“He!” The word burst from Serena’s lips. She swept round, and bore down upon the Marquis, as lithe as a wild cat, and as dangerous. “Was it your doing? Was it?”

“Good God, no!” he said contemptuously. “A pretty charge to saddle myself with!”

“How could he do such a thing? How could he?” she demanded. “And without your knowledge and consent? No! No! I don’t believe it!”

“When you have come to the end of all this fretting and fuming, perhaps you may! Your father desired nothing so much as our marriage, and this is his way of bringing it about. It’s a cock that won’t fight, however!”

“No!” she said, cheeks and eyes flaming. “I will never be so enforced!”

“Nor I!” he said brutally. “Why, you featherheaded termagant, do you imagine that I wish for a wife upon such terms? You mistake the matter, my girl, believe me!”

“Then release me from so intolerable a situation! To be obliged to beg your consent—! Something must be done! It must be possible! My whole fortune tied up—pin-money—Good God, how could Papa treat me so? Will you assign the Trust to my cousin? Will you do that?”

“Poor devil, no! If I could, I would not! You would bully him into giving his consent to your marriage to the first wastrel that offered, only to break the Trust! Well, you won’t bully me, so make up your mind to that, Serena!”

She flung away from him, and resumed her restless pacing, tears of rage running down her face. Fanny went to her, laying a hand on her arm, saying, in a beseeching tone: “Serena! Dearest Serena!”

She stood rigidly, her throat working. “Fanny, don’t touch me! I am not safe!”

Fanny found herself being pushed unceremoniously aside. Rotherham, who had come up behind her, seized Serena’s wrists, and held them in a hard grasp. “You have edified us enough!” he said harshly. “A little more conduct would be becoming in you! No, you will neither hit me, nor claw my eyes out! Be still, Serena, and think what a figure you make of yourself!”

There was a pause. Fanny trembled for the issue, herself a good deal distressed. The stormy eyes, shifting from Rotherham’s dark face, found hers. The glare went out of them. A shuddering sigh broke from Serena; she said: “Oh, Fanny, I beg your pardon! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No, no, never!” Fanny cried.

Serena began unconsciously to rub the wrists which Rotherham had released. She glanced round the room, and gave a rather hysterical little laugh. “Indeed, I am very sorry! I am behaving so badly, and have thrown you all into embarrassment. Pray excuse me! Rotherham, I must see you before you leave Milverley: will you come to me, if you please, in the Little Drawing-room?”

“At once, if you wish it.”

“Oh, no! My senses are quite disordered still. You must give me time to mend my temper if I am not to be betrayed again into unbecoming warmth!”

She hurried out of the room, repulsing Fanny, who would have accompanied her, with a gesture, and a quick shake of her head.

Her departure unleashed the tongues of her relations, Mr Eaglesham deploring so passionate a disposition, and recalling his wife’s various pronouncements on the subject; Fanny firing up in defence; Dorrington ascribing the outbreak to Rotherham’s provoking manners; and Spenborough reiterating his determination to overset the clause. This at once led to further disputation, for Dorrington, while agreeing that the clause should be overset, resented Spenborough’s assumption of authority; and Mr Eaglesham, on general grounds, was opposed to any scheme of Dorrington’s. Even Claypole was drawn, though reluctantly, into expressing an opinion; but Mr Perrott, waiting with gelid calm for the discussion to end, met all appeals with noncommittal repressiveness; and Rotherham, his shoulders to the door, his arms folded across his chest, and one leg crossed negligently over the other, appeared to consider himself the audience to a farce which at once bored and slightly diverted him. It lasted too long for his patience, however, and he put a ruthless end to it, interrupting Dorrington to say: “You will none of you overset it, and you are none of you concerned in it, so you may as well stop making gudgeons of yourselves!”

“Sir, you are offensive!” declared Mr Eaglesham, glaring at him. “I do not hesitate to tell you so!”

“Why should you? I don’t hesitate to tell you that you’re a muttonhead! I collect that you think her aunt the properest person to control Serena’s hand and fortune. You’d look mighty blue if you could succeed in foisting that charge on to Lady Theresa! What a trimming she would give you, by God!”

