This thought had already occurred to Abby, causing her to hover on the brink of excusing herself from the engagement; and had Selina said no more she might possibly have done so. But Selina’s evil genius prompted her to utter fatal words. “I am persuaded that James would tell you to cry off, Abby!”

“Are you indeed?” retorted Abby, instantly showing hackle. “Well, that settles the matter! I shall do no such thing! Oh, Selina, pray don’t fly into a great fuss! If you are afraid of what the quizzes may say, you have only to tell them that since you don’t yet venture out in the evening Mr Calverleigh very kindly offered to act as your deputy. And once it becomes known that he dined with us here, before escorting me to the theatre—”

“Nothing—nothing!—would prevail upon me to do anything so unbecoming as to invite a single gentleman to dine with us!” declared Selina, with unwonted vigour.

“No, dear, but you are not obliged to do so,” said Abby mischievously. “I’ve done it for you!”

“Abby!” gasped Selina, turning pale with dismay. “Asked a man to dine with us alone? You can’t be serious! Never have we done such a thing! Except, of course, James, which is a very different matter!”

“Very different!” agreed Abby. “Mr Calverleigh may be an oddity, but he’s not a dreadful bore!”

“I was never so mortified!” moaned Selina. “So brass-faced of you, as though you knew no better, and exactly what dear Papa deplored, and what he would say to it, if he were alive, which I am devoutly thankful he is not, I shudder to think!”

It had taken time, patience, and much tact to reconcile Selina but in the end she consented to entertain Mr Miles Calverleigh, persuaded by the horrid suspicion that if she refused to do so her highty-tighty young sister was quite capable of setting the town in an uproar by dining with him at York House. She had then devoted the better part of the afternoon to the composition of a formal invitation, written in her beautiful copper-plate, and combining to a nicety condescension with gracious civility. Mr Miles Calverleigh responded to this missive with commendable promptness, in a brief but well-expressed note, which conveyed to Selina’s mind the impression that he had invited her sister to go with him to the play in a spirit of avuncular philanthropy. She was thus able to meet him in the Pump Room with a modicum of complaisance; and although, when he left her side, he joined the group round Abby, she had no apprehension of danger. It was not at all remarkable that he should show a preference for her: a great many gentlemen did so; but if it had been suggested to Selina that Abby was quite as strongly attracted to him as he to her she would have thought it not so much remarkable as absurd. Abby enjoyed light flirtations, but Selina had almost ceased to hope that she would ever discover amongst her suitors one who was endowed with all the perfections she apparently demanded.

They were certainly not to be found in Mr Miles Calverleigh, with his swarthy countenance, his casual manners, and his deplorable want of address.

Nor was Abby apprehensive that in pursuing her acquaintance with him she might be running into danger. She was by no means sure that she liked him. He was amusing, and she enjoyed his company; but he frequently put her quite out of temper, besides shocking her by his unconcerned repudiation of any of the virtues indispensable in a man of principle. He was undoubtedly what her brother-in-law succinctly described as a loose screw, and so hopelessly ineligible that it never so much as crossed her mind that in him she had met her fate. Nor did it occur to her that in encouraging his advances she was influenced by anything other than the hope that she might be able to persuade him to send his nephew to the rightabout. He had refused unequivocally to meddle, but the hope persisted, and, with it, the growing conviction that if he wished to bring Stacy’s schemes to fiddlestick’s end he would know just how it could be done. To inspire him with such a wish was clearly her duty; if it had been suggested to her that her duty, in this instance, had assumed an unusually agreeable aspect, she would have acknowledged readily that it was fortunate that she did not find Mr Calverleigh repellent; but she would have been much amused by a further suggestion that she was rapidly losing her heart to a black sheep.

So she was able to greet him, when he descended upon her in the Pump Room, with calm friendliness; and when he presently detached her from her circle, inviting her, with his customary lack of finesse, to take a stroll about the Room, in the accepted manner of those who made the Promenade their daily business, she was perfectly willing to walk off with him.

