach herself habits of economy. There was a want of management in her house which led to a succession of financial crises driving her quite distracted, and never failing to exasperate Rotherham. He was not her cousin, but her husband’s; and, in addition to being her Trustee, was joined with her in the guardianship of her children. She could neither understand why her poor husband had made such a choice, nor cease to bewail it. No one could have been more unacceptable to her! He was a man of no sensibility, and impatient temper, and had so little affection for his cousin’s children that it was a question whether he knew them apart. His decrees were imperious, and issued without the smallest regard for her wishes; himself a man of huge fortune, he had no comprehension of the difficulties confronting those left to maintain the elegances of life upon a mere pittance. He always thought she should have been able to manage better! It was he who had insisted on Gerard’s being sent to school, although her own dear Dr Ryde had pronounced the poor little fellow’s constitution to be too delicate for the rigours of Eton. She could not believe that he would have cared if Gerard had died of it. Miraculously, Gerard had survived; and Charlie, of course, had always been very stout, so that she had no fears for him; but now Rotherham was saying that it was time poor little Tom was sent to join his brother. Do as she would, she could not make him understand the shocking expense of having two sons at Eton. There was no end to the calls on her purse: she was sure the fees were the least part of the whole. As for the girls, beyond saying that he saw no reason why Susan should be presented at a Drawing-room, and annihilating Margaret by telling her that when she could address him without prefixing her remarks with a giggle he might attend to her, he never noticed them. Very likely he had forgotten that little Lizzie even existed: he could certainly never remember her name.

The Carlow ladies listened, and sympathized, and agreed that it was a hard case, Fanny rather more sincerely than Serena. Serena could perceive that there might be something to be said in Rotherham’s defence. He made too little allowance, she believed, for the difficulties besetting a woman left with six children on her hands; but she, like him, was intolerant of folly, and Mrs Monksleigh was so very foolish! But she thought him less than kind to Gerard, of whom he was contemptuous; and quite indifferent to the younger members of the family. This opinion was shared by Lady Silchester, who excused it, however, by saying that gentlemen always dislike to be plagued by children, and that no one could expect such a thorough sportsman as Rotherham to take to Gerard, who had no taste for sport, a very bad seat, and far too little spirit. But even she could not pretend that her brother had shown the smallest sign of approval when the more robust Charlie, upon the occasion of his only visit to Delford, had given evidence of such spirited behaviour as led him into the performance of every kind of prank, from trying to bestride his guardian’s more unmanageable horses to falling off the stable roof, and breaking his collarbone. All he had said was that Charlie might think himself fortunate that he had broken his collar-bone, and that he would be damned if ever he saddled himself with the whelp again.

“So Augusta quite mistakes the matter when she says he would like poor Gerard better if he were bolder, and didn’t stand so much in awe of him,” complained Mrs Monksleigh. “I’m sure no boy could be holder than Charlie, for he is for ever in a scrape, and he never minds a word anyone says to him, but that doesn’t please Rotherham either! I assure you, Lady Serena, I live in dread of his making Rotherham angry while we are at Claycross, for I know he wouldn’t hesitate to use the poor boy with dreadful harshness, which I have told him I utterly forbid. Indeed, I thought all was lost yesterday, when that most disagreeable keeper made such a commotion about Charlie’s putting a charge of shot into his leg. Just as though it had not been an accident! Of course, it was wrong of Charlie to take the gun without leave, but the man was only very little hurt, after all! Rotherham said in the most menacing way that he would teach Charlie a lesson, and I could feel one of my spasms coming on, only Augusta told Rotherham he was a great fool not to have locked up the gunroom when he had an imp like Charlie to stay, and said surely he could not wish me to fall into strong hysterics, and so it passed off, and I was truly grateful to Augusta.”