“Oh, no, she hadn’t an ounce of steel in her!” he said coolly. “She was romantical, though, and certainly biddable: one of those pretty, clinging females who invariably yield to a stronger will! I hadn’t the wit to perceive it, until the sticking point was reached, and she knuckled down in a flood of tears. And a very good thing she did,” he added. “We might have carried it, if she had stood buff, and I should have been regularly in for it I didn’t think so at the time, of course, but I was never nearer to dishing myself. How did she deal with Rowland?”

He had stripped the affair of all its romantic pathos, but Abby could not help wondering whether his apparent unconcern hid a bruised heart. She answered his casual question reticently: “I don’t know. I wasn’t of an age to know. She was always rather quiet, but she never appeared to be unhappy. I see now that she can’t have loved Rowland, but I do know that she held him in the greatest respect I mean, she depended wholly on his judgment, and was for ever saying Rowland says,as though that was a clincher to every argument!”

The slightly acid note on which she ended made him laugh. “An opinion not shared by Abigail Wendover, I apprehend!”

“No!” she returned, her eyes kindling reminiscently. “It was not shared by me! Rowland was a—” She stopped, resolutely shutting her lips together.

“Rowland,” said Miles Calverleigh, stepping obligingly into the gap, “was a pompous lobcock!”

“Yes!” said Abby, momentarily forgetting herself. “That is exactly what he was! The most consequential, pot-sure—” Again she broke off short, adding hastily: “Never mind that!”

“I don’t—and it seems that Celia didn’t either. No, she wouldn’t, of course. You know, the more I think of it the more I feel that they must have been made for each other! Well, I’m glad to know she didn’t fall into a green and yellow melancholy.”

Abby’s brow was wrinkled. “Yes, but—Did Rowland know of—of the elopement ?”

“Oh, lord, yes!” He met her astonished look with a smile of pure derision. “Come, come, ma’am! Where have your wits gone begging? Celia was an heiress! Consider, too, the scandal that would have attended a rupture of the engagement! People must have talked,and nothing could have been more obnoxious to a Wendover or a Morval! The affair had to be hushed up, and you must own that a very neat thing they made of it, between the four of them!”

“Four of them?”

“That’s it: your father, Celia’s father, my father, and Rowland,” he explained.

“Respectability!” she ejaculated bitterly. “Oh, how much I have detested that—that god of my father’s idolatry! Did your father worship at the same altar?”

“No, what he worshipped was good ton. I wasn’t good ton at all, so he was glad of the chance to be rid of me, and I can’t say I blame him. I was very expensive, you know.”

“From what I have heard, your brother was even more expensive!” she said. “I wonder he didn’t get rid of him!”

He smiled. “Ah, but Humphrey was his heir! Besides, his debts were those of honour: quite unexceptionable, particularly when contracted in clubs of high fashion! He was used to move in the first circles, too, which I—er—didn’t!”

“No doubt he would have taken no exception to his son’s ruinous career!”

“Oh, that doesn’t follow at all! Being badly under the hatches himself, he would probably have taken the most violent exception to it. However, he died before Stacy came of age, so we shall never know. Judging by my own experience, Stacy might have got himself into Dun territory at Oxford, but he could scarcely have gone to pigs-and-whistles—unless, of course, he was a regular out-and-outer, which, from what you’ve told me, he don’t seem to be.”

“Were you up at Oxford?” she asked curiously.

“No, I was down from Oxford—sent down!” he replied affably.

She choked, but managed to say, after a brief struggle: “What—whatever may have been your youthful f-follies, sir, I must believe that you have outgrown them, and—and I cannot think that you would wish your nephew—the head of your house!—to—to retrieve his fortunes by seducing a girl—oh, a child!—into a clandestine marriage!”

“But if the poor fellow is rolled-up what else can he do?” he asked.

She said through gritted teeth: “For all I care, he may do anything he chooses, except marry my niece! Surely—surely you must perceive how—how wrong that would be!”

“I must say, it seems mutton-headed to me,” he agreed. “He’d do better to fix his interest with a girl who is already in possession of her fortune.”

“Good God, is that all you have to say?” she cried.

“Well, what do you expect me to say?” he asked.

“Say! I—I expect you to do something!”

“Do what?”

“Put an end to this affair!”

