This was by no means what Mrs Grayshott wanted. She believed Oliver to be a long way from complete recovery, unable to forget how gray and worn he had looked after the journey from London; and she could not like his scheme of riding out of Bath with his sister as his only companion. Lavinia was a nervous horsewoman, requiring constant surveillance: not at all the sort of escort one would choose to send out with an invalid; and Fanny, instantly offering to accompany the Grayshotts, was no more acceptable to the widow. Fanny was not nervous. Mrs Grayshott, herself no horsewoman, had heard her described by one of her admirers as a clipping rider, a regular good ‘un to go, which was an encomium to strike dread into a mother’s anxious heart. And then, to make matters worse, Stacy Calverleigh, who had met the two girls in Queen’s Square, and accompanied them to Edgar Buildings, proffered his services, laughingly assuring Mrs Grayshott that he would engage himself to bring the party back to her in good time, and none the worse for wear.

This question was instantly approved of by the girls, if not by Oliver, which made it difficult for Mrs Grayshott to decline it. She was floundering amongst some rather lame excuses when Abigail was announced.

“In a good hour. Come in, my dear, and lend me your support!” she exclaimed going forward to greet Abby. “Here is my wilful son determined on riding up to Lansdown, and these other young people bent on making up a party to go with him! I am persuaded you cannot like the scheme any more than I do, for although Mr Stacy Calverleigh has very kindly offered to go with them I fear that he would find the task of preventing three such harum-scarum children from going much too far quite beyond his power!”

“No, indeed we wouldn’t!” cried Fanny. “We mean to take the greatest care of Oliver, and I promise you it wouldn’t be at all hard for Stacy to prevent us from going too far, even if we wished to do so, ma’am!” She turned impulsively towards Abby. “You don’t object to it, do you, Abby?”

Misliking the scheme, yet unable to think of any other reason for placing a veto on it but the inclusion of Stacy in the party, Abby hesitated. Rescue came from an unexpected quarter. “Do you ride, Miss Wendover?” asked Mr Miles Calverleigh, smiling across the room at her with such complete understanding in his eyes that an answering smile was won from her.

“Why, yes!” she replied.

“In that case, you may be easy, ma’am,” said Miles, to Mrs Grayshott. “Between us, Miss Wendover and I should be able to control the activities of the younger members of this hazardous expedition.”

The only objection raised to this unexpected augmentation of the party came from Oliver, who said, with feeling, that he had not yet received notice to quit, and was very well able to take care of himself. He added that if he had had the least apprehension that his wish to hack out of Bath would have caused such a commotion he would never have uttered it

“Silence, halfling!” said Miles, in shocked accents. “You are leading Miss Wendover to suppose that you don’t want her to go with you!”

This intervention naturally cast Oliver into confusion, and he hastened to reassure Abby. She laughed at him, telling him that she had not the smallest intention of enacting the role of dry-nurse; and was herself much heartened by Fanny’s instant approval of the revised scheme.

“Oh, capital!” Fanny exclaimed. “You will come, won’t you, Best of my aunts?”

Chapter VIII

Since Oliver showed no signs of exhaustion, and Stacy, behaving with great circumspection, made no attempt to monopolize Fanny’s attention, nothing occurred to spoil Abby’s enjoyment of this mild form of exhilaration. Miles Calverleigh rode beside her for most of the time, and made himself so agreeable that she forgot her anxieties in listening to what he had to tell her of India, and the customs of its people. He had to be coaxed to talk, saying at first that persons who gabbed about their foreign experiences were dead bores, but the questions she put to him were intelligent, and her interest in his replies so real that he soon dropped his reserve, painting a vivid picture for her, and even recounting some of his experiences. These ranged from the adventurous to the comical, but it was not long before he brought them to an end, saying: “And that is enough about me! Now tell me of yourself!”

“Alas, there’s nothing to tell! I’ve done nothing, and have been nowhere. You don’t know how much I envy you—how often I have wished I were a man!”

“Have you, indeed? You must be alone in that wish!”

“Thank you! But you are wrong: my father wished it too! He wanted another son.”

“What, with Rowland and James as grim examples? Or because he hoped that a third son might be less of a slow-top?”