Lord Dorrington burst into a rumbling laugh which immediately set him coughing and wheezing. Mr Eaglesham, much incensed, opened his mouth to retaliate, and then, as the appalling truth of Rotherham’s words came home to him, shut it again, and seethed in silence. After regarding him sardonically for a moment or two, Rotherham nodded at the attorney, and said: “You may now read us the rest of this original document!”

Mr Perrott bowed, and replaced the spectacles on his nose. The Will contained no further surprises, and was listened to without comment. Only at the end of the reading did Rotherham unfold his arms, and stroll over to the desk, holding out an imperative hand. Mr Perrott put the Will into it; the stiff sheets were flicked over; in frowning silence the Marquis studied the fatal clause. He then tossed the document on to the desk, saying: “Ramshackle!” and walked out of the room.

His departure was the signal for the break-up of the party. Mr Perrott, declining Fanny’s civil offer of hospitality, was the first to take leave. He was accompanied out of the library by the new Earl, who desired information on several points, and followed almost immediately by Mr Eaglesham, who was engaged to spend the night with friends in Gloucester; and by Lord Dorrington, who had had the forethought to bespeak dinner at one of his favourite posting-houses, and was anxious lest it should spoil. Fanny soon found herself alone with her father, who, with Spenborough, was remaining at Milverley until the morrow.

She awaited his first words with a fast-beating heart, but these, not surprisingly, were devoted not to her affairs but to Serena’s. “An awkward business!” Sir William said. “Quite unaccountable! A strange man, Spenborough!”

She agreed to it, but faintly.

“One cannot wonder at your daughter-in-law’s vexation, but I should be sorry to see any daughter of mine in such a passion!”

“Oh, pray do not regard it, Papa! In general, she is so good! But this, coming as it does at such a moment, when she is in so much affliction and behaving so beautifully—! The distressing circumstances, too—her previous connection with Rotherham—the most ungentlemanly language he used. She must be pardoned! She is so good!”

“You astonish me! Your Mama was much inclined to think her not at all the thing. She has some odd ways! But there, these great ladies think they may behave as they please! I daresay she would tie her garter in public, as the saying goes!”

“Oh, no, no! Indeed, you misjudge her, Papa! If she is an unusual girl, recollect that to dear Lord Spenborough she was more a son than a daughter!”

“Ay! It is an unhappy thing for a girl to lose her mother! No more than twelve years of age, was she? Well, well! You are very right, my dear: allowances must be made for her. I am very sensible to it, particularly now, when I should have wished above all things that I could have brought your mother to you!”

Fanny was too much astonished at having her opinion deferred to by him to do more than murmur a confused assent.

“It is an unfortunate circumstance that she should be lying-in when her presence must have been a comfort to you.”

“Oh, yes! I mean—that is, it was so kind of her to have spared you to me!”

“No question of that! I never knew your Mama to give way to crotchets of that kind. Besides, you know, a tenth lying-in is by no means the same thing as a first. One does not make a piece of work over it! She will be sadly disappointed, however, not to receive better news of you than I can carry to her. Not that my hopes were high. After three years, it was scarcely to be expected. A sad pity, upon all counts!” She hung her head, blushing deeply, and he made haste to add: “I don’t mean to reproach you, my dear, however much I must wish it had been otherwise. I daresay Spenborough felt it?”

She replied in so suffocated a voice that only the words “always so considerate” could be distinguished.

“I am glad to hear you say so. It is no very pleasant thing to know that one’s possessions must pass into the hands of some trumpery cousin—no great thing, the new Earl, is he?—but I hold him to be as much to blame as you. What a freak, to contract inflammation of the lungs while the succession was still unsure! I never knew such improvidence!” He sounded indignant, but recollected immediately to whom he spoke, and begged pardon. “There is no sense in dwelling upon the matter, to be sure. For your sake, it is a great deal to be regretted. Your rank must always command respect, but had you been the mother of a son your consequence would have been enhanced beyond anything, and your future decided. As things have fallen out, it is otherwise. I don’t know, Fanny, if you have any thoughts on this head?”

She gathered her forces together, and replied with tolerable firmness: “Yes, Papa. I have the intention of removing to the Dower House, with dear Serena.”

He was taken aback. “With Lady Serena!”

“I am persuaded it is what Lord Spenborough would have desired me to do. She must not be deserted!”