“Lady Maria is the fat one, and that’s her elder sister, Lady Jane,” explained Meg. “Annerwick’s daughters, you know: he has five, and all as plain as puddings! No fortune, of course: Mama says that old Lord Annerwick ran through thirty thousand pounds before he was twenty-five years old even!”

“Good gracious!” said Kitty, looking in surprise towards Lady Maria’s box. “I had supposed her to be very rich indeed! She wears so many jewels and feathers!”

“Oh, yes! For, by the luckiest chance, Mr. Yalding wished to marry her, and although he was quite an ungenteel person—I believe, in fact, a merchant!—the Annerwicks could not but be thankful.”

“Didn’t want to marry her,” interpolated Freddy. “Wanted to be in the ton. Offered for the Calderbank girl first, but he smelled too much of the shop for Calderbank. Queer old fellow! Didn’t do him much good, either. Nailed up a couple of years ago.”

“N-no, but it d-did Lady M-Maria good,” said Mr. Stonehouse. “He left his whole f-fortune to her. She saw to that! D-dragon of a female!” He glanced across the house. “Stupid, too. Who’s the young b-blade making—” He stopped abruptly, his question cut short by a nip from Meg’s fingers.

But Freddy, who had moved beyond the reach of his sister’s hand, answered it. “Cousin of Miss. Charing’s. French fellow. Think he’s dangling after her, Kit?”

“Oh, Freddy, surely he would not do so?” exclaimed Kitty, shocked.

“Might,” said Freddy. “Wouldn’t myself, but plenty of fellows have. Well, bound to! Worth a hundred thousand, they say. Trouble is, she’s a dashed queer-tempered woman. Uphall made a push to fix his interest with her. She’d have had him, too, but he couldn’t bring himself up to scratch.

Told me he’d sooner be rolled-up. Says it ain’t so bad in a sponging’house—once you get used to it. Good God! For the lord’s sake, don’t look to the left, Meg! Aunt Dolphinton!”

With great presence of mind, Meg unfurled her fan, and plied it so that it hid her profile. “Has she seen us?” she hissed.

“Don’t know, and I’m dashed well not going to look. She’s got Dolph with her, that’s all I can tell you. We shall have to take a stroll outside after the act, or she’ll start beckoning to us. You know what she is!”

Just then the curtain rose, and although Freddy’s enjoyment of the drama was marred by what he felt to be the urgent necessity to evolve a scheme that would enable them all to escape a compulsory visit to Lady Dolphinton’s box, Kitty instantly forgot the ordeal ahead, and sat throughout the act in a trance of rapt interest, her lips just parted, her gaze riveted, and her hands tightly clasping her fan. At the fall of the curtain Freddy made a creditable attempt to hustle the ladies out of the box before his redoubtable relative had had time to observe them; but owing to Meg’s having lost her handkerchief, and to Kitty’s having to be roused from her lingering trance, this failed. Before he could achieve his end, a knock fell on the door, and the Chevalier entered, so that the project had to be abandoned.

Kitty could not but be glad. That her handsome cousin should dangle after a fortune was a suggestion that distressed her. His prompt appearance in Freddy’s box seemed to give the lie to it; and nothing in his demeanour betrayed the least desire on his part to return to Lady Maria’s side. In full view of his hostess, he stayed chatting, very gay and debonair; and when Kitty, rendered quite uncomfortable by a fixed stare from the opposite box, told him that she feared he might be offending Lady Maria, his brows flew up in surprise, and he exclaimed: “But, no! How should it be possible? I have informed her that my cousin is present—my cousin whom for so many years I have not seen!”

“Well, she looks very cross,” said Kitty.

“I am not very well acquainted with Lady Maria, but it seems that she suffers from bad humours,” he said, with a droll look. “But I should not say so! I am, in effect, an ingrate! She has been most kind to one who is without friends in London, and—you understand my lips are sealed!”

“All very w-well,” said Mr. Stonehouse, when, by tacit consent, he and Mr. Standen withdrew from the box to take an airing in the corridor, “b-but if he hasn’t any f’friends in London, w-why did he c-come here? N-not one of the Embassy people, is he?” He added hastily: “I don’t m-mean to say that he isn’t p-perfectly respectable! It just struck m-me that it was odd!” He became aware of a lanky figure in his path, and put up his glass. “Oh! Dolphinton! How d’ye do?”

Lord Dolphinton addressed himself to his cousin, briefly and to the point. “Mama says you are to bring Kitty to her box,” he stated. “Freddy, I didn’t know you were going to bring Kitty to town, did I?”

