“Good gracious!” The anxious look in Abby’s eyes was put to rout by one of irrepressible merriment. “My dearest goose, do try to forget it! I have, I promise you! Indeed, I haven’t any very dear recollection of what he even looked like, though I do remember that I believed myself to be brokenhearted at the time. At seventeen, one does, only to discover that one has quite mistaken the matter.”

This sad want of sensibility daunted Selina for a moment, but she made a recover, saying, with an air of boundless understanding: “You were always so brave, my dear one! But if you had forgotten Mr Thornaby why did you refuse Lord Broxboume’s offer? So very flattering, and such an excellent man, with a most superior mind, and every quality to render him acceptable!”

“Except one! He was a dead bore!” Abby’s eyes began to dance again. “Have you been picturing me nursing a broken heart all these years? My dear, I do beg your pardon, but it is quite useless to make me the heroine of a tragic romance: I must always disappoint you.”

“Next you will tell me that you too are determined to arrange a splendid match for poor little Fanny! I hope I know you rather too well to believe that!”

“I hope you do. I may own that Papa chanced to be right when he sent Thornaby packing, but I still hold to it that this resolve he had—and my grandfather before him, and James after him!—to arrange only the most advantageous marriages for every one of his children was nothing short of an obsession! And you may be sure I won’t allow Fanny to be sacrificed as you and Jane were! Mary was so compliant as to fall in love with George, but only think of Jane, positively forced into marriage with that odious creature who had nothing but his wealth and his title to recommend him!”

Selina, who had derived consolation all her life from the inculcated belief that Papa must know best, said feebly: “No, no! How can you say such things, Abby? One would think—not but what—perhaps sometimes he may have been a trifle—But I am sure he did only what he believed to be right!”

“But for Papa,” said Abby inexorably, “you would have married that curate—I forget his name, but I daresay you would have been very happy, with a quiver full of children, and—Oh, dearest, forgive me! I didn’t mean to make you cry!”

Selina had indeed dissolved into tears, but she wiped them away, saying: “No, no! It was only remembering, and even dear Mama, who entered into all my feelings, couldn’t conceal from me her apprehension that he would become bald before he was forty! It is you who should be pitied!”

“Not a bit of it! I don’t regret Thornaby, and I was not sacrificed, as Jane was! No, and I won’t let James make a burnt offering of Fanny either: that you may depend on! But, on the other hand, my dear, I won’t—if I can prevent it—let her throw herself away on the first fortune-hunter who makes up to her!”

“But I am persuaded he is no such thing!” expostulated Selina. “He is possessed of considerable estates in Berkshire, and he comes of a most distinguished family. I believe he can trace his lineage back for hundreds of years!”

“Well, I know nothing about his ancestors, but from all I have been able to discover the present family is distinguished for profligacy, and nothing else! This man’s reputation is bad; and, according to James, his father was far from respectable; while as for his uncle, he,after having been expelled from Eton, seems to have gone his length in every extravagant folly until he was packed off to India, under orders never to show his face to his family again! As for the estates, George says they are grossly encumbered. And if you think all these circumstances make Stacy Calverleigh an eligible suitor—”

“Oh, no, no, no!” Selina cried distressfully. “Only I can’t believe that poor Mr Calverleigh—and it always seems to me most unjust to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, and when it comes to an uncle positively wicked! Such engaging manners, and feels just as he ought, besides showing delicacy of mind, and—oh, I don’t believe it!”

“Well, it was what George said, and you must allow that he is not at all prudish, as James is.” She paused, her brow wrinkled in thought. “And I should suppose, wouldn’t you, that a libertine must be engaging?”

“Abby!” gasped Selina. “I must beg of you to guard your tongue! If anyone were to hear you—!”

“Well, no one but you can hear me,” Abby pointed out. “And all I said was—”

“I know nothing about that class of person!” interrupted Selina hastily.

“No, nor do I,” said Abby, on a note of regret. “Except what I’ve read, of course, and that diverting man who came to a ball the Ashendens gave—oh, years ago! Papa said he would not permit a daughter of his to stand up for as much as one dance with such a fellow as that,only I had already done so, and very agreeable it was! I don’t know that he was a libertine, but I do know that he was a shocking flirt—and not because Rowland told me so! In that consequential way of his, which made him look just like Papa—you know!”

