“My dear ma’am, if you do indeed wish it—! But as for putting your Martha to the trouble of escorting her, most certainly not! I’ll send the carriage for her, and only hope she may not be very much in your way!”

She then took leave of her hostess. So did Mr Miles Calverleigh: a circumstance which she regarded with mixed feelings. He followed her down the stairs, and it occurred to her that his object might be to apologize for having alarmed her so much half-an-hour before. But as she had by this time formed a very fair estimate of his character she was not much surprised when his first words to her, as soon as the street-door was shut behind them, were: “Do tell me!—Who, and what, is Sir Joshua?”

“Sir Joshua,” she replied primly, “is Lady Weaverham’s husband, sir.”

“Yes, my pretty pea-goose, and Sophy’s father too!” he said outrageously. “My powerful intellect has enabled me to assimilate those barren facts! Don’t act the dunce!”

“Let me tell you, sir, that if you wish to be accepted into Bath society you will do well to mend your manners!” retorted Abby.

“I’ve none to mend, and not the smallest wish to be accepted into Bath, or any other, society. And if Bath society is composed of Lady Weaverham and her like—”

“Of course it isn’t!” she interrupted impulsively. “I mean—Oh, what a detestable man you are!”

“Well, if that’s what you meant to say you must have a very hubble-bubble mind!” he commented. “I may be detestable—in fact, I know I am—but what has that to say to anything ?” He added, as she resolutely bit her lip: “Yes, do laugh! You have a pretty laugh, and I like the way your eyes dance.”

Guiltily aware that this very improper speech had pleased rather than offended her, she said, as coolly as she could: “We were discussing the Weaverhams, I think. They are very kind, worthy people, and although they are not—not the pink of gentility, they are generally well-liked.”

“Full of juice, eh?” he said, showing at once his understanding and his disregard for polite ambiguities. “Where did they pick up the title? In the City?”

“I don’t know. Sir Joshua certainly was engaged in Trade, until he retired—they make no secret of that—but—but in a perfectly respectable way!”

“No need to defend him,” he said kindly. “I’ve been engaged in trade myself, though I daresay you wouldn’t say respectably.”

“I should be astonished if I discovered that you had done anything respectably!” declared Abby, goaded into retort. Shocked by her own lapse from propriety, she was thankful to see that they had reached York House, and added hastily: “Our ways part here, sir, so I will say goodbye!”

“No, don’t! it would be premature! I’m going to escort you to your home.”

“I am obliged to you, but it is quite unnecessary, I assure you!”

She had stopped by the entrance to the hotel, and held out her hand, repeating; “Goodbye, Mr Calverleigh!”

“If you imagine that I am going to walk behind you, like a footman, all the way to Sydney Place, you are mightily mistaken, Miss Abigail Wendover!” he said, taking her hand, and drawing it within his arm. “Is it now the established mode for young females to jaunter about the town unattended? It wasn’t so when I lived in England!”

“I am not a young female, and I don’t jaunter!” replied Abby hotly, pulling her hand away, but walking on beside him. “Times have changed since you lived in England, sir!”

“Yes, alas, and not for the better!” he agreed, in a mournful tone. “Bear with my foibles, ma’am! Being yourself stricken in years, that shouldn’t be difficult!”

A chuckle escaped her. “Don’t be so absurd!” she admonished him. “I may not be stricken in years, but I am no longer of an age when I need chaperonage. I don’t care to let Fanny go out alone, though I know several mothers who see no objection to it here.Not in London, of course.” She paused, and said, after a moment: “May I request you, sir, to take care what you say to Fanny? Since you have seen fit to inform her that you knew her mother very well, she may try to talk to you about Celia, and she is sufficiently needle-witted to add two and two together. I’m aware that you did it to put me in a quake, but, having succeeded, pray be satisfied!”

He laughed. “No, no! just bantering you a little! You were looking such daggers at me that I couldn’t resist!”

“Chivalrous!” she remarked.

“Not a bit! I warned you that there’s no virtue in me.”

“Then why do you insist on escorting me home?”

“Because I want to escort you home, of course. What a bird-witted question!”

Her eyes began to dance, and her lips to quiver. “You know, you are the most provoking creature I ever encountered!” she told him.

“Oh, come, now, that’s doing it rather too brown!” he expostulated. “Remember, I was acquainted with your brother Rowland! I never saw much of James, but I shouldn’t wonder at it if he’s as bad. Or don’t you find consequential bores provoking?”

