At this moment, and just as he released Miss Stavely’s hand, one of the assembled company, an elderly spinster who had been observing him with avid curiosity, confided to a stout matron in the over-loud voice of the deaf: “Very handsome! That I must own!”

Startled, and far from gratified, Kit looked up, involuntarily meeting Miss Stavely’s eyes. They held a look of twinkling appreciation; and he thought suddenly that she was more taking than he had at first supposed. He smiled, but before he could speak Lord Stavely interposed, saying: “Come, Denville, my mother is anxious to make your acquaintance!”

He led the way across the room to where the Dowager Lady Stavely was seated in a large armchair, grimly watching their approach.

Listening to his mama’s daunting description of the Dowager, Kit had insensibly formed the impression of a massive lady, with a hook nose and a commanding bosom. He realized that his imagination had misled him: the Dowager was small, and spare, with a straight nose and a flat bosom. She had a deceptive air of fragility, and her thin fingers were twisted by gout. Her expression was not that of one anxious to make Lord Denville’s acquaintance. When her son rather obsequiously presented Kit, she said: “H’m!” in a disparaging tone, and looked him over critically from head to foot before holding out her hand. That tickled his ready sense of humour, and brought a dancing smile into his eyes. He said demurely: “I am honoured, ma’am!” and bowed politely over her hand.

“Fiddle!” she snapped. “So you are William Denville’s son,” are you? You’re not as good-looking as your father.”

Lord Stavely cleared his throat deprecatingly; a faded lady of uncertain age and a harassed demeanour, who was standing beside the Dowager’s chair, looked imploringly at Kit, and uttered a faint, twittering sound. He was aware of tension amongst the assembled members of the family, and began to be very much amused. He replied: “Oh, no! But, then, my father was exceptionally good-looking, wasn’t he, ma’am’?”

She glared at him; and, in another attempt to put him out of countenance, said: “And, by what I hear, you’re not as well-behaved either!”

“He was exceptionally well-behaved too,” countered Kit.

Someone behind him gave a smothered guffaw; the faded lady, blenching, said, in the voice of one expectant of a blistering set-down: “Oh, pray, Mama—!”

“Pray what?” demanded the Dowager sharply.

Lord Stavely, jerked out of paralysis by a nudge from his wife’s elbow, hurried into the breach, saying: “I must make you known to my sister Clara, Denville! I believe you have not previously met, though you are acquainted, I fancy, with my eldest sister, Lady Ebchester.”

Kit, casting a swift glance round the room, saw that one of the middle-aged ladies present was favouring him with a slight smile, and an inclination of her turbaned head, and said promptly: “Yes, indeed! But—” drawing a bow at what he believed to be a fairly safe venture—“I have not hitherto had the pleasure of making Miss Clara Stavely’s acquaintance. Your servant, ma’am!”

“And my brother!” said Stavely, edging Kit away from the Dowager’s vicinity. “You must let me present Mr Charles Stavely to you, Denville!”

“Overdoing it, George!” said Mr Stavely, in a caustic undervoice. “I’ve been acquainted with Denville since his come-out.” He nodded to Kit, and gave him two fingers, observing that he hadn’t seen him in the club lately.

Kit, realizing that he had placed rather too much reliance on his mother’s airy assurance that Evelyn was not acquainted with any other of his betrothed’s relations than her father, now knew that it behoved him to tread with even greater wariness than he had foreseen. He responded that he had lately been out of town, and passed on, to be presented to two ladies, one of whom said that they had met before, though no doubt he had forgotten the occasion. Since any gentleman, accustomed, as Kit was, to a succession of routs, balls, and official receptions, was familiar with this gambit, he dealt with it easily enough. He was then spared any further introductions by the intervention of Lady Ebchester, who shook hands with him in a very robust way, adjuring her brother in a pungent aside to stop trying to addle the poor boy’s brains by presenting him to every member of the family.

“They all know who he is,” she said trenchantly, “and if he don’t know who we are, so much the better for him! If I had guessed you meant to invite the whole family, stock and block, I wouldn’t have come here tonight, and nor, I dare say, would he. Anyone but a chucklehead would have known that it would only serve to make Mama as cross as crabs!” She waved him aside, and addressed herself to Kit, saying: “No need to take fright! I don’t know what maggot my brother got into his head, but very likely you’ll never set eyes on most of these old quizzes again. How does your mother do?”