“Certainly not! And although I didn’t like him I must in common justice say that Rowland, at least, was not a slow-top. He was hunting-mad, you know, and a very hard goer.”

“I wasn’t talking about that. Intellectually a slow-top!”

“Oh, yes, but so was my father! Naturally he didn’t count his stupidity a fault in Rowland. In fact, he had the greatest dislike of clever people.”

He chuckled appreciatively, which made her say, in a conscience-stricken voice: “I ought not to have said that. My wretched tongue! I do try to mind it!”

“Then don’t! I like the way you have of saying just what comes into your head.”

She smiled, but shook her head. “No, it is my besetting sin, and I ought long since to have overcome it.”

“From what I recall of your father, I should suppose that he made every effort to help you to do so. Did he dislike you as much as you disliked him?”

“Yes, he—Oh, how dare you? You are quite abominable! You know very well that it would be the height of impropriety for me to say that I disliked my father! Every feeling must be offended!”

“Well, none of mine are,” he responded imperturbably. “You did, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but it is one of the things which must never be said. And if he disliked me I am bound to own that it was quite my own fault. I was a sad trial to him, I fear.”

“Yes, of course: too clever by half!”

“I’m not clever—or only if you compare me with the rest of my family,” she said reflectively. “I love them dearly, but Selina and Mary are perfect widgeons, and although my sister Jane has a good deal of commonsense she never thinks of anything but her children, and the failings of her servants. My father merely thought I was bookish, which was the worst he could say of anyone! He ascribed all my undutiful conduct to it.”

“Now, I should have said that you had an all too lively sense of your duty,” he remarked.

“Not when I was a girl. I was for ever rebelling against the restrictions imposed upon me, and oh, how much I detested that hateful word, propriety ! That’s why I was used to wish I were a man: so that I could have escaped from it! Girls can’t, you know. We are always shackled—hedged about—”

“Cabin’d, cribb’d, confined,” he supplied, adding grandiloquently: “I’m bookish too.”

A ripple of laughter broke from her. “So I perceive! And that is just how it was in my family.”

“Was? Still is!” She turned her head, startled. “No! Why, what can you mean?”

He nodded towards the four younger members of the party, riding ahead. “Fanny, of course. Don’t you cabin, crib, and confine her?”

“Indeed I don’t!” she said warmly. “She enjoys far, far more liberty than ever I did!” A quizzically raised eyebrow brought the blood rushing to her cheeks. She stammered: “It’s true! You—you are thinking that I don’t permit her to go anywhere without me, but that is not true! I have never, until your odious nephew came to Bath, accompanied her on such expeditions as this—and if he had not been in question, and young Grayshott had invited her to go with him, she might have done so with my goodwill!” She paused, and, after considering for a moment, said frankly: “No. Not alone. I should have no qualms, but where she is concerned I must take care that she does nothing to provide all the Bath quizzes with food for gossip! You see, my brother entrusted her to my guardianship, and however nonsensical I may think many of the conventions which hedge us about I must, for her own sake, compel her to abide by them. Pray try to understand! What I, at my age, might choose to disregard, she, on the verge of her come-out, must not!”

“Poor girl!” he said lightly. “How many nonsensical conventions are you ready to flout?”

“Oh, a great many, if I had only myself to consider!”

“We’ll put that to the test. Will you go with me to the play on Saturday?”

She hesitated, in equal surprise and doubt. After a moment, she said: “Are you inviting me to form one of your party, sir?”

“Good God, no! I haven’t a party.”

“Oh!” She relapsed again into silence. “I collect you mean to invite Fanny as well?” she hazarded at last.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” he retorted. “You know very well that Fanny is engaged to go with the Grayshotts to Mrs Faversham’s waltzing-party! I wonder you will let her!”

“Do you, indeed? Well, if you think me so—so stuffy, I wonder that you should suppose I would go to the theatre with you alone! The waltz is not danced in the Rooms, but Bath is a very old-fashioned place, and, in London, waltzes, and quadrilles too, are extensively danced. I am very happy that Fanny should be given the opportunity of—of getting into the way of it, before her come-out in the spring! But when it comes to going to the theatre—” She paused, frowning over it.