“No, no, stop!” she cried. “What are you going to do to her?”

“Murder her!” he said, through shut teeth, and went hastily out of the room.

Fanny started forward, but the Major caught her arm. “No, my dear! Let be!”

“Hector, go after him!” she said urgently. “His face—Oh, he looked like a fiend! Heaven only knows what he may do in such a wicked passion! You must do something! Hector, it is your duty to protect Serena!”

“So I might, if I thought she stood in peril of her life,” he replied, laughing. “What I do think is that I should make a very bad third in that quarrel!”

Meanwhile, Rotherham, running down the stairs, reached the entrance floor just as Serena walked past Lybster into the house. Under the stiff, curling brim of her tall hat, her face was a little pale, and her eyes frowning in a look of fatigue. She laid her whip down on the table, and began to strip off her gauntlets. “Is her ladyship in, Lybster?”

“In the drawing-room, my lady. Also—”

“Ridden that short-backed mare of yours to a standstill, Serena?”

She looked round quickly. “Ivo! You here?”

“Yes, Serena, as you see!” he said, advancing upon her. “Not only here, but extremely anxious to have a few words with you!”

“Dear me, in the sullens again?” she asked, her voice light but her eyes watchful. “Are you vexed because Emily did not abandon our expedition on the chance that you might arrive in Bath today? How absurd of you!”

“My girl,” said Rotherham dangerously, “it will be just as well for you if you stop thinking me a bleater, whom you can gull by pitching me your damned gammon! Come in here!” He pushed open the door into the dining-room, and to Lybster’s intense disappointment pulled Serena into the room, and shut the door in the butler’s face. “Now, Serena! Now!” he said. “What the devil have you been doing? Don’t lie to me! I know what expedition yours was!” He unclenched his left hand, and showed her the crushed letter. “Do you recognize that? Then tell me the truth!”

She said indignantly: “So, not content with browbeating Emily, you have bullied Fanny into giving you my letter, have you? Well, if I find you’ve upset her, you will very speedily wish you had remembered with whom you would have to deal, if you came raging into this house! I am not a wretched schoolgirl, wilting under your frown!”

“You are ameddlesome vixen!” he told her angrily.

Her eyes flashed, but she choked back a pungent retort, struggled for a moment with herself, and finally said, in a voice of determined calm: “No. This is no moment for a turn-up, Rotherham. If you have read my letter, it may be for the best. Of course you are angry—though why you should make me your scapegoat God knows! Never mind that! I can stand a knock or two. Ivo, what a fool you have been! You may blame yourself for what happened today! Don’t vent your wrath on Gerard! I’ve sent him back to London with such a flea in his ear as he will not soon forget, I assure you!”

“You have, have you? How much—how very much—I am obliged to you! Go on!”

“You are more obliged to me than you know! You may dismiss Gerard from your mind: Emily is no more in love with him than I am! Had you had enough sense to have come to Bath, without heralding your arrival in a letter anyone but an idiot would have known must scare the child out of what little wit—out of her wits!—she would never have spared Gerard a thought! She seized on him merely as a means of escape. Really, Ivo, you have handled this like the veriest whipster! You! You have the vilest temper in creation, but I’ve never known you lose it with a nervous young ’un! Couldn’t you guess that if you let Emily see it, she would behave exactly as would a filly you had spurred? She turned you into a positive ogre—and you could have made her adore you! Instead, you frightened her—and the devil’s own task I have had, all the way from Gloucester, to convince her she has been a goose! I can’t tell whether I’ve succeeded, but I can’t do any more! The rest is with you! Be gentle with her, and I think all may be well!”

“O God!” uttered Rotherham, in a strangled voice. “What have I ever done to be cursed with such a marplot as you, Serena? So you’ve convinced her that I’m not such a devil as I made her think! I thank you! And I thought that if there was one person I could depend upon to urge the wretched girl on no account to marry me, it was you! I might have guessed you would bullfinch me if you could!”

“Rotherham!” exclaimed Serena, grasping a chairback. “Are you telling me—are you daring to tell me—you meant to scare Emily into jilting you?”

“Of course I meant it!” he said furiously. “You think I’m clever in the saddle, do you? Much obliged to you! A pity you didn’t remember it earlier! Good God, Serena, you can’t have supposed that I wanted to marry that hen-witted girl?”

