“He is pressing for an early marriage?” Fanny repeated.

“Yes, why not?” Serena said evenly. “He is very right, though he had better have seen her first. Once she is his wife, he will very soon teach her not to shrink from his embraces.”

“How can you? Oh, how can you?” Fanny exclaimed, shuddering. “When you know that she neither loves nor trusts him!”

“She will rapidly do both. She is amazingly persuadable, I assure you!” Serena retorted. She glanced at the clock. “Do we dine at eight? How tonnish we become! I must go and make myself tidy. Does Hector dine with us tonight, or is he vexed with me for having flouted his extremely wise advice?”

“You know he is never vexed,” Fanny said. “But he doesn’t come to us tonight. He called this afternoon, to desire me to tell you that he was obliged to go into Kent for a few days, and meant to catch the mail, at five o’clock.”

“Good heavens, what a sudden start! Has some disaster befallen?”

“Oh, no! That is, I did not question him, naturally! But he said something about business which he had neglected, and his agent’s having written to tell him that it had become most urgent.”

“Oh, I see! Very likely, I daresay. I recall that he told me once that he had come to Bath for a few weeks only. The weeks have turned into months! I hope he will dispatch his business swiftly: how moped we shall be without him!”

“Yes, indeed!” Fanny agreed. Her voice sounded hollow in her own ears; she fancied Serena had noticed it, and made haste to change the subject. “Serena, if Rotherham comes to see Emily—and if he is now at Claycross you cannot doubt that he will!—”

“I doubt it very much,” Serena interrupted. “I understand he has been there for a fortnight, or more! He has neither visited Emily, nor suggested to her that he should. If you won’t allow my first answer to that riddle to be correct, perhaps he is trying to pique her. How good for him to be kept champing at the bit! I wish I might see it!”

“Can it be that he has guests staying with him?” said Fanny.

“I have not the remotest conjecture, my dear!” replied Serena. “Perhaps, since Lady Laleham is at Cherrifield Place again, he finds her company sufficiently amusing!”

But his lordship, although alone at Claycross, showed no disposition to fraternize with his future mother-in-law. He even omitted to pay her the compliment of leaving cards at Cherrifield Place, a circumstance which made her so uneasy that she bullied Sir Walter into riding over to Claycross to discover whether Rotherham had taken offence at Emily’s prolonged stay in Bath, and to reassure him if he had. Sir Walter was a man of placid temperament, but he was also strongly opposed to any form of activity that seemed likely to cast the least rub in the way of his quite remarkable hedonism, and he resented this effort to compel him to enter into his wife’s matrimonial schemes. It was his practice to abandon home and children entirely to her management, partly because he was indifferent to both, and partly because argument was abhorrent to him. Having long outlived his fondness for his wife, he spent as little time in her vicinity as was possible, and was inclined to be aggrieved that his only reward for being so obliging as to spend a week under his own roof was to be hunted out on an embarrassing errand.

“I sometimes wonder,” declared Lady Laleham acidly, “whether you have a spark of affection for your children, Sir Walter!”

He was stung by the injustice of this speech, and replied indignantly: “Very pretty talking, upon my soul, when I’ve let you drag me down to this damned lazar-house! If coming to see the brats when they’re covered all over with spots isn’t being affectionate, I should like to know what is!”

“Have you no desire to see your eldest daughter creditably established?” she demanded.

“Yes, I have!” he retorted. “It’s a damned expense, puffing her off all over town, and the sooner she’s off my hands the better pleased I shall be.”

“Expense!” she gasped. “Your hands! And who, pray, paid the London bills?”

“Your mother did, and that’s what I complain of. I’m not unreasonable, and if you choose to persuade the old lady to fritter away a fortune on presentation gowns, and balls, and the rest of it, I’m not surprised she hasn’t sent me that draft.”

“Mama has promised to send it when Emily is well again,” Lady Laleham said, controlling herself with some difficulty.

“Yes, provided you don’t take the girl away from her! A rare bargain, that! I shouldn’t be surprised if Emily never does get well, and then where shall we be?”

“What nonsense!” she said scornfully. “Emily shall come home the instant we are rid of these vexatious measles. Mama cannot withhold our daughter from us for ever!”

“No, but she can withhold her money, which is a deal more to the point! If you weren’t stuffed so full of senseless ambition, Susan, you’d see whether the old lady wouldn’t be prepared to pay us a handsome sum to let her keep Emily for good!”

