“I’ve done no such thing!” she said, much incensed. “And if I had I shouldn’t believe a word he said! What’s more, considerations of that nature wouldn’t weigh with me, if—if I returned your regard!”

“Don’t you? Not at all?”

“I—No! I mean—I mean, it isn’t that!”

“Well, if it isn’t that—Good God, you don’t mean to tell me it’s because I made a cake of myself over Celia Morval twenty years ago? No, really, my sweet life, that’s doing it much too brown! What had it to do with you? You must have been in the nursery!”

“Yes, but—Oh, surely you can perceive how impossible it would be for me to marry you? She was my brother’s wife!”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“She was engaged to be married to him, at all events, and she became his wife! And, if it hadn’t been hushed up, there would have been a shocking scandal—of your making!”

“But it was hushed up,” he pointed out.

She looked helplessly at him. “How can I make you understand?”

“Oh, I do understand! You don’t care a straw for all that ancient history, but you know that James would, and you’re afraid he’d kick up the devil of a dust. He wouldn’t, but I daresay he’d wear you to death, trying to heckle or cajole you into giving me up. However, you needn’t let that worry you: I can deal with James.”

She said, in a low tone: “I’m not afraid of James. If—if I knew that I was doing right. But it wouldn’t be James only. My sisters—all my family—would be thrown into such an uproar! I only wish I might not be wholly cast off!” She glanced up fleetingly, and tried to speak more lightly. “I shouldn’t like that, you know. They may not know about Celia—indeed, I am very sure they don’t, though I suppose Cornelia might, being James’s wife—but, alas, they do know that you are the prodigal son!”

“Alas? What if they didn’t know it? Would my disreputable weigh with you?” Her head was down-bent; she shook it slightly. “Not if I loved you enough”.

“That sounds to me remarkably like a leveller. Don’t you?”

She said frankly: “I don’t know. That’s to say, it is so easy to mistake one’s feelings: that I do know, for I cut my eye-teeth ears ago. I hadn’t any thought of marriage, and I didn’t think that you had either, so—so I’ve had no time to consider. I own that if the circumstances had been different I—I should have been sorely tempted! But to marry—and at my age, too!—to disoblige one’s family ought not to be considered. Do you understand?’

“Well, I understand that you’ve the devil of a lot of scruples, but it’s no use expecting me to enter into them,” he replied. “Family ties don’t mean anything to me: didn’t I tell you so once? As for making a sacrifice of yourself to suit your family’s notions of respectability, I call it addlebrained!”

She smiled reluctantly. “You would, of course! But it isn’t quite that I don’t think I can explain it, because it’s all tangled in my head—making me addlebrained! Do I seem odiously missish?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t going to say so,” he assured her.

The laughter sprang into her eyes. “Obnoxious creature! If only you didn’t always make me laugh! Sometimes I wonder if you have any proper feelings at all!”

“Almost none, I fear. Would you marry me if I had?”

She ignored this. “Or any sense of shame either! But you have a great deal of quickness, and I’m persuaded you must see how outrageous it would be if I were to do the very thing I am trying to prevent Fanny from doing!”

“O my God!” he ejaculated. “These Calverleighs—!”

“Exactly so!”

“Do you think exactly?” he asked diffidently. “Would you object to it if I were to point out to you certain differences between the Calverleighs?”

She put out her hand impulsively. “Oh, I know, I know! There is no comparison between you!”

He took her hand, and held it lightly on his knee. “Oh, there is some comparison! Shocking fellows, both of us! I was one of the roaring-boys when I was on the town: they used to say of me that I was a hell-born babe—too rackety by half! But what no one ever said of me, not even my loving family, was that I was a bounce, or a queer-nabs!”

“Do they say that of Stacy?” she asked anxiously.

“So I’ve been informed, and I don’t find it at all difficult to believe. Well, to continue our respective histories, each of us eloped with an heiress—or, rather, attempted to do so.”

“But you were in love with Celia! You didn’t care for her fortune!” she interpolated swiftly.

“No, nor was I nine-and-twenty. I’m in love with you, and I don’t care for your fortune.”

“You need not tell me that! Besides, I haven’t a fortune. Not like Fanny! I think you would call it an independence, perhaps, or an easy competence.”

