“I, on the other hand, am a gentleman of extraordinary impropriety, of course.”

“Oh, not a gentleman, sir, a nobleman,” said Miss Challoner with irony.

“You hit hard, ma’am. Pray, was there anything else in Mr. Comyn that you found worthy of remark?”

“To be sure, sir. His manners were of the most amiable.”

“I’ve none at all,” said his lordship blandly. “Being a nobleman, ma’am, I don’t need ’em. Pray let me pass you this second, dish of comfits which has apparently escaped your notice.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Challoner.

The Marquis sipped his wine, watching her over the rim of his glass. “I think it only fair to warn you, ma’am, that this paragon is secretly contracted to a cousin of mine. In fact, his business in Paris, and I mistake not, is to elope with her.”

“Indeed?” Miss Challoner said innocently. “Your cousin is no doubt very like you?”

“Oh, just a family likeness, ma’am,” retorted his lordship. “She should be pleased with you,” he added thoughtfully.

“I cannot conceive why, sir.”

“She’d be pleased with any female who married me.”

Miss Challoner looked at him curiously. “She is so fond of you?”

“No, that ain’t the reason. Her mamma, my ambitious Aunt Fanny, intends her to be my bride—a prospect Juliana dislikes as much as I do.”

Miss Challoner said quickly: “Juliana?”

“My cousin.”

“Yes, I understand that, my lord. But what is her surname?”

“Marling,” said his lordship. “Now what’s to do?”

Miss Challoner jumped in her chair. “Your cousin! Juliana Marling! But I know her!”

“Do you?” said Vidal, not visibly excited. “A mad piece, ain’t she?”

“Oh, she was my very dearest friend!” Miss Challoner said. “But I never dreamed she was your cousin! We were at the same seminary, you see.”

“I’ll wager Juliana learned precious little there,” remarked Vidal.

“Not very much,” allowed Miss Challoner. “They nearly sent her away once, for—er—flirting with the drawing-master. She always said they only forgave her because her uncle was a duke.”

“Kissed the drawing-master, did she? She would!”

“Is she really going to marry Mr. Comyn?” inquired Miss Challoner.

“She says so. But she can’t run off with him now until our affair is settled. Egad, it’s providential that you know her!” He pushed back his chair and got up. “She’s staying with my cousin Elisabeth—bundled off too young to be out of Comyn’s way. I’ll go and pay my respects to her immediately we reach Paris, and tell her the whole story. She’s a rattle-pate, but she’s fond of me, and she’ll do as I bid her. She shall have met you in Paris, just as you were on the point of returning to England with—oh, an aunt, or some such thing. She will tell Tante Elisabeth that she has prevailed upon you to visit her for a week or two and you will go to the Hotel Charbonne surrounded by a positive fog of respectability. From whence, my dear, I shall presently elope with you—before, I trust, Tante has had time to discover the truth.”

Miss Challoner was thinking fast. If Juliana were in Paris, Juliana could help her to obtain a post in some genteel household. Knowing that lively damsel, she had no fear that she might be shocked at her friend’s extraordinary escapade. “Yes, my lord, that is a very good notion—some of it, but I believe you have not perceived the whole good of Juliana’s presence in Paris. You have said yourself, sir, that I shall be surrounded by a positive fog of respectability. I have only to pretend to my mother that Juliana was with you from the start of our journey, and my reputation is saved.”

He shook his head. “I fear not, Mary. It’s a good lie, but too many people would know it for a lie. Moreover, my dear, if I know aught of your mamma, her first care will have been to apprise my parents of your abduction, and to create as much stir as possible. I am well aware that she meant to try and force me into marriage with Sophia by some such method. Didn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Miss Challoner, flushing and shamefaced.

The Marquis touched her cheek with a careless finger as he passed her chair. “No need to look like that, child; I know. Happily, these plans will be delayed a little by the absence of both my parents from town. My father was to have left for the races at Newmarket upon the day I took my leave of him; and my mother was to have gone with him as far as Bedford, where she will be at this moment, staying with the Vanes. We have, therefore, at least a fortnight’s grace, I imagine, but certainly not longer. Write to your mother, apprising her of your betrothal: that should silence her.”

“And you?” she said, watching him as he wandered restlessly about the room. “Do you intend to write your father?”