“Then why the devil did you offer for her?” she demanded.

“It only needed that!” he said. “Serena, I could break your damned neck!”

She stared at him in bewilderment. “Why? How was I to guess you had run mad? Anyone would think it was my fault you lost your head over a pretty face!”

“I never lost my head over any but one face, God help me! My temper, yes—once too often! I offered for Emily because you had become engaged to Kirkby! And if you were not a paperskull, you would have guessed it!”

“It’s a lie! I only wrote to tell you of my engagement after the notice of yours had appeared in the Gazette!” she said swiftly.

“And you thought that because you hadn’t told me of it I didn’t know? Well, I did know! You cannot live in a man’s pocket here, my girl, without setting tongues wagging! From three separate sources did I hear of your doings!”

“If you choose to listen to gossip—”

“No, I didn’t listen to it—until I knew who it was who had appeared in Bath! Then I did more than listen! I got the truth out of Claypole!”

“You didn’t so much as remember Hector!” she stammered.

“Of course I remembered him!” he said scornfully. “I remembered something else too!—that unknown person whose name you refused to divulge, when I first visited you here!”

“Unknown person?” she repeated blankly. “Oh, good God! Mrs Floore! I had not seen Hector then! Ivo, what a fool you were!”

“I was a fool,” he said grimly, “but not in believing that Claypole spoke the truth!”

“And you became engaged to Emily merely because I—Ivo, it is beyond words! To use a child very nearly young enough to be your daughter as a weapon of revenge on me—I wonder that you dare to stand there and tell me of such an iniquity!” Serena said hotly.

“It wasn’t as bad as that!” he said, flushing. “I meant then to marry her! If that curst Adonis of yours had won you, what did it signify whom I married? I must marry someone, and Emily was as good as another—better! I knew I could mould her into whatever shape I pleased; I knew she would be happy enough with what I could give her; I knew the Laleham harpy would jump at my offer. And I knew you would hate it, Serena! Oh, yes, infamous, wasn’t it? I did it because I was mad with anger—but I never meant to play the child false!”

“And what, most noble Marquis,” inquired Serena scathingly, “made you change your mind, and decide instead to be rid of her?”

He set his hands on her shoulders, and gripped them, holding her eyes with his, “Years ago, Serena, you fancied yourself head over ears in love with a devilish handsome lad! I didn’t think then that he was the man for you—and when I saw you both together here, I was even more certain of it! But when I heard of his reappearance, and of the reception he got from you, I was shaken as I never was before, and hope to God I never shall be again! But the instant I saw the pair of you I knew that I had rolled myself up to no purpose at all! I don’t know what madness seized you, but I do know that you don’t love Kirkby, and never did, or will!”

She wrenched herself away. “Did you? Did you, indeed? Perhaps you thought I loved you!”

“No—but I knew that I still loved you! I could see you would break with Kirkby—Lord, Serena, if I hadn’t been in such a damned tangle myself I should have laughed myself into stitches! My poor girl, did you really think you could be happy with a man that would let you walk rough-shod over him? For how long did you enjoy having your own undisputed way? When did you begin to feel bored?”

“Let me tell you this, Rotherham!” she flung at him. “Hector is worth a dozen of you!”

“Oh, probably two or three dozen! What has that to say to anything?”

“It has this to say! I am pledged to him, and I shall marry him, so let me recommend you to lose no time in reinstating yourself in Emily’s good graces! How dare you talk to me like this? And to think I didn’t believe the things Emily poured out to me today!” She paused, almost choking. “You deliberately tried to make that girl cry off!”

“Well, how the devil else was I to get out of a marriage that was going to wreck the pair of us—and Emily, too, for that matter?”

“You made your bed—”

“—and we could all of us lie on it, I suppose?” he interjected witheringly.

She drew a breath. “Good God, had you no compunction? You had offered her a great position, a—”

“Yes, I had! And if you fancy that her mother forced her to accept my offer, you’re out, my girl! I never tampered with her affections: don’t think it! Had I thought she cared one jot for me it would have been a different story, but she didn’t! She wanted nothing from me but rank and fortune, and she made that abundantly plain!”