Sophia gave a choked scream of rage, “She shan’t have him! She shan’t, she shan’t! Oh, I shall die of mortification!”

“I never thought to marry Mary well,” went on her mother, unheeding, “but I begin to see that nothing in the world could be better than this. Lord, the Gunnings will be nothing to it! To think I was intending Joshua for Mary, and all the time the sly minx was meaning to steal Vidal from under your nose, Sophy! I declare I could positively laugh at myself for being so simple,”

Sophia sprang up, clenching her fists. “Mary to be a Marchioness? I tell you I’ll kill myself if she gets him!”

“Oh, don’t fret, Sophy,” Mrs. Challoner reassured her. “With your looks you will never want for a husband. But Mary, whom I never dreamed would be wed, unless it were to Joshua — ! La, it is the most amazingly fortunate thing that could ever be.”

“She isn’t going to marry Vidal!” Sophia said in a voice that shook with passion. “She’s gone to save my honour, the interfering, hateful wretch! And now it’s her honour will be ruined, and I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it!”

Mrs. Challoner folded up Mary’s letter. “It’s for me to see she’s not ruined, and I promise you I shall see to it. My Lady Vidal — oh, it is famous! I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.”

Sophia’s fingers curled like a kitten’s claws. “It’s me Vidal wants, not Mary!”

“Lord, what has that to say to anything?” said Mrs. Challoner. “It’s Mary he has run off with. Now don’t pout at me, miss! You will do very well, I don’t doubt. There’s O’Halloran, mad for you, or Fraser.”

Sophia gave a little scream. “O’Halloran! Fraser! I won’t marry a plain mister! I won’t! I’d sooner drown myself!”

“Oh well, I’m not saying you might not do better for yourself,” replied Mrs. Challoner. “And if only I can get Mary safe wedded to Vidal there’s no saying who she may not find you. For she has a good heart; I always said Mary had a good heart; and she’ll not forget her mamma and sister, however grand she’s to become.”

The prospect of having a husband found for her by Mary proved too much for Sophia’s self-control. She fell into renewed hysterics, but was startled into silence by a smart box on the ear from a mother who had suddenly discovered that her elder daughter was of more account than her pampered self.

She was bundled off to bed; Mrs. Challoner had no time to waste on tantrums. Her chief fear at that moment was that Mary might return uncompromised, and her night’s repose was quite spoiled by her dread of hearing a knock on the front door. When morning came bringing no news of Mary, her maternal anxieties were allayed, and telling Sophia sharply to stop crying, she set about making herself smart for a visit to his grace of Avon. She chose a gown of stiff damson-hued armazine, with one of the new German collars, and a caravan bonnet with a blind of white sarsenet to belet down at will, and thus attired set forth shortly before noon for Avon House. The door was opened by a liveried porter, and she inquired haughtily for his grace of Avon.

The porter informed her that his grace was from home, and having formed his own opinion of Mrs. Challoner’s estate, prepared to shut the door.

That redoubtable lady promptly put her foot in the way. “Then be so good as to take me to the Duchess,” she said.

“Her grace is h’also h’out of town,” replied the porter.

Mrs. Challoner’s face fell. “When do you expect her back?” she demanded.

The porter looked down his nose. “H’it is not my place to h’expect her grace,” he said loftily.

Feeling much inclined to hit him, Mrs. Challoner next inquired where the Duke and Duchess might be found. The porter said that he had no idea. “And h’if,” he continued blandly, “you will have the goodness to remove your foot h’out of the way, I shall be h’able to close the door.”

But it was not until the porter had been reinforced by the appearance of a very superior personage indeed that Mrs. Challoner could be induced to leave the doorstep. The superior personage required to know Mrs. Challoner’s business, and when she replied that this concerned the Duke and Duchess only, he shrugged in a very insulting manner, and said that he was sorry for it, as neither the Duke nor the Duchess was in town.

“I want to know where I can find them!” said Mrs. Challoner belligerently.

The superior personage ran her over with a dispassionately appraising eye. He then said suavely: “Their graces’ acquaintances, madam, are cognisant of their graces’ whereabouts.”

Mrs. Challoner went off with a flounce of her wide skirts at that, and reached home again in a very bad temper. She found Eliza Matcham sitting with Sophia, and it was plain from Eliza’s demeanour that she had been the recipient of all Sophia’s angry confidences. She greeted Mrs. Challoner with an excited laugh, saving: “Oh, dear ma’am, I never was more shocked in my life! Only conceive how we have been hoodwinked, for I could have sworn ’twas Sophia he wanted, could not you?”