An involuntary smile twisted his mouth. He refrained from telling her that it was not his libertine behaviour that would annoy his grace, but his honourable intention to marry. He said only: “No need: his grace is not likely to concern himself with my affairs.”

“I do not desire to speak with any disrespect of your father, sir, but from the little I have heard of him I take it that though he might not concern himself with your more clandestine affairs, he would do all in his power to prevent your marriage with one so unsuitable as myself.”

“I devoutly hope you are wrong, my dear,” replied his lordship humourously. “For when my father uses every means to achieve an end, he invariably does achieve it.”

Miss Challoner got up, smiling a little ironically. “Vastly pretty, my lord. I could almost suppose that you wanted to marry me.”

She moved towards the door which his lordship held open for her. “I assure you, ma’am, I am becoming hourly more reconciled to the prospect,” he said, and surprised her by taking her hand and kissing it, very much in the grand manner.

She reflected on her way upstairs that the sooner she left his lordship’s protection the better it would be for her peace of mind.

Upon the following day they resumed their journey, travelling by easy stages, and, at Miss Challoner’s request, at a moderately decorous pace.

She was somewhat amused at the Marquis’s entourage. Besides the chaise that carried her, there was a light coach bearing a quantity of luggage, and Mr. Timms. His lordship rode, and seemed to be accompanied by half his household. Miss Challoner remarked on the size of the cortege, and learned that the Marquis had thought himself to be travelling light. He described his mother’s frequent progresses, and made her feel sad to think that she would never meet the Duchess of Avon. Her grace, it appeared, had only two ways of travelling. Either she set forth carrying all her wardrobe, and most of her furnishings, with a small army of servants preceding her to make ready at every inn she stopped at, or she started out in an immense hurry, forgetting to provide herself with so much as a change of dress.

Miss Challoner soon discovered that the Marquis adored his mother, and by the end of the journey she had learned much concerning the engaging Duchess. She learned something, too, of the Duke, enough to make her feel thankful that the sea separated her from him. He seemed to be a somewhat sinister person, with uncanny powers of penetration.

They spent four days upon the road to Paris, and the Marquis only twice lost his temper. The first occasion was at Rouen, when Miss Challoner slipped off to see the cathedral, narrowly escaped being seen by a party of English persons, and was treated by her return to a furious tirade; and the second was induced by her refusal to wear the clothes of his lordship’s providing. This quarrel began to assume alarming proportions, and when the Marquis announced his intention of dressing Miss Challoner with his own hands, she thought it prudent to capitulate. His eyes were still smouldering when she reappeared in a gown of blue dimity, and it took her some time to coax him out of his wrath.

Upon their arrival in Paris his lordship conducted Miss Challoner immediately to the Hotel Avon and left her there while he went in search of his cousin. It was already late in the evening, and neither Miss Marling nor Mme. de Char-bonne was to be found at home. The Marquis learned that they had gone to a ball at the house of one Mme. de Chateau-Morny, and promptly followed them there. He had taken the precaution of changing his travelling clothes for a coat of yellow velvet rather heavily laced with gold, and satin breeches. Mr. Timms, on his mettle in this land of exquisites, managed to powder his raven locks with fair thoroughness, and further to fix a diamond buckle over the black riband that tied them back. There were diamond buckles on the Marquis’s shoes, and a diamond pin in the foaming lace at his throat. Mr. Timms would dearly have liked to slip a few rings on to my lord’s long white fingers, but the Marquis pushed them all aside, and would wear nothing but his gold signet. He was impatient of the hares-foot, and the patch-box, but when Timms besought him almost in tears not to go to a ball in Paris with his face entirely free from rouge, he laughed, and submitted. Consequently when he took his leave of Miss Challoner, cosily ensconced beside the fire in the big library, she thought for a moment that a stranger had entered the room. The sight of his lordship in full ball dress with diamonds glinting, ruffles of the finest lace falling over his hands, his hah: adequately powdered and arranged in neat curls, and a patch at the corner of his mouth, almost took her breath away. She laughed at him, but thought privately that he looked magnificent. He grimaced at his reflection in the mirror over the mantelpiece. “I look like a damned Macaroni, dont I?” he said. “If I know anything of Juliana, I shall find her at some ball or rout. Don’t go to bed till I get back.”