“If I didn’t believe you to be dead to all proper feeling,” said Abby, in a shaking voice, “I should endeavour to point out to you that that is a—an abominable thing to say!”

“Well, thank God you do realize it!” he replied. “Now we shall go on much more comfortably!”

“No we shan’t. Not until you stop trying to hoax me into thinking you are uniformly odious! Pray, did you bring Oliver Grayshott home because you wanted to?”

“Yes, I like the boy. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I daresay, but—”

“Now, don’t run away with the notion that I came back to England on his account!” he admonished her. “Nothing could be farther from the truth! All I did was to take charge of him on the voyage: no very arduous task!”

“And subsequently put yourself to the trouble of bringing him down to Bath,” said Abby pensively.

“Oh, that was because—” he checked himself, but continued blandly, after an infinitesimal pause: “—because his uncle is a man of vast interests, and one never knows when the favour of such a man might stand one in good stead.”

“How quickly you made a recover!” said Abby admiringly. “You were within an ace of telling me that you came to Bath to see your nephew, too!”

“Ah, I did tell you that I didn’t know he was here! I rather thought I did,” he said, quite unperturbed. “I hope he means to return: according to Lady Weaverham, he is a perfect paragon, and I should like to meet a Calverleigh who fitted that description.”

“You won’t meet him in the person of your nephew!”

“How do you know? You’ve never clapped eyes on him!”

“No, but—”

“Furthermore, Selina likes him,” he pursued. “You told me that yourself, and I have the greatest respect for her judgment.”

“Oh, have you indeed?” she said wrathfully. “When you have never clapped eyes on her—!”

“Not to my knowledge,” he admitted. “However, I understand her to be your eldest sister, and there’s no saying but what I may have met her—before I was excluded from polite circles, of course. If I didn’t, I look forward to making her acquaintance.”

They had reached the corner of Bridge Street, and Abby came to an abrupt halt. “No!” she said forcefully. “I don’t wish you to make her acquaintance! She knows nothing of what you disclosed to me—she doesn’t even know that I met you yesterday! And I have no intention—none whatsoever!—of introducing you to her!”

“Haven’t you? But you’ll be made to look no-how if you don’t, won’t you? If Mrs Grayshott doesn’t perform that office, would you wager a groat on the chance that Lady Weaverham won’t?”

“No—or on the chance that you wouldn’t instantly tell my sister of our previous meetings!” said Abby, with considerable bitterness. “Without a blush!”

“Very likely,” he agreed.

Unable to think of any suitable rejoinder, she walked on in silence.

“And I promise you I won’t blush,” he added reassuringly.

She choked, but managed to retort with tolerable gravity: “I shouldn’t suppose that you know how to!”

“No, I don’t think I do,” he said, subjecting the matter to consideration. “At my age, it is rather too late to acquire the accomplishment, don’t you think?”

“Mr Calverleigh!” she said, turning her head to look up at him, “let us be a little serious! It is true that I haven’t yet met your nephew, but you have met my niece! You don’t want for sense; you are not a green youth, but a—a man of the world; and you loved Fanny’s mother! I don’t doubt that, or that seeing Fanny must have given you a—a pang—brought it all back to you!”

“You know, the odd thing is that it didn’t,” he interrupted. “Is she so like Celia?”

Astonished, she gasped: “Her image!”

“No, is she indeed? What tricks memory plays one! I had thought that Celia had brown eyes.”

“Do you mean to say that you have forgotten?”demanded Abby, wholly taken aback.

“Well, it all happened more than twenty years ago,” he said apologetically.

“And no doubt your memory has confused her with some other lady!”

“Yes, that’s very possible,” he acknowledged.

Miss Abigail Wendover decided, while she struggled with her emotions, that one of the worst features of Mr Miles Calverleigh’s character was his obnoxious ability to throw her into giggles at quite the wrong moment. Being a woman of strong resolution, she mastered herself, and said: “But you do remember that you once loved her, and I don’t think you would wish her daughter to—to become the victim of a fortune-hunter—even if he is your nephew!”

“No. Not that I’ve considered the matter, but I don’t wish anybody to become the victim of a fortune-hunter. Or, now I come to think of it, of any other predacious person. But I am of the opinion that you may be wronging my foolish nephew: he may well have tumbled into love with her, you know. Undoubtedly a piece of perfection!”