“Very much: it was a dreadful bore! I hope you missed me: it would be too bad if I were the only sufferer!”

He responded in kind; and spent the rest of the walk to Laura Place in telling her of the alterations to his house he meant to put in hand. He parted from her on her doorstep. She invited him to come in, and to partake of a nuncheon, but although he longed to see Fanny he knew that he must see her as seldom as possible, and he declined, saying that he had promised his mother to come home within the hour.

“I won’t press you, then. Pray, give my love to Mrs Kirkby, and tell her how sorry I am to hear that she is out of sorts!”

“Thank you, I will. Do we ride tomorrow, Serena?”

“Yes, indeed! Will you—Oh, confound it! Is not tomorrow Wednesday? Then I cannot. I promised I would ride with Emily to Farley Castle. Drive with me instead, later in the day!”

“Willingly! At what time?”

“A little before three o’clock? That is, if Mrs Kirkby will spare you to me.”

“Of course she will. I shall be here!” he promised.

She went into the house, and up the stairs to the drawing-room, where Fanny was seated, with her embroidery-frame in front of her. She looked up, and smiled, as Serena came in, but her eyes were heavy, and her cheeks rather wan. Serena said quickly: “Fanny, have you the headache again?”

“It’s nothing! Only a very little headache. I shall lie down presently, and soon be quite cured of it.”

Serena stood looking down at her in some concern. “You look worn to a bone! Tell me, my dear, wouldn’t you like to go away from Bath? I don’t know how anyone can escape being invalidish here, it is so oppressive! Shall we go back to the Dower House?”

“No, no!” Fanny said. “Indeed, I’m not ill, dearest! I daresay if the sun would but shine I should be in a capital way again. I don’t know how it is, but these hot, dull days always give me the headache.”

“We only hired this house until the end of August,” persisted Serena. “Why not leave it now? Do you say no because you think I don’t wish to leave Hector? Tell me truthfully, Fanny! I’ll go with you tomorrow, if you would like it.”

“Dear, dear Serena!” Fanny said, catching Serena’s hand, and nursing it to her cheek. “So good to me! so very good to me!”

“Now, what in the world is this?” Serena rallied her. “I begin to think that you must be more sickly than I had guessed! I warn you, if you talk to me of my goodness—and in such a melancholy voice!—I shall send for a doctor. Or shall it be the Dower House?”

“It shall be neither,” Fanny said, with determined cheerfulness. “I don’t at all wish to leave Bath before I must. Don’t let us prose about my health! Next you will be telling me I look hagged and ridée! Did you hear any news in the town?”

“No news, but I saw a new face: Gerard Monksleigh’s! I wish you might have seen him! Very much the Pink of the Ton, with shirt-points serving as blinkers, and a very dashing waistcoat!”

“Good gracious, I wonder what brings him here? Is Mrs Monksleigh here too?”

“No, he said he was staying with friends in the neighbourhood. Hector thought he wasn’t pleased to see me, but my guess is that—” She broke off suddenly, and a laugh sprang to her eyes. “Oh, I wonder if Hector was right after all? Fanny, do you recall my aunt’s writing to me once that Gerard had been very much smitten with Emily? Can it be that the foolish boy has come here to dangle after her?”

“He would be a more suitable match for her than Lord Rotherham,” said Fanny.

“He would be the worst possible match for her, my dear, for, setting aside the fact that he has no fortune, he is very nearly as silly as she is, and has not yet outgrown the schoolboy. However, it is not all likely that he will be a danger to Ivo, even if he has come to Bath in a lovelorn state. I notice that Emily’s flirtations are always with men a good deal older than herself: her youthful admirers she considers stupid. It won’t do, of course, if Gerard makes a cake of himself by enacting the disappointed lover for the entertainment of the Bath quizzes. I do wonder whether he was telling me a whisker when he said he was visiting friends, or whether he is lurking somewhere in Bath. It will be well, perhaps, if I drop a hint to Emily not to encourage him to dangle after her. She is riding to Farley Castle with me tomorrow.”

She spoke lightly, unaware of the fact that all recollection of this engagement had been banished from Emily’s mind. The four o’clock mail had brought her shocking tidings. Lady Laleham and Lord Rotherham were coming to Bath.

