“I am not picking a quarrel. It would surprise you, I daresay, if I told you that I rarely quarrel with anyone but yourself.”

“Ah, that’s because very few people have the courage to pick up your gauntlet!” she said, smiling.

“An amiable portrait you draw!”

“But a speaking likeness!” she countered, a laughing challenge in her eye.

He shook his head. “No: I choose rather to prove you wrong. We won’t quarrel this time, Serena.”

“As you wish! Will you alter the arrangement for my tiresome allowance, if you please?”

“I have already done so. There is the direction,” he replied, handing her a piece of paper.

“Thank you! That was kind of you. I am sorry to have been so troublesome. Did you come all the way from town just for that?”

“I had business at Claycross,” he said curtly. “You seem to be comfortably established here. How do you go on?”

“Very prosperously. It was a relief to escape from Milverley.”

He nodded, but made no comment, merely saying, after a brief, keen scrutiny of her face: “Are you well? You look a trifle peaked.”

“If I do, it is because black doesn’t become me. I mean to lighten my mourning, and have ordered a charming grey gown.”

“You are mistaken.”

“What, in going into half-mourning?”

“No, in thinking black does not become you. Are you sure that Bath agrees with your constitution?”

“Yes, indeed! Now, don’t, I beg of you, Rotherham, put it into Fanny’s head that I am looking hagged! I think I did become a little out of sorts, but Bath will soon set me to rights.” She glanced at him, and added, with difficulty: “I have not learned yet not to miss Papa. Don’t let us speak of that! You know how it is with me! I don’t care to talk of what so much affects me, and making a parade of grief is of all things the most repugnant to me.”

“Yes, I know,” he replied, “You need not be afraid. I have nothing to say on that subject, for there is nothing to be said. Your aunt, by the by, charged me with all manner of messages to you. I met her at the Irebys’ party a couple of nights ago. It is wonderful, Serena, how much she likes you when a hundred miles or so separates you from her!”

She laughed. “Very true! My love to her, if you please, and tell her that I quite depend upon her letters for the latest on-dits. Where are you putting up, Ivo? Do you make a long stay in Bath?”

“At the York House. I return to town tomorrow.”

“How shabby! You will stay to dine with us at least! We keep unmodishly early hours here, I warn you.”

He hesitated. “I can hardly sit down to dinner with you in my riding dress, and I brought no other.”

“Ah, so you did mean to pick a quarrel with me!” she rallied him. “Fanny will pardon your top-boots, and I hope you don’t mean to stand on ceremony with me!” She turned her head, as Fanny came into the room, and said: “Here is Rotherham, so full of punctilio he will not dine with us in his riding dress! Persuade him, Fanny, while I make myself tidy!”

She returned presently to find them apparently in perfect charity with one another, Rotherham having been so obliging as to furnish Fanny with all the latest news of the Royal Marriage preparations. Since it was rarely that he had been known to pander to such feminine curiosity, Serena could only suppose that he was determined on amiability. Nothing occurred during the evening to make her change her mind. He indulged Fanny’s taste for gossip, without betraying too much contempt for it; and entertained Serena with a pungent description of what he described as the flutter in the Whig dovecot. Both ladies were pleased, and if an elliptical reference, which made Serena’s eyes dance, was incomprehensible to Fanny, or the conversation turned on Mr Canning’s journey home from Lisbon, she had her embroidery-frame to occupy her, and was merely glad to see Serena in such spirits. Such phrases as: “Pretty well to be employing a frigate for one’s pleasure!” and: “Never was there such a job!” put her forcibly in mind of agonizing evenings at Milverley, or in Grosvenor Square, when she had been obliged to strain every nerve in the effort to follow just such conversations. It was no longer her duty to do so, and she could only be thankful.

Her wandering thoughts were reclaimed presently, for the talk seemed to have switched from the despotic behaviour of someone called Ferdinand, to a subject of more interest. Rotherham was asking Serena who was at present visiting Bath.

“My dear Ivo! At the start of the London season? None but dowdies!”

Fanny protested that she was too severe, but Serena laughed, and shook her head. “General Creake, old Lady Skene, Mrs Piozzi, Madame D’Arblay and her set: Mrs Holroyd, Mrs Frances, Miss Bowdler—need I continue?”

“You need not, indeed! I had hoped you might have found some more enlivening company.”

“I have!” Serena said.

“I mistrust that smile,” Rotherham said dryly. “Who is it?”

“I’ll tell you one day. At present my lips are sealed!” she replied, with an air of mock solemnity.

“That means, I imagine, that you know well I should disapprove.”

“I daresay you might, but very likely you would not, and in any event it doesn’t concern you.” She glanced mischievously at Fanny, and added: “I find the acquaintance excessively enlivening!”