It was evident that whatever Miss Wendover might have known she was determined to forget. Summoning to her aid all the authority of her years, she said, in a voice of the gravest reproof: “Must I remind you, Abigail, that dear Rowland is dead?”

“No, and you need not remind me that he was our eldest brother either. Or call me by that detestable name! Whatever else I might forgive Papa, that I never could! Abigail! Mashams and maidservants!”

“Some people think it a charming name!” said Selina, casting an arch look at her. “One of them is Canon Pinfold, who thinks you are charming too! He says that it is from the Hebrew, and means father rejoiced.”

After a stunned moment, her unregenerate sister went into a peal of laughter. It was several minutes before she could do more than wail: “Papa c-can’t have kn-known that! He w-wan-ted another son!” and when she did manage to stop laughing Selina’s look of pained reproach very nearly set her off again.

She bit her lip, and said, a little shakily: “Don’t mind me! You know what I am! And what in the world has all this to do with Fanny? Selina, I realize that you have a decided tendre for Calverleigh, but if he were the biggest prize on the matrimonial mart I still should not like it! Good God, do you wish her to plunge into marriage with the first man she has met who is neither middle aged nor a youth she has known since he was a schoolboy? At seventeen!”

“I told her she was too young to be talking of having formed a lasting attachment,” answered Selina, thrown upon the defensive again. “Yes, and I said that her uncle would never countenance it, and that she must put it out of her mind!”

This effectively banished any lingering desire in Abby to giggle. She exclaimed: “You didn’t! Oh, Selina, I wish you had not!”

“You wish I had not?” echoed Selina, her voice as much as her countenance betraying her bewilderment. “But you have just said—”

“Yes, yes, but don’t you see—” Abby interrupted, only to break off her sentence abruptly, as she realized the folly of expecting Selina to perceive what was so obvious to her own intelligence. She continued, in a gentler voice: “I am afraid that it may have put up her back—roused the independence of spirit which you have so often deplored. Yes, I know that you think she ought to submit meekly to the decrees of her guardian, but recollect that she hasn’t been reared as we were, to regard the lightest pronouncement of a parent—or an aunt!—as something it would be sacrilege to question, and unthinkable to disobey!”

Roused to indignation, Selina retorted: “Well, I must say, Abby! For you to talk in such a way, when you never showed the least respect for Papa’s judgment—! And when I recall how often you came to cuffs with him, casting dear Mama and me into agonies of apprehension—Well! Not, dearest,” she added hastily, “that I mean to say that you ever actually disobeyed Papa, for that I know you didn’t!”

“No,” agreed Abby, in a flattened tone. “A very poor honey, wasn’t I?”

The mournful note startled Miss Wendover, but in a very few seconds she realized that it had its origin in fatigue, aggravated by anxiety. It was incumbent upon her to divert poor Abby’s mind, and with this amiable intention she first told her, with an indulgent laugh, that she was a naughty puss; and then launched into a recital of the various events which had lately occurred in Bath. Her rambling discourse embraced such topics as what her new doctor said about Russian Vapour Baths; how eagerly dear Mrs Grayshott was awaiting the return of her son from India—if the poor young man survived the voyage, so ill as he had been in that horrid country; how much she was obliged to poor Laura Butterbank, who had spared no pains to cheer and support her during Abby’s absence, coming every day to sit with her, and always so chatty and companionable, besides being charmed to execute any little commission in the town. But at this point she broke off, to accuse her sister of not listening to a word she said.

Abby had indeed been allowing the gentle stream of inanities to flow past her, but at this reproach she recalled her thoughts, and said: “Yes, I am! Mrs Grayshott—Miss Butterbank! I’m glad she bore you company while I was away—since Fanny seems not to have done so!”

“Good gracious, Abby, how you do take one up! No one could have been more attentive, the sweet child that she is! But with so much of her time occupied by her music-lessons, and the Italian class, besides having so many of her friends living here, who are for ever inviting her to join them for a country walk, or some picnic-party—perfectly unexceptionable!—I’m sure it is not to be wondered at—I mean, when Laura gave me the pleasure of her company every day there was no reason why Fanny should have stayed at home, and very selfish it would have been in me to have asked it of her! Yes, and most unnatural it would be if she didn’t wish to be with girls of her own age!”