“Well, that’s one objection disposed of: no one would be able to say that I married you for your fortune.”

“You wouldn’t care if they did!” she said shrewdly.

“No, but you would.” There was a good deal of amusement in his eyes as they rested on her face. “Just what do you imagine I’ve been doing during the past twenty years, dear innocent?”

“I don’t know. How should I? You have never told me!”

“I’ll tell you now. I’ve been making my fortune, of course.”

She laughed. “So now you are a nabob! How stupid of me not to have guessed it!”

An odd smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “Just so!” he said. “You aren’t even interested, are you?”

“Well, no!” she confessed. “Except that I did think you were perhaps a trifle purse-pinched, and I collect that this isn’t the case, which I’m glad of, for your sake.”

“Thank you,” he said meekly.

“You know, if you were a rich nabob, your nephew might look to you rather than to Fanny to rescue him from his embarrassments,” she said.

“Not unless he was touched in his upper works! That would be rainbow-chasing, my dear!”

She smiled, but her own words had recalled her overriding anxiety to her mind. She drew her hand away, which had been resting snugly in his clasp, and gave a sigh. “Wouldn’t you do it, if it lay within your power? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Isn’t there anything you might do to save my poor Fanny?”

“I thought it wouldn’t be long before we came back to your poor Fanny. You are determined to embroil me in her affairs, aren’t you?

“Don’t be vexed with me!” she begged. “It is so very important! Perhaps you couldn’t do anything, but you might be able to—if not for Fanny’s sake, for mine?”

“Yes, well, let us now emerge from this pretty fairy-story!” he said, with a touch of astringency. “If you imagine that I have the smallest desire to receive your hand as a reward for having performed a difficult task to your satisfaction you’re beside the bridge, my child! I’ve no fancy for a reluctant wife. I want your love, not your gratitude.”

“I didn’t say that!” she faltered. “Indeed, I didn’t!”

“You came mighty near it, didn’t you?” he said quizzically. He got up, and held out his hands to her. “Come! If we don’t make our way back to that inn, and get the horses put-to again, we shall be devilish late, and Miss Wendover will be thinking that you have eloped, not Fanny!”

She allowed him to pull her to her feet. As she walked beside him, towards the inn where they had left the curricle, she said tentatively: “I hope you are not offended?”

He glanced down at her, and she was relieved to see that he was smiling again, very tenderly. “No, not a bit. I was trying to decide whether I love you most when you’re awake upon every suit, or when you’re a pea-goose.”

Her eyes sank, as her colour rose; she said, with an uncertain laugh: “I must seem like a pea-goose, I know. It is your fault, for—for putting windmills into my head! It doesn’t seem so to you, but you have set me a problem, which I must solve, I think, by myself—if you understand me?”

“Well enough, at all events, not to press you further today When I do press you further, I’ll take care I don’t do so here! Or in any other place where there’s a hoary legend to take possession of your mind!”

“Hoary legend?” she repeated, momentarily puzzled. Her brow cleared suddenly. “Oh, the bride and her attendants being turned into those stones! I had forgotten it”

This interlude did much to lessen her constraint. During the drive back to Bath he talked on indifferent topics, so that she was very soon at her ease. She was careful not to introduce Fanny’s name into her conversation, and was considerably surprised when he did so, saying abruptly: “Don’t tease yourself too much over Fanny! Have you any reason for fearing that shemeans to run away with Stacy? I’m inclined to doubt it, you know.”

She replied calmly: “I don’t know. She doesn’t mean to do so before Thursday, I believe. She was discussing which of her new gowns she should wear for the party only this morning, so I think myself reasonably safe for the present. Afterwards—well, if she does mean to elope, she will find it a more difficult adventure than she bargained for!”

“I should think you would be more than a match for her,” he said. “But that puts me in mind of something! I must make my excuses to your sister: I shan’t be in Bath next week”

She was conscious of feeling a disproportionate degree of disappointment, and a little disquiet. She said: “My sister will be sorry. Are you—do you expect to be away for long?”

“Not longer than I need. There’s some business I must attend to, and it won’t do to put it off.”

“No, of course not,” she replied sedately. Then, as a thought occurred to her, she uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and said: “Now, if only I had known, we need not have sent a card to Stacy!”