“Very well, ma’am, and desired me to convey her compliments to you.”

“Mighty civil of her—or of you!” she replied. “We’ve never been on better than bowing terms. So you’re going to marry my niece! I wish you happy: it won’t be her fault if you’re not.”

“Then we shall be, ma’am, for I am determined it shan’t be mine.”

“You’re full of pretty speeches,” she said, putting him forcibly in mind of the Dowager. “I see young Lucton wanting to edge in a word. Heaven knows what he’s doing here, for he’s the merest connexion! However, I dare say you’re glad to see a face you do know!”

She nodded dismissal, and he turned away to confront a young gentleman of dandified appearance, who was hovering close at hand, and who greeted him with a broad grin, and drew him a little apart, saying: “I warned you, Den! Devilish, ain’t it? Dashed nearly sherried off to Brighton this morning: can’t think why I didn’t!”

“A want of nerve!”

“No, no, that wasn’t it! The old lady don’t take a particle of interest in me. Fact is, I wanted a word with you. You haven’t forgotten that little matter I broached to you, have you?”

“No, but to own the truth I’ve been too busy to think about it.”

“What a fellow you are!” said Mr Lucton. “No wish to press you, but you said you’d give me an answer within a day!”

“Oh, lord, did I?” said Kit, thankful for the first time in his life for his twin’s well-known forgetfulness. “I was called away suddenly, and it went out of my mind.”

“Ay, I guessed as much, so I’ve done nothing about it. Don’t want to press you, Den, but I wish you will tell me one way or the other!”

“Yes, but not at this moment!” protested Kit. “It’s neither the place nor the occasion.”

“Oh, very well!” said Mr Lucton discontentedly. “I’ll give you a look-in tomorrow, then. Though I must say—”

He was interrupted by the sound of the dinner-gong, and, as Lady Stavely came up at that instant to take possession of Kit, the rest of the sentence remained unuttered.

Kit found himself placed between his hostess and Miss Cressida Stavely at the dinner-table. He was relieved to see that the length of the table separated him from the Dowager; had it separated him from Cressida he would have been profoundly thankful.

For the first ten minutes his attention was fully engaged by Lady Stavely, who regaled him with a flow of vivacious small-talk. This presented him with no difficulty, since she allowed him little opportunity to speak, and asked him only such commonplace questions as anyone would have been able to answer. She was, mercifully, more anxious to show herself off than to draw out her guests, but he found her empty, incessant titter of laughter irritating, and was not altogether sorry when she turned from him to converse with Mr Charles Stavely. Sooner or later he would be obliged to talk to Cressida; he thought that to do so at the dinner-table might be the best way of avoiding a tête-à-tête. He glanced at her. Her head was turned a little away, as she listened to what her other neighbour was saying to her. It struck Kit that she had all the unconscious assurance lacking in her stepmother. Lady Stavely was overacting the part of Society hostess; she had been for too long the daughter who had failed to catch a husband to slip easily into her new position. It was not difficult to understand why she should be jealous of Cressida, so quietly poised, so well-accustomed to the management of her father’s establishment, and to the entertainment of his guests. She appeared to be absorbed in her conversation with her neighbour, but she must have noticed that Lady Stavely had transferred her attention to her brother-in-law, for she brought her conversation to a natural conclusion and turned towards Kit, saying, with a faint smile: “I wish this were not such a dull party: you must be dreadfully bored!”

“Not at all!” he replied.

She looked quizzically at him. “A high treat, in fact!”

“Well, I shouldn’t describe it in quite those words,” he owned, “but the truly boring parties, you know, are the formal squeezes, when one is obliged to do the polite to all the people one would least wish to talk to.”

She was surprised. “But I thought you never attended such parties!”

“Not when I can avoid them,” he said, retrieving the slip.

“Which, in general, you find yourself able to do! And when you are not so able,” she added thoughtfully, “you take care not to become bored by arriving late, and leaving early, don’t you?”

“A gross aspersion upon my character!”

She laughed. “Did you think that because I am not very much in the habit of attending such squeezes that I don’t know your reputation? You are the despair of hostesses!”

“You have been listening to slanderous reports.”