“I’ve received an invitation from your sister,” he told her. “She hopes that I will give you both the pleasure of dining in Sydney Place on Saturday, but I’m not deceived: her hope is that I may break a leg, or be laid low of a severe colic, before I can expose you to the censure of all your acquaintance. Shall I be doing so?”

She laughed. “Good God, no! I hope my credit is good enough to survive a visit to the theatre in your company! Much I should care if it proved otherwise! I’ve a great desire to see this particular play, and have never yet done so. It has always been popular in Bath, you know.” Her eyes danced. “If only you had had the good sense to have been a widower, I daresay Selina wouldn’t have raised the least objection! She saw no harm in my attending the races with General Exford: there is something very respectable about widowers! Single gentlemen, in her view, are surrounded by an aura of impropriety.”

“What, even the turnip-sucker who pays you extravagant compliments?”

“If,” said Abby, a trifle unsteadily, but with severity, “you are speaking of Mr Dunston, Selina knows him to be a very worthy man who has far too much conduct to transgress the bounds of propriety by as much as an inch!”

“He is a slow-top, isn’t he? Poor fellow!”

“He may be a slow-top, but that’s better than being ramshackle!” retorted Abby, with spirit.

“No, do you think so indeed? Was that a cut at me, by the way, or at Stacy?”

“Well, it was at you,” said Abby frankly. “I don’t think Stacy ramshackle: I think him a shuffling rogue! Mr Calverleigh, if you had heard him trying to cut a wheedle, when we rode back from Lansdown, you must have been disgusted!”

“Very likely. The wonder is that Fanny seems to be not at all disgusted.”

“She is very young, and had never, until that wretch came here, known any men but those who reside here: Selina’s and my friends, or the schoolboy brothers of her own friends! You must know that she has only lately begun to go out into society a little; and although, during the winter, a number of London-visitors come to Bath, she has met none of them. I saw to that!”

“Why let yourself be blue-devilled?” he asked. “She’ll recover!”

“I don’t doubt she would do so, if he were removed from her sight!”

“Or even if she were to be removed from his,” he suggested.

She frowned over that for a moment, and then said, with a sigh: “I’ve thought of it, of course, but I believe it wouldn’t answer. Tames talked of removing her to Amberfield, and that would be fatal: she would run away! And if my sister Brede were to invite her to stay with her in London she would know that it was at my instigation, and to separate her from your nephew. What is more, he would follow her, and you may depend upon it that it would be easier for them to meet in London than it is here, where everyone knows her. I think, too, that if it were possible to prevent this she wouldn’t recover—or, at any hand, not for a long time. Towards me she would be bound to feel resentment: oh, she’s resentful already!” She hesitated, before saying, with a faint smile: “I was used to think, you know, that we stood upon such terms as would make it a simple matter for me to guide her—even to check her! That my influence was strong enough to—But I seem to have none at all. I suppose I’ve gone the wrong way to work with her: nothing I could urge would carry the least weight with her! I wish—oh, how much I wish—that her eyes might be opened to what I am persuaded is his true character! That would be the best thing that could happen! It would be painful for her, poor child, but she wouldn’t wear the willow for long: she has too much pride! And above all she wouldn’t fancy herself a martyr! That’s very important, because if one thinks oneself the victim of tyranny there is every inducement to fall into a lethargy.”

“I should imagine that that would make life very uncomfortable for you. But hasn’t it occurred to you that my nephew has a rival?”

“Oliver Grayshott?” She shook her head. “I don’t think it. She says he is like a brother to her! And although I fancy he has a strong tendre for her he has done nothing to attach her.”

“Well, if you think it nothing to send her laudatory verses masquerading as acrostics, and to ransack all the libraries for the works of her favourite poets, you must be as green as she is!” he said caustically.

She could not help laughing. “Does he do so? I thought they were his favourites too: he is certainly very well read in them.”

“Pea-goose! So would you be, if you made it your business to study them!”

“Poor young man! But even if Fanny did prefer him to your nephew it wouldn’t do, I’m afraid.”

“Why not?”

“Because—as you very well know!—James would consider him to be almost as ineligible as Stacy!”

“I know nothing of the sort. Your brother James whistle a fortune down the wind ? Gammon!”