Mr. Standen, though irritated by this peremptory command, was not deaf to the note of appeal in Lord Dolphinton’s voice. “No, no!” he said soothingly. “At least, I don’t know what you knew, Dolph, but no need to get into a taking, old fellow! Too late to bring Kit along to see my aunt now! You go back and tell her so! Bring her after the next act!” He then turned his relative gently round, and gave him an encouraging thrust, remarking to Mr. Stonehouse, as Dolphinton ambled away: “Sevenmonths’ child, y’know: daresay it accounts for it! Better go back and warn Kit!”

“Freddy!” said Mr. Stonehouse, detaining him. “What i.>; this? I m-mean, Elgin MMarbles—WWestminster Abbey—! Are you g-going to be m-married?”

“No, no!” Freddy said involuntarily. Recollecting himself, he added: “What I mean is—only betrothed! Keeping it a secret, Jasper! Family reasons!”

“Oh!” said Mr. Stonehouse, much mystified. “Of c-course, if you d-don’t want it known, I shan’t s-say anything! But why—”

“Curtain’s going up!” interrupted Freddy desperately, retreating into his box much in the fashion of a rabbit hotly pursued by a terrier.

Chapter X

Considerably to their surprise, and not a little to their relief, Lady Dolphinton received the engaged couple later in the evening with a degree of affability which was as rare as it was unexpected. She was a hard-featured woman, with a predatory mouth, a smile that never reached her eyes, and an air of consequence. At no time had she been popular with her deceased husband’s relations, for she was both proud and ill-natured, insolent to persons whom she considered to be her social inferiors, tyrannical to her son, and ruthless in the methods she employed to achieve her ends. Even Lady Legerwood, always prone to take the kindliest view of everyone, could not like Augusta. In her eyes, Augusta was a bad mother, whose treatment of her dull-witted son had, she maintained, done much to increase his imbecility. She could say no worse of anyone. The younger members of the family were frightened of her when children, and avoided her when rhey grew up. Mr. Penicuik detested her. He made very little secret of his belief that his nephew’s untimely decease might be laid at her door; and none at all of his conviction that his great-nephew’s peculiarities were directly inherited vrom her. He said that all the Skirlings were loose screws, adding darkly that he didn’t blame them for setting it about that old James Skirling had been drowned while fishing on a Scottish loch. No one, he said, could be expected to advertize the fact that a member of the family had to be confined in a room at the top of the house, with a couple of attendants to see that he came to no harm.

Knowing how much she must have angered the Countess by rejecting Dolphinton’s suit, Kitty went to her box in considerable trepidation, clutching Freddy’s arm tightly enough to draw from him a remonstrance. She begged pardon, and expressed the hope that her ladyship would not say anything very dreadful. He seemed surprised, and said: “Lord, Kit, you ain’t afraid of her?”

“N-no. At least—yes, I am a little! I think she is an evil person! And she can say such crue! things!”

“Go away if she does,” said Freddy.

“Oh, Freddy, would you dare?” .she asked, laughing a little.

“No question of daring: easy thing to do!”

“Freddy, she would be as mad as fire!” said Kitty, awed by the very thought.

But the practical Mr. Standen refused to be intimidated. “Wouldn’t make any odds to us if she was. Shouldn’t be there to see it,” he pointed out. “No need to be in a quake: I won’t let her frighten you.”

This unexpected sangfroid greatly impressed Miss Charing, but she could not be sorry that it was not put to the test. They found the Countess wreathed in smiles, arch felicitations to Freddy and broad compliments to Kitty issuing smoothly from between her thin, painted lips. Kitty was even permitted to kiss her ladyship’s cheek; and learned, with incredulity, that nothing had more pleased the Countess than the news of her engagement.

While his mother was overwhelming Kitty with her goodwill, Dolphinton, having acquired a grip on Freddy’s coat, was subjecting it to a series of tugs. Freddy, a wary eye on his aunt, was at first unconscious of this attempt to attract his attention, but when the tugs became imperative they attracted it to rather more purpose that Lord Dolphinton desired. “Stop it, Dolph!” he said indignantly. “First time I’ve had this coat on, and between the pair of you, you and Kit—” He paused, meeting his cousin’s anguished look of entreaty, and said: “Oh, very well! What’s the matter, old fellow?”

“Never told me you was bringing Kitty to town!” said Dolphinton imploringly. “Of course I didn’t! Why should I?” replied Freddy.

“He never told me!” said Dolphinton, addressing his parent.

She laughed, but in a way (as Miss Charing later told Mr. Standen) that boded ill for him. “Good God, Foster, what is that to the purpose? I wish you will strive to be a little less foolish! And so you are staying with dear Margaret, Kitty? Such a sweet creature, but perhaps not quite the person to take care of you! Naughty girl! Why did you not come to me? I am sure, if I have begged poor Uncle Matthew once to send you to me for a season, I have done so fifty times! I promise you, I grudge you to Margaret! It was always the wish of my heart to bring out a daughter!”