Lady Laleham was so obliging as to disclose the day of her arrival; Lord Rotherham, more alarmingly still, wrote at the end of a brief letter which all too clearly showed impatience, gathering wrath, and a determination to claim his reluctant bride, merely that he proposed to come to Bath immediately, and expected to find Emily not only ready to receive him, but prepared to come to a point. He made no mention of Mr Monksleigh: Lady Laleham, on the other hand, telling her daughter of Gerard’s abortive call at Cherrifield Place, warned her that if, by some chance, he had succeeded in discovering her direction, and was even now in Bath, he must be sent instantly to the rightabout. If Lord Rotherham were to find out that although he had been refused permission to visit his betrothed Mr Monksleigh (who appeared to think himself a rival) was making up to her, he would be very (heavily underscored) and justifiably angry. So, too, would be Emily’s affectionate Mama.

The combined effect of these two missives was to throw Emily into a fever of apprehension. Converging upon her, each filled with rage and determination, were two dread figures, one of whom would certainly arrive on the following afternoon, the other perhaps even sooner. Between them she would inevitably be crushed. She saw herself being dragged by her mother to the altar, and there delivered into the power of one who by this time figured in her distorted imagination as a merciless ogre. That her grandmother might intervene to save her from this hideous fate never occurred to her, partly because Mrs Floore, not unnaturally, had refrained from expressing to her her opinion of her only daughter; and partly because it was incredible to Emily that her vulgar, goodnatured grandmama could exercise the smallest influence over the far more formidable Lady Laleham. Her only hope of support seemed to lie in Mr Monksleigh’s slender person. Terrifying under any circumstances though the approaching ordeal must be, she felt that if he would only remain at her side to protect her there might be a very faint chance of her surviving it. Or he might be able to think of a way of escape. It was true that the only plan he had so far evolved would not serve the purpose at all, since it depended for its success on the resolution she was well aware that she lacked; but when he learned of the imminent peril in which she stood he might, perhaps, be inspired with further schemes.

Her hope was not misplaced. After looking round the theatre, and perceiving, with a start of surprise, that Mrs Floore was in one of the boxes, Gerard hurried upstairs in the first interval, encountering Mr Goring’s party on their way to the foyer. He received a friendly greeting from Mrs Floore, a slight bow from Mr Goring, and from Emily a look so full of meaning that he at once realized that something of an appalling nature must have happened since the morning. Mr Goring being occupied in guiding Mrs Floore to a seat against the wall, it was an easy matter for Gerard to whisk Emily to the other end of the foyer, where in an urgent undervoice she told him of the letters she had received, and besought his counsel and support.

He showed no tendency to minimize the danger. Indeed, he was more inclined to magnify it. The intelligence that his guardian was coming, like Nemesis, to Bath, transfixed him with dismay, and set his wits working faster than ever before in his life. Emily’s timid suggestion that he should come to Beaufort Square to confront Rotherham at her side, he dismissed hastily, saying with great vehemence: “Useless!”

Emily wrung her hands. “They will make me do just as they say, then! I can’t—I can’t tell them I w-won’t, Gerard! Oh, do you think Mama and Lady Serena may be right, and it won’t be so very dreadful to be married to Lord Rotherham?”

“No,” said Gerard positively. “It would be far worse than you dream of! I tell you this, Emily, Rotherham is a tyrant! He will make you wholly subservient to his will. I have cause to know! You cannot yet have seen him in one of his rages, my poor darling! They are quite ungoverned! His servants are all terrified of him, and with good cause!” He saw that her face was perfectly white, and pressed home his advantage. “You must not meet him! All will be lost, if you come within reach of that—that ruthless despotism! Emily, we must elope!”

It was not to be expected that she would instantly perceive the advantages of this course. She was, in fact, shocked by such a suggestion, but by the time Gerard had regaled her with an account of his own sufferings at Rotherham’s hands, and some liberal prophecies of the horrors in store for her; and had declared himself to be incapable of imagining the extent or effects of the Marquis’s wrath, when he discovered—as discover he would—what had been going on in Bath, she was ready to consent to any measure that would rescue her from her Andromeda-like plight. People were beginning to leave the foyer; Gerard had only time, before Mrs Floore bore down upon them, to warn her not to breathe a word to her, but to meet him in Queen’s Square at ten o’clock on the following morning. “Leave everything to me!” he ordered. “Once in my care you are safe!”