“I wish to God I knew what had become of my brother!”

“You don’t wish it no more than I do, Master Kit. There’s times when I’ve worried myself sick, fancying all kinds of things; but then I get to thinking that his lordship is like a cat: fling him anyway you choose, he’ll land on his feet! And now I’ve seen you in tolerable spirits I’ll take my affy-davy he’s safe and sound!” He cocked an intelligent eye at Kit, and gave a chuckle. “Lor’, sir, what kind of a clodpole do you take me for? Me, that knew you when you wasn’t out of leading-strings! If his lordship was in trouble, or—or worse, which has crossed my mind—you’d know it! Ain’t that so?”

Kit nodded. “Yes—I think. I haven’t said so to my mother, but I could have sworn, about a week ago, that he had met with some accident That’s what brought me home so suddenly. I’d meant to come, for I haven’t been easy—Well, never mind that! I think something did happen to him, but it wasn’t fatal. I am as certain of that as I am of anything. If he were dead, or in desperate straits, I should know it.”

“That’s just what I thought,” agreed Challow. “He ain’t dead! In mischief, more like! I never ought to have let him go off like he did, but he properly bamboozled me, Master Kit Nor I didn’t think he’d go off on one of his starts when he’s in a way to be buckled. Oh, well, we’ll just have to bear a hand until he comes back, sir, and that’s all there is to it! Now, if you wish to ride today, there’s a neatish bay hack would suit you pretty well. Or there’s the curricle, and a pair of prime ’uns: beautiful steppers, they are: just the thing for showing off in the Park! Or you could have his lordship’s new tilbury: quite the rage these tilburies have got to be!”

But Kit, pithily informing him that nothing could be farther from his intention than to show himself off in the Park, or anywhere else, declined these offers, and demanded instead to be told what, if anything, Challow knew about Mr Lucton’s mysterious business.

“Him!” Challow said scornfully. “Trying to sell his lordship a horse which we don’t want: not in our stables we don’t!”

“If his lordship doesn’t want the animal, why didn’t he tell Mr Lucton so?”

“You know what his lordship is, sir! Too easy by half! Not but what Mr Lucton ain’t one to take no for an answer: a proper jaw-me-dead he is! He waved to us in the Park, so his lordship pulled up, and then he started in to puff-off a flat-sided chestnut he hunted last season, trying to. slumguzzle my lord into believing it was the very thing for him. Let alone no one would want a horse Mr Lucton had hunted, that chestnut ain’t worth the half of the price he’s set on it. “A perfect fencer,” he tells my lord. “Jumps off his hocks,” he says. Yes, I thought to myself, I wish I may see it! So I give his lordship a nudge, and he tells Mr Lucton he’ll think it over, and let him know next day, meaning, as he told me, to write him a civil note. I dare say it slipped his mind, for it was the next day that we went off to Ravenhurst. There’s no call for you to trouble yourself, Master Kit.”

“Oh, isn’t there? Mr Lucton is coming here today, to get my answer! I shall have to buy the creature, I suppose. What’s the figure?”

“Master Kit! You won’t never! £160 is what he told his lordship, and dear at £80 is what I say!”

“I’ll offer him £100, and if he refuses, so much the better. I can’t say I don’t want the horse when the man’s been kept waiting for a fortnight! I’ll give him a draft on my bank—Oh, the devil! I can’t do that, can I? Well, you must go to the bank for me, Challow, and draw the money in bills. I’ll give you a cheque. I’d better make it out for £200, for I shall be needing some pitch and pay for myself. Don’t get robbed!”

“It’s you that’s going to be robbed, sir!” said Challow, deeply disapproving.

“Not I! I’m buying this horse on my brother’s behalf—and serve him right!” said Kit.

He set forth a little later to walk to Mount Street, nattily attired in the correct town-dress of a gentleman of fashion. His coat of dark blue superfine was the very latest made for Evelyn by Weston, and never yet worn by its owner; his stockinette pantaloons were knitted in the newest and most delicate dove-colour; his cambric shirt was modishly austere, with no ruffle, but three plain buttons; his waistcoat combined opulence with discretion; and his hat, set at an angle on his glowing locks, had a tall and tapering crown, smoothly brushed, and very different from the low, shaggy beaver to which Fimber had taken such instant exception. Only his Hessian boots were his own. Within ten minutes of forcing his feet into Evelyn’s shoes Kit had straitly commanded Fimber to retrieve from his baggage his own foot-wear. Fimber, obstinately prejudiced against Kit’s Viennese valet, had eyed his Hessians with contempt, but there was really no fault to be found either in their cut, or in their unsullied brilliance. Starched shirt points of moderate height, a Mathematical Tie, dogskin gloves, an elegant fob, and a malacca cane completed Mr Fancot’s attire, and caused his mama to declare that he was precise to a pin. Thus fortified, he set forth with tolerable composure to keep his appointment with Miss Stavely.

