“She loves no one else,” Serena replied. “It is not unusual, ma’am, for a bride to start with no more than liking.”

“Well, it don’t appear she likes him either!” said Mrs Floore, reviving a little. “What’s more, my dear, those ways may do very well for tonnish people, but they don’t do for me! If Emma don’t love him, she shan’t marry him!”

Serena looked up from the letter she was writing. “It would not be well for her to cry off, ma’am, believe me!”

“You did so!” Mrs Floore pointed out.

“Yes, I did,” agreed Serena, dipping the pen in the standish again.

Mrs Floore digested this. “Sukey and her dratted ambition!” she said, suddenly and bitterly, “You needn’t tell me, my dear! I know the world! You could cry off, and no one to say more than that you were rid of a bad bargain; but if Emma did it, there’d be plenty to say that, if the truth was known, it was him, and not her, that really did the crying off!”

“I did not say it was well for me either, ma’am,” Serena replied quietly.

Mrs Floore heaved a large sigh. “I don’t know what to do for the best, and that’s a fact! If you’re right, my lady, and Emma finds she likes him after all, I wouldn’t want to spoil her chances, because there’s no doubt she has got a fancy to be a Marchioness. At the same time—Well, one thing is certain, and that’s that I’m not letting the Marquis into the house until I have Emma safe and sound here again! The servants shall tell him she’s gone off for a picnic, and very likely won’t be home till late—Oh, lor’, whatever’s to be done if you and Ned don’t find them today? If they go putting up at a posting-house for the night, it’ll be no use finding them at all!”

“If I know Gerard,” retorted Serena, “he will insist on driving through the night, ma’am! He will wish to put as much ground as possible between himself and Rotherham—and with good reason! But if Mr Goring can discover the road they took, I have no doubt we shall catch them long before nightfall.”

Mr Goring returned to Beaufort Square just before twelve o’clock, and came running up the stairs, with a look of triumph on his face. Serena said, as soon as he entered the drawing-room: “You have found out where they went! My compliments, Mr Goring! You have been very much quicker than I had dared to hope.”

“It was just a piece of good luck,” he said, colouring. “I might as well have gone to half a dozen houses before hitting upon the right one. As it chanced, I got certain news at the second one I visited. There seems to be no doubt that it was Monksleigh who hired a post-chaise early this morning, and ordered it to be in Queen’s Square at ten o’clock. A yellow-bodied chaise, drawn by a single pair of horses.”

“Well, I must say!” exclaimed Mrs Floore indignantly. “If he had to make off with poor little Emma, he might have done it stylishly! One pair of horses only! I call it downright shabby!”

“I fancy Master Gerard is none too plump in the pocket, ma’am,” said Serena, amused.

“Then he’s got no business to elope with my granddaughter!” said Mrs Floore.

“Very true! Where are they off to, Mr Goring?”

“The chaise was booked to Wolverhampton, ma’am, which makes it seem as though your guess was correct.”

“Wolverhampton?” demanded Mrs Floore. “Why, that’s where all the locks and keys come from! Very good they are, too, but what maggot’s got into the boy’s head to take Emma there? It’s all of a piece! Whoever heard of going to a manufacturing town for a wedding-trip?”

“No, no, ma’am, I don’t think you need fear that!” Serena said, laughing. “It’s as I told you: Gerard is husbanding his resources! Depend upon it, they mean to go on by stagecoach, or perhaps mail, to the Border. Never mind!” she added soothingly, seeing signs of gathering wrath in Mrs Floore’s countenance. “They are not going to reach Wolverhampton, or any place near it, ma’am.”

Mr Goring, who had spread open a map upon the table, said: “I bought this, for although I know the country hereabouts pretty well, if we are obliged to ride much beyond Gloucester I might find myself at a loss.”

“Very well done of you!” Serena approved, going to his side, and leaning one hand on the table, while she studied the map. “They will have taken the Bristol pike-road, though it’s longer. We came into Bath from Milverley by way of Nailsworth, but the road is very bad: brings the horses down to a walk in places. How far is it to Bristol?”

“Twelve and a half miles. They should have reached it in an hour. Bristol to Gloucester is about thirty-four miles: a good pike-road. They must change horses ten miles out of Bristol, at the Ship Inn, or go on to Falfield, fifteen miles out.”

“They won’t do that, travelling with one pair.”

“No. The next change, then, will be at the Cambridge Inn, here, about a mile short of the Church End turnpike, and ten miles from Gloucester. If we knew when they set out from Bath—!”