“Emily,” said his wife coldly, “will return to us precisely when I desire her to, and she will be married as soon afterwards as Rotherham chooses.”

“Well, the odds are he won’t choose to marry her at all, if I get a clap on the shoulder, so take care you don’t out-jockey yourself, my lady!” said Sir Walter.

“You will not be arrested for debt, if that is what you mean, while your daughter is known to be betrothed to one of the richest peers in the land,” she replied. “If the engagement were to be declared off, it would be another matter, no doubt. You will oblige me, therefore, by going to Claycross, and setting Rotherham’s mind at ease—if any suspicion lurks in it that Emily is reluctant to marry him!”

“I don’t mind going to Claycross, because Rotherham has a devilish good sherry in his cellars; but if Emily bolted to your mother because she didn’t want to marry Rotherham it stands to reason she’ll come home if he cries off, and as soon as she does that the old lady will hand over the blunt. Which will be all the same to me. In fact, if she don’t like him, I’d as lief she didn’t marry him, for I’ve nothing against her, and I don’t like him myself.”

“She does like him!” Lady Laleham said swiftly. “She is very young, however, and his ardour frightened her. It was nothing but a piece of nonsense, I assure you! I blame myself for having allowed them out of my sight: it shan’t happen again.”

“Well, you can make yourself easy on one count: Rotherham won’t cry off.”

“I wish I might be certain of that!”

Sir Walter shook his head. “Ah, it’s one of the things I never could teach you!” he said regretfully. “You will just have to take my word for it: a gentleman, my dear, doesn’t cry off from a betrothal.”

She bit her lip, but refrained from speech. Sir Walter was so much pleased with his triumph that he rode over to Claycross the very next day.

He was ushered into Rotherham’s library twenty minutes after Lord Spenborough, paying a ceremonial visit, had left it: a circumstance which possibly accounted for the expression of impatient boredom on his host’s face. He was accorded a civil, if unenthusiastic, welcome, and for half an hour sat talking of sporting events. Since this was his favourite subject, he might have continued to discuss for the remainder of his visit the form of various race-horses, and the respective chances of Scroggins, and Church, a reputedly tiresome customer, in a forthcoming encounter at Moulseyhurst. But when Rotherham rose to refill the glasses he said: “What news have you to give me of Miss Laleham?”

Reminded of his errand, Sir Walter replied: “Oh, tol-lol, you know! Better: decidedly better! In fact, she’s fretting to come home.”

“What prevents her?”

“Measles. Can’t have the poor girl coming out in spots! However, it won’t be long now! There aren’t any more of them to catch ’em. William was the last—no, not William! Wilfred? Well, I’ve no head for names, but the youngest of them, at all events.”

“Is Miss Laleham well enough to receive a visit from me?” asked Rotherham.

“Nothing she’d like better, I daresay, but the deuce is in it that her grandmother’s not well. Not receiving visitors at present. Well, she can’t: she’s in bed,” said Sir Walter, surprising himself by his own inventiveness.

He found to his discomfort that his host was looking at him in a disagreeably piercing way. “Tell me, Laleham!” said Rotherham. “Is Miss Laleham regretting her engagement to me? The truth, if you please!”

This, thought Sir Walter bitterly, was just the sort of thing that made one dislike Rotherham. Flinging damned abrupt questions at one’s head, no matter whether one happened to be swallowing sherry at the moment, or not! No manners, not a particle of proper feeling! “God bless my soul!” he ejaculated, still choking a little. “Of course she isn’t! Nothing of the sort, Marquis, nothing of the sort! Lord, what a notion to take into your head! Regretting it, indeed!”

He laughed heartily, but saw that there was not so much as the flicker of a smile on Rotherham’s somewhat grim mouth. His curiously brilliant eyes had narrowed, in a measuring look, and he kept them fixed on his visitor’s face for much longer than Sir Walter thought necessary or mannerly.

“Talks of nothing but her bride-clothes!” produced Sir Walter, feeling impelled to say something.

“Gratifying!”

Sir Walter decided that his visit had lasted long enough.

Returning from attending his guest to where his horse was being held for him, Rotherham walked into the house, a heavy frown on his face. His butler, waiting by the front-door, observed this with a sinking heart. He had cherished hopes that a visit from his prospective father-in-law might alleviate his lordship’s distemper, but it was evident that it had not done so. More up in the boughs than ever! thought Mr Peaslake, his countenance wholly impassive.