“Yes,” he said naively, “but Mama says that if I’m married to you she’ll let me go to London!”

Her eyes danced appreciatively. “That is certainly an object,” she agreed.

“And you would be Lady Broome, you know, because when my father dies Staplewood will be mine, and the title, too, of course. I shouldn’t think it will be long before he pops off the hooks, either, because he’s pretty well burnt to the socket now.”

She felt no desire to laugh at this speech, which was uttered in a voice of total unconcern; and replied coldly: “It so happens that I have no wish to be Lady Broome. Pray don’t say any more on this head! Believe me, you don’t appear to advantage when you speak of your father in that callous style!”

“Oh, pooh! Why shouldn’t I? I don’t care a rush for bun, or he for me!”

The entrance of the doctor put an end to any further remarks of this nature. Pointedly turning her shoulder on Torquil, Kate inquired after her aunt’s condition. Dr Delabole said that he had hoped that her fever might have abated itself by today, but that it had been a particularly violent catching, aggravated by colic. She had suffered a disturbed night, and was still a little feverish, and disinclined to talk. “So I think you should not visit her until she feels rather more the thing,” he said. “I have great hope that a change of medicine will put her in better cue. Torquil, my dear boy, do you care to drive with me into Market Harborough to procure it?”

“Not if you mean to handle the reins!” said Torquil rudely.

“No, no!” said the doctor, laughing indulgently. “I shall be happy to sit at my ease while you do the work. I know you are a better whip than I am—almost as good a fiddler as Mr Philip Broome! And where, by the way, is Mr Broome? I didn’t hear him come in last night, so no doubt he has overslept this morning!”

“Lord, no! he never does so!” said Torquil. “He was getting up from the table when I came into the room! I daresay he’s with my father.”

He then began to argue with the doctor about which horse should be harnessed to which vehicle; and Kate got up, and left the parlour while the respective merits of the whisky and the more fashionable tilbury were still being discussed.

There was no sign of Philip in any of the rooms on the entrance floor, so that unless he had retired upstairs to the library, he had either gone out, or was indeed sitting with his uncle. Kate, who had been longing to see him ever since she had awakened from an uneasy sleep, felt just a little ill-used. If he was anxious to see her, as surely he should have been, if he was really in love with her, he need not have come down to breakfast at an hour when he must have known she would not be present, she thought, forgetting that it was just possible that he might have wished to avoid meeting her in the presence of Torquil and the doctor. If he had gone out, or was visiting his uncle, it looked very much as if he were avoiding her; which must surely mean that he was trying to find a way of escaping his engagement. Kate, whose overnight lucubrations had led to an uneasy sleep, infested with worrying dreams, was hoping, without realizing it, for reassurance. She did not find it in the library, which was as empty as the saloons; and it was in a despairing mood that she came slowly down the stairs again, trying to persuade herself that it behoved her to make everything easy for Philip by telling him that, after thinking the matter over, she had come to the conclusion that she did not love him enough to marry him.

This melancholy resolve brought tears to her eyes, and although she resolutely wiped them away, she was obliged to keep one hand on the baluster rail, because her vision was still blurred. It cleared miraculously when she heard herself hailed by Mr Philip Broome, who appeared (as it seemed to her) from nowhere, and came up the stairs two at a time, exclaiming: “Kate! I was coming in search of you! What’s this Pennymore has been telling me? No, don’t answer me! We can’t talk on the stairs. Come down to the Red saloon, where we can be private!”

There was nothing at all lover-like, either in this imperious command, or in the ungentle grasp round her wrist; but the depression lifted from Kate’s heart. As he almost dragged her down the stairs, she uttered a protest, which he most uncivilly disregarded, pulling her into the saloon, and shutting the door firmly. He then said, searching her face with hard, penetrating eyes: “When I stepped out on to the terrace before breakfast, I found the carpenter mending one of the gun-room windows! Is it true that it was Torquil who broke in, yesterday, and stole one of my uncle’s shotguns?”

“Why, yes!” she replied, tenderly massaging her wrist. “I shall be excessively obliged to you—Cousin Philip!—if you will have the goodness to inform me of your intention when next you mean to manhandle me! You have bruised me to the bone!”