“It was me! It is me!” choked poor Sophia. “I hope he strangles Mary! And I dare say he has strangled her by now, for he has a horrid temper. And it win serve her right, the mean, designing thing!”

Finding Mrs. Challoner in an unresponsive mood, Miss Matcham soon took her leave of Sophia, and went away agog with her news. When she had gone Mrs. Challoner soundly rated Sophia for her indiscretion. “It will be all over town by to-night!” she said. “I would not have had you tell Eliza for the world.”

“I don’t care,” Sophia answered viciously. “People shan’t think that he preferred her to me, for it’s not true! She’s a shameless hussy, and so I shall tell everyone.”

“You’ll be a fool if you do,” her mother informed her. “Pray who would believe such a tale? People will only laugh at you the more, and say you are jealous.”

She did not tell Sophia of her fruitless mission to Avon House, but went off again directly after luncheon to visit her brother Henry.

She found only her sister-in-law at home, Henry Simpkins being in the city, but Mrs. Simpkins, perceiving her to be big with news, pressed her warmly to await his return, and dine with them. It did not take Mrs. Simpkins long to possess herself of her sister’s news, and the two dames spent a very comfortable few hours, discussing and exclaiming, and forming plans for the runaways’ marriage.

When Henry and Joshua came in, shortly before five, they were immediately apprised of the whole story. Mrs. Challoner told it with a wealth of detail and surmise, and Mrs. Simpkins added riders here and there.

“And only fancy, Henry,” Mrs. Challoner ended triumphantly, “she is the slyest thing! For she pretended she was gone off to save Sophy’s reputation, and all the time she must have meant to run away with the Marquis herself, for if she did not, why didn’t she return as she said she would? Oh, she is the naughtiest piece imaginable!”

A deep groan brought her attention to bear upon her nephew. “Ay, Joshua, it is a sad thing for you,” she said kindly. “But you know I never thought she would have you; for she’s a monstrous pretty girl, and I always said she would make a brilliant marriage.”

“Marriage?” Joshua said deeply. “I wish you don’t live to see her something far other than a wife. Shameless, shameless!”

Mr. Simpkins supported his son. “Time enough to brag of marriages when you have her safe tied to the Marquis,” he said. “If the Duke is indeed from home you must find him. Good God, Clara, one would think you were glad the girl’s gone off like this!”

Mrs. Challoner, knowing her brother’s Puritanical views, hastily dissembled. She told him how she had found both the Duke and the Duchess of Avon absent from town, and he said that she must lose no time in running one or the other to earth. She had no notion how to set about this task, but her sister-in-law was able to assist her. Mrs. Simpkins had not read all the Court journals for years past in vain. Not only could she recite, unerringly, all his grace of Avon’s names and titles, but she was able to inform her sister-in-law that he had a brother living in Half Moon Street, and a sister who had married a commoner, and was now a widow.

Mr. Simpkins, upon hearing the name of his grace’s brother, brushed him aside. Lord Rupert Alastair was known to him by reputation, and he could assure his sister that this nobleman was depraved, licentious, and a spendthrift, and would be the last person in the world likely to aid her to force Vidal into marriage. He advised her to visit Lady Fanny Marling in the morning, and this she in the end decided to do.

Lady Fanny’s servants were not so well trained as those at Avon House, and Mrs. Challoner, by dint of saying that Lady Fanny would regret it if she refused to see her, managed to gain an entrance.

Lady Fanny, dressed in a négligée of Irish polonaise, with a gauze apron, and a point-lace lappet-head, received her in a small morning-room at the back of the house, and having a vague notion that she must be a mantua-maker or milliner come to demand payment of bills long overdue, she was in no very good humour. Mrs. Challoner had prepared an opening speech, but had no opportunity of delivering it, for her ladyship spoke first, and in a disconcerting fashion. “I vow and declare,” she said stringently, “things are come to a pretty pass when a lady is dunned in her own house! My good woman, you should be glad to have the dressing of me, and as for the people I’ve recommended you to, although I can’t say I’ve ever heard your name before — (I suppose you are Cerisette, or Mirabelle) — I am sure there must be dozens of them. And in any case I’ve not a penny in the world, so it is of no avail to force your way into my house. Pray do not stand there goggling at me!”