Halfway up John Street this composure was shaken by an encounter with a total stranger, who demanded indignantly what he meant by giving him the cut direct He extricated himself from this situation by pleading a brown study; but as he had no clue to the stranger’s identity, nor any knowledge of the latest on-dits to which this Pink of the Ton made oblique references, the ensuing conversation severely taxed his ingenuity. It culminated in a pressing invitation to him to join a gathering of Evelyn’s cronies at Limmer’s Hotel that evening. He declined this, on the score of having promised to escort his mother to a ton-party; and parted from his insouciant new acquaintance imbued with a resolve to seek refuge at Ravenhurst without any loss of time.

It had been forcibly borne in upon him that a prolonged sojourn in the Metropolis would not only be extremely wearing, but would infallibly lead to his undoing.

He was admitted to Lord Stavely’s house by the butler, who came as near to bestowing a conspiratorial wink upon him as his sense of propriety permitted, and was conducted to a parlour, at the back of the house. Here Miss Stavely awaited him, becomingly attired in a morning dress of jaconet muslin, made up to the throat, its sleeves tightly buttoned at the wrists, and its hem embellished with a broad, embroidered flounce. As he bent ceremonially over her hand, the butler, surveying the scene with a fatherly and sentimental eye, heaved an audible sigh of great sensibility, and withdrew, softly closing the door behind him.

There had been constraint in Miss Stavely’s manner, but the butler’s sigh brought the ready twinkle into her eyes, and she said involuntarily: “Oh, dear! Poor Dursley is convinced that he is assisting in a romantical affair! Don’t be dismayed! The thing is that he, and all the upper servants, have, most unfortunately, taken it upon themselves to champion what they imagine to be my cause!”

“Unfortunately?” he said.

“Why, yes! I should be a monster if I were not very much touched by their loyalty, but I wish with all my heart they could be persuaded to accept Albinia as my successor! You can’t conceive how awkward they make it for both of us! Do what I will, they persist in coming to me for orders, even of referring her orders to me! I do most sincerely feel for her: her situation is insupportable!”

“What of yours?” he asked. “Is that not insupportable?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged, with a wry smile. “You know that! It was—is!—my reason for—for entertaining your proposal, my lord.”

“That’s frank, at all events!” he remarked.

Her eyes responded to the smile in his. “We were agreed, were we not, that only candour on both our parts could make our projected alliance tolerable to either of us? Your reason for wishing to be married is your very understandable desire to become independent of your uncle; mine is—is what I feel to be an urgent need to remove myself from this house—from any of my father’s houses!”

“Having made the acquaintance of your mother-in-law—having furthered my acquaintance with her,” Kit said, smoothly correcting himself, “I perfectly comprehend your feeling—and sympathize with you!”

“No, no, don’t misunderstand me!” she said quickly. “You should rather sympathize with Albinia! It must be hard indeed for her to come into a household which has been managed for years by a daughter-in-law so little removed from her in age. Then, too, I have been in some sort my father’s companion since my mother’s death, and—and it is difficult to break such a relationship. Albinia feels—inevitably—that she is obliged to share Papa with me.”

“And you?”

“Yes,” she said frankly. “I feel the same—perhaps more bitterly, which—which quite shocks me, because I had never dreamt I could be so horridly ill-natured! Between the two of us poor Papa is rendered miserably uncomfortable! I detest Albinia as much as she detests me, and—to make a clean breast of it!—I find I can’t bear playing second fiddle where I have been accustomed to being the mistress of the house!” She added, with an effort at playfulness: “You should take warning, Denville! I have lately learnt to know myself much better than ever I did before, and have come to the dismal conclusion that I am an overbearing female, determined to rule the roast!”

He smiled at her. “I’m not afraid of you. But tell me this!—if I should ask it of you, would you find it irksome to share a home with my mother?”

She stared at him, and then exclaimed, as enlightenment dawned on her: “Was that the stipulation you spoke of? Good God, how could you be so absurd? Did you think that I should require you to thrust her out of her home? What a toad you must think me! My dearest, most adorable Godmama! Let me tell you, my lord, that my hope is that she will receive me into your household with as much kindness as she has always shown me!”