Swift amusement suddenly softened his eyes; he exclaimed: “Oh, Kate, you dear rogue! What a plumper! Show me this bruise!”

“Very likely it won’t be visible until tomorrow,” she said, with a dignity—that admirably concealed the intense pleasure she felt at being called a dear rogue.

“And still more likely that it will never become visible!” he retorted, advancing upon her, and possessing himself of both her hands, and holding them in a strong clasp. “Stop bantering me, and tell me the truth! Did Torquil, in fact, try to shoot you?”

“Good God, no! Of course he didn’t!” she replied. “He tried to shoot a dog, and missed both the dog and me, for which I am heartily thankful! He’s not fit to be trusted with guns, as I told him! I was in such a rage! But how did Pennymore know of it? He wasn’t there! No one was there, except Badger, and, later, Dr Delabole!”

“One of the stable-hands saw you from the avenue, and was trying to summon up the pluck to dash to your help—or so he says—when the appearance of Badger on the scene relieved him of the necessity to show his mettle. The story had reached Pennymore’s ears by the time you went to bed.”

“Grossly exaggerated, I make no doubt!”

“Very likely. Is it true that Torquil threatened to shoot Badger?”

“With an empty gun! He was only trying to frighten Badger! He gave the gun up to me the instant I told him to do so, and I promise you there is no need for you to be cast into high fidgets!”

“On the contrary, there is a very urgent need!” he said. “Kate, let me take you away from this place!” His clasp tightened on her hands. “It isn’t safe for you to remain here, believe me!” He looked down into her upturned face, and deep into her eyes, his own glowing with a light which made her pulses jump. “You pretty innocent!” he said, in a thickened voice, snatching her into his arms, and roughly kissing her. Then, as she burst into tears of relief, he slackened his embrace, and demanded: “Why, Kate! Kate, my darling, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing!” she sobbed. “Only I thought—I was afraid—that you might be regretting it! And although I think you ought to, I couldn’t bear it if you did! And I know you haven’t thought how you would like to be married to a female who has only her nurse to support her at the altar!”

His eyes laughed, but his voice was perfectly grave as he replied: “You are very right! I hadn’t thought of it. You wouldn’t care, I suppose, to depend on my support, if your nurse should be unequal to the task?”

She gave a rather watery giggle, and subsided again on to his chest. “Don’t make game of me! You know very well what I mean! What would all your relations think?”

“Of course! That is a serious consideration. I wonder why it should not have occurred to me?” he said, apparently much struck. “Could it have been because what they think doesn’t seem to me to be of consequence?”

“It is of consequence to me,” she said, into his coat.

“Is it? Then there’s only one thing for it! We must be married privately, by special licence!”

“Oh, Philip, as though that would make it any better! Do, do be serious!”

“I am being serious, little wet-goose. I am determined to remove you from Staplewood as soon as may be possible; and since neither of us, I hope, is so lost to all sense of propriety as to consider a flight to the Border to be pardonable in any but extremely ramshackle persons—what one might call the baggagery, you know!—I believe my best course will be to convey you to London, to the protection of your nurse, for just so long as it will take me to procure the special licence, and to send an express to my steward, telling him to make all ready for our homecoming. After which, I mean to carry you off to Broome Hall immediately. Oh, Kate, my dear love, you don’t know how much I long to see you there! Or how much I hope that you will like it!”

“I am very sure I shall,” she replied, with simple conviction. “But it would be quite as ramshackle for me to run away to London with you immediately as to fly with you to the Border, my dear! Consider! Surely you could not wish me to behave with such a want of conduct—so ungratefully? Every feeling must be offended!”

“You have no cause to be grateful to Minerva!”

“Oh, yes, I have!” she said, smiling mischievously up at him. “If she hadn’t brought me here I should never have met you, my dear one!”

His arms tightened round her until she felt her ribs to be in danger of cracking, but he said unsteadily: “That was not her object, you artful little Sophist!”

“No, far from it! What was that you called me?”

“A Sophist, my love—an artful one!”

“What does it mean?” she asked suspiciously.

“One who reasons in a specious way!” he answered, laughing at her.