“We have a fair notion. Gerard ordered the chaise to be in Queen’s Square at ten, and at ten Emily was still in her bedroom—which one can’t but feel is precisely what would happen in such an absurd adventure as this. When did you know that she was missing, ma’am?”

Mrs Floore shook her head helplessly, but Mr Goring, thinking the matter over, said: “I arrived here about a quarter of an hour before you rode up, Lady Serena, and it had been known then for several minutes, I think.”

“Then, we may take it that they started between ten or fifteen minutes after ten, and half past ten. My dear sir, we are only an hour and a half behind them! What I wish to do is to overtake them before they reach Gloucester. We can’t but run true on the line up to that point, but once in Gloucester we might be obliged to make several casts. We will take the Nailsworth road as far as Badminton, and then ride cross-country to Dursley—a nice point, that!—and join the Bristol-Gloucester Road here!”

He nodded. “Ay, the road comes out at the Cambridge Inn.”

“Where the scent should be hot!” she said, her eyes dancing. “Come, let’s be off!”

“I am ready, but—it will be a twenty-five mile ride. Lady Serena! Do you think—”

“Oh, the mare will do it!” she said cheerfully, pulling on her gauntlets. “All we have to do now is to get rid of Fobbing! The worst of a groom who ran beside one on one’s first pony is that he can’t be ordered off without explanation. I’ll tell him our picnic party doesn’t assemble until half past twelve, but that I want my letter carried to Lady Spenborough at once, in case she should be uneasy. Mrs Floore, you will have Emma under your wing again before nightfall, I promise you! Pray don’t tease yourself any more!”

Mr Goring opened the door, and held it for her, but before he followed her out of the room, he looked at Mrs Floore and said: “I’ll do my best to bring her back, ma’am, but—don’t let them push her into marriage with Lord Rotherham!”

“You may depend upon it I won’t!” said Mrs Floore grimly.

“She isn’t old enough to marry anyone yet!” he said, and hesitated, as though he would have said more. Then he seemed to think better of it, bade Mrs Floore a curt goodbye, and departed in Serena’s wake.

21

The start to the elopement was not altogether auspicious, for the bride was tardy, and the groom harassed. What had seemed to Gerard, after watching the first act of a romantic drama, a splendid scheme, he found, upon more sober reflection, to present several disagreeable aspects to his view. For one thing, he had no idea whether the marriage of two minors was any more legal in Scotland than in England, or whether it would be possible for it to be set aside. He told himself that once the knot was tied neither Rotherham nor his mother would choose to cause a scandal by intervening; and tried to think no more of the possibility. Instead, he reckoned up his resources, made a vague guess at the distance to be travelled, totted up post-charges, and, at the end of all these calculations, decided to sell his watch. Elopements to Gretna Green, he realized bitterly, were luxuries to be afforded only by men of substance, for not merely was one obliged to journey over three hundred miles to reach the Border: one was obliged to come all the way back again. This reflection brought another difficulty before him: how, if his pockets were to let, was he to support a wife during the month that must elapse before he received the following quarter’s allowance? The only solution that presented itself to him was that he should convey Emily to his mother’s house, and he could not but see that, fond parent though she was, his mother might not accord his clandestine bride a very warm welcome. And if Rotherham (out of revenge) insisted on his spending another year at Cambridge, Emily would have to remain under his mother’s roof until he came down for good, and it was just possible that she might not like such an arrangement. He wondered if he could install her in rooms in Cambridge, and decided that if he exercised the most stringent economy it could be managed.

These problems nagged at him, but they were for the future, which he was much in the habit of leaving to take care of itself. A far more pressing anxiety was the fear that Rotherham, arriving in Bath to find Emily gone, might guess her destination, and follow her. He had warned her not to tell anyone of her flight, and he could not think that he had given Mrs Floore the least cause to suspect him of being implicated in it; but if she mentioned his name Rotherham would know at once that the flight was an elopement. And then what would he do? Perhaps he would be too proud to chase after an unwilling bride. Gerard could picture his look of contempt, the curl of his lip, the shrug of his powerful shoulders. Unfortunately he could even more clearly picture his look of blazing anger: and when he at last fell asleep his dreams were haunted by the sound of hooves, relentlessly drawing nearer and ever nearer, and by lurid, muddled scenes, in which he was always looking down the barrel of a duelling-pistol. Waking in a sweat, it was a little time before he could throw off the impression of the dream, and realize that whatever else Rotherham might do, he would not challenge his ward to a duel. But Rotherham was a boxer, and whether he would consider himself debarred by his guardianship from wreaking a pugilistic vengeance on his ward was a question to which Gerard could find no answer. Of the two fates he thought he would prefer to be shot.