“But Lady Spenborough does not?”

“Fanny has such grand notions! Besides, she is my mama-in-law, and feels it to be her duty to chaperon me very strictly!”

“Now, Serena—!”

“I don’t envy her that task. I shan’t gratify you by trying to discover the mystery, but I wish you will take care what you are about.”

“I will. It is not precisely a mystery, only, although I daresay I might safely tell you about it, I believe I ought not, at this present.”

He looked frowningly at her, but said nothing. She began to talk of something else, and the subject was not again mentioned until Rotherham took his leave. Serena having run out of the room to fetch a letter which she desired him to frank, he said abruptly: “Don’t let her run into some scrape! You could not prevent her, I suppose: I know that headstrong temper!”

“Indeed, you are mistaken!” Fanny assured him.

He looked sceptical, but was prevented from saying more by Serena’s coming back into the room with her letter.

“There it is,” she said, laying it upon the writing-table, and opening the lid of the standish. “Cousin Florence will be very much obliged to you for saving her at least sixpence.”

He took the pen she was holding out to him, and dipped it in the ink. “Shall I carry it to London, and post it there?”

“If you please. I wish you might have stayed longer in Bath, though.”

“Why? To have made the acquaintance of the Unknown?” he said, scrawling his name across the corner of her letter.

She laughed. “No—though I want very much to present you to the Unknown! To ride with me, merely. You never think a fence too high for me, or beg me to have a care!”

“In the saddle I think you very well able to take care of yourself.”

“This is praise indeed!”

He smiled. “I never denied your horsemanship, Serena. I wish it were possible for me to stay, but it is not. This curst ball looms ahead of me!”

“What ball?”

“Oh, did I not tell you? I am assured it is my duty to lend Rotherham House to Cordelia, so that she may launch Sarah, or Susan, or whatever the girl’s name may be, upon the world with as much pomp as possible. I am unconvinced, but when it comes to Augusta adding her trenchant accents to Cordelia’s plaintive ones I am against the ropes, and would give a dozen balls only to silence the pair of them.”

“Good God! Upon my word, I think it is amazingly good-natured of you, Ivo!” Serena said, quite astonished.

“Yes, so do I!” he replied.

He departed, and the ladies were left to marvel over this new and unexpected turn, Fanny declaring that she would never have believed he could be brought to do so much for his unfortunate wards, and Serena saying: “I certainly never thought of his giving a ball for Susan, but I have sometimes suspected that he does a great deal more for them than he chooses to divulge.”

“I’m sure I never thought so! What put it into your head?”

“Well, it crossed my mind, when Mrs Monksleigh was complaining of his having insisted on her sending the boys to Eton because it was where their father was educated, that he could not have compelled her to do so, which she vows he did, unless it was he, and not she, who was to bear the cost of it. Only consider what that must be! Three of them, Fanny, and Gerard now at Cambridge! I am persuaded Mrs Monksleigh could not have contrived it, even had she had the least notion of management, which she has not!”

Fanny was much struck, and could only say: “Well!”

“It is not so wonderful,” Serena said, amused. “Nor need it make you feel, as I see it does, that you have grievously misjudged him! He is so rich that I daresay he would not notice it if he were paying the school-fees of a dozen children. I shall feel I have misjudged him when I see him showing his wards a little kindness.”

“Well, if he is giving a grand ball for Susan, I call it a great deal of kindness!” said Fanny, with spirit.

Except for various formal notices in the London papers, they heard nothing more of the ball until the arrival of Lady Theresa’s next letter to her niece. Lady Theresa had taken her third daughter to the function, but it did not seem as though she had enjoyed it, in spite of the many compliments she had received on Clarissa’s beauty, and the gratifying circumstance of her never having lacked a partner. Any pleasure Lady Theresa might have derived from the ball had been destroyed by the sight of Cordelia Monksleigh, in a hideous puce gown, standing at the head of the great stairway to receive the guests. She had been unable to banish the reflection that there, but for her own folly, might have stood Serena, though not, she trusted, in puce. Moreover, had Serena been the hostess it was to be hoped, that the company would have been more exclusive. What could have induced Rotherham to have given Cordelia Monksleigh carte blanche, as there was no doubt he had done, was a matter passing Lady Theresa’s comprehension. Had anyone told her that she would live to see That Laleham Creature storming Rotherham House (heavily underscored), she would have laughed in his face. But so it had been; and if Serena had seen her positively flinging her chit of a daughter at all the eligible bachelors, besides forcing herself on the notice of every distinguished person present, she might, at last, have regretted her own folly, wilfulness, and improvidence.