“How?”

“Speak to your nephew—tell him—oh, I don’t know! You must be able to think of something!”

“Well, I’m not. Besides, why should I?”

“Because it is your duty! Because he is your nephew!”

“You’ll have to think of some better reasons than those. I haven’t any duty to Stacy, and I don’t suppose I should do it if I had.”

“Mr Calverleigh, you cannot wish your nephew to sink himself so utterly below reproach!”

“Wish? I haven’t any feelings in the matter at all. In fact, I don’t care a straw what he does. So if you are looking to me to rake him down, don’t!”

“Oh, you are impossible!” she cried, starting up.

“I daresay, but I’m damned if I’ll preach morality to oblige you! A nice cake I should make of myself! I like the way your eyes sparkle when you’re angry.”

They positively flashed at this. One fulminating glance she cast at him before turning sharply away, and walking out of the room.

The Leavenings were forgotten; it was not until she had reached Laura Place that she remembered that the note she had written had been left on the writing-table. She could only hope that it would be found, and delivered to Mrs Leavening. By this time her seething anger had abated a little, and she was able to review her encounter with Mr Miles Calverleigh in a more moderate spirit. Slackening her pace, she walked on, into Great Pulteney Street, so deeply preoccupied that she neither acknowledged, nor even saw, the salutation directed towards her from the other side of the street by her clerical admirer, Canon Pinfold: an aberration which caused the Very Reverend gentleman to subject his conscience to a severe search, in an effort to discover in what way he could have offended her.

It was not long before Miss Abigail Wendover, no self-deceiver, realized that she was strangely attracted to the abominable Mr Miles Calverleigh. Out of his own careless mouth he had convicted himself of being a person totally unworthy of respect, but when she recalled the things he had said to her a most, reprehensible bubble of laughter rose within her. A very little reflection, however, was enough to bring a blush to her cheeks. It was no laughing matter, and strangely depraved she must be to have felt the smallest inclination to laugh at the cool recital of his misdeeds. She knew that he had been expelled from Eton; he had told her in the most unconcerned way, that he had been sent down from Oxford; and it now appeared that he had crowned his iniquities by attempting to elope with a girl out of the schoolroom. Curiously enough she was less shocked by this escapade than by the rest: he could hardly, she supposed, have been much older himself, and it did seem that he had been desperately in love. It was bad, of course, but what was worse was his unblushing avowal of his sins. He had not mentioned them in a boastful spirit, but as though they had been commonplaces, which he regarded with amusement—even with ribaldry, she thought, once more obliged to suppress a reminiscent smile. When she remembered his callous refusal to intervene to save Fanny from his nephew’s designs, however, she had no desire to laugh: she felt it to be unpardonable. He disclaimed any affection for Stacy; and, although he was certainly not in love with the memory of Celia, it was surely reasonable to suppose that enough tenderness remained with him to make him not wholly indifferent to her daughter’s fate.

Recalling, exactly, the closing stage of her interview with him, contempt and indignation rose in Abby’s breast, and she reached Sydney Place in a very uncomfortable state of mind: uncertain whether she most loathed Mr Miles Calverleigh, for his detestable cynicism, or herself, for succumbing to his wicked charm. Quite carried away, she uttered, aloud: “No better than a wet-goose!” a savage self-apostrophe which considerably discomposed Mitton, opening the door at that inopportune moment.

Learning from him that Miss Butterbank was with her sister, she retired to her own room; and by the time she emerged from it she had in some measure recovered her accustomed equanimity, and had decided (on undefined grounds) that it would be wisest not to yield to her first impulse, which had been to pour the story of the morning’s encounter into Selina’s ears. She said nothing about it, merely assuring Selina that she had left a note at York House, to be delivered to Mrs Leavening upon her arrival.

After all, one of the servants was bound to find it, and would no doubt give it to Mrs Leavening.

Fanny, returning from her expedition in time for dinner, seemed also to have recovered her equanimity: a circumstance which would have afforded Abby gratification had Fanny not artlessly disclosed that Miss Julia Weaverham, included in the equestrian party, had told her all about the very civil letter her mama had received from Mr Stacy Calverleigh, heralding his return to Bath at the end of the week. “And when you meet him you will see for yourself—you’ll understand why—won’t she, Aunt Selina?”