But this worthy presented himself at the house before Kit had finished his breakfast on the following morning; and when his supposed employer joined him, perforce, in the library, he greeted him with a warm smile, and an apology for failing to wait upon him when he had visited Ravenhurst a fortnight earlier. He disclosed that when he had laid the quarterly accounts before Lord Brumby my lord had informed him (with gratifying condescension) that he had every expectation of being able, shortly, to resign his trusteeship; and had charged him to do all that lay within his power to put my Lord Denville in possession of every relevant detail that concerned the management of his Sussex estate. He added, beaming upon Kit, that if he had had warning of his previous visit he would not have failed to have waited upon him. “For, if I may be permitted to say so, my lord, I—and, I believe, all who are employed at Ravenhurst—have been eagerly awaiting the day when you would assume the control of your inheritance. Not that I, or anyone, would utter a word in disparagement of my Lord Brumby! No one could have been more punctilious in the execution of his duties than Mr Henry—Lord Brumby, I should say!—but it is not the same thing, sir! Not to those of us who watched you and Mr Kit grow up from your cradles! And how is Mr Kit, my lord?”

Mr Kit, resigning himself to the inevitable, said that he was very well; accepted gracefully felicitations on his twin’s approaching marriage; and expressed his willingness to spend the rest of the golden summer’s morning amongst the several forbidding tomes which Goodleigh had brought up to the house for his inspection. Fortunately, it did not occur to Goodleigh that his noble master was much more interested in the property bequeathed by the late Earl to his younger son than in his own vast inheritance.

During the next two days, Kit’s boredom was enlivened by instructive rides round the estates with Goodleigh, and by a ceremonial visit from the Vicar of the parish. On the third day, the reduced staff at Ravenhurst was thrown into a state of excited expectation, and himself one of instinctive foreboding, by the arrival of two coaches from London, accommodating, amongst a number of lesser menials, the steward, my lord’s and my lady’s own footmen, and the extortionately paid, and vastly superior individual who held sway over the kitchens in my lord’s town-house in Hill Street. These vehicles were followed some time later by a large fourgon, which was found to contain, besides a mountain of trunks, several housemaids, two kitchen-porters, two subordinate footmen, and such articles of furniture as my lady considered indispensable for her comfort. Later still an elegant private chaise swept up to the main entrance. The steps having been let down, a stately female, who bore all the appearance of a dowager of high estate but was, in fact, none other than Miss Rimpton, my lady’s top-lofty dresser, alighted, to be followed, a moment later, by my lady herself, far from stately, but ravishing in a pomona green silk gown which clung to her shapely person, and the very latest mode in bonnets: a dazzling confection with a high crown, a huge, upstanding poke-front, pomona green ribbons, and a cluster of curled ostrich plumes. Mr Fancot, arriving on the scene just in time to hand this vision down from the chaise, was the immediate recipient of an unnerving announcement, delivered in an urgent undervoice.

“Dearest, the most dreadful thing!” said her ladyship, casting herself into his arms, and speaking into his ear. “There was nothing to be done but to pack up immediately, and come down to support you! And don’t, I implore you, try to law it in my dish, Kit, because I never foresaw it, and am wholly overset already!”

8

It was some time before Kit was able to detach his mama from the various senior members of the household who were either demanding, or receiving, instructions from her; but he managed to do it at last, and to withdraw with her to the library. Shutting the door upon the ominously hovering form of Miss Rimpton, he said, between laughter and anxiety: “For God’s sake, Mama, tell me the worst! I can’t bear the suspense for another moment! What is the dreadful thing that has brought you here five days before your time? Why all those servants? Why so much baggage?”

“Oh, dear one, do but let me rid myself of this hat before you bombard me with questions!” she begged, untying its strings. “It is giving me the headache, which is too vexatious, for it is quite new, and wickedly expensive! Indeed, if it had not been so excessively becoming I should have refused to purchase it. Except, of course, that when one owes one’s milliner a vast amount of money the only thing to be done is to order several more hats from her. I bought the prettiest lace cap imaginable at the same time: you shall see it this evening, and tell me if you don’t think it becomes me.” She removed the hat from her head, and looked at it critically. “This does, too, I think,” she said. “And what a very smart hat it is, Kit! It’s what you, or Evelyn, would call bang-up to the nines! But it does make my head ache.” She sighed, and added tragically: “There’s no end to the troubles besetting me: first it’s one thing, and then it’s another! And all at the same moment, which quite wears down one’s spirits.”

Accepting the situation as he found it, Kit replied sympathetically: “I know, love! They come not single spies, but in battalions, don’t they?”

“That sounds to me like a quotation,” said her ladyship mistrustfully. “And it is only fair to warn you, Kit, that if you mean, after all I have endured, to recite bits of poetry to me, which I am not at all addicted to, even at the best of times, I shall go into strong convulsions—whatever they may be! Now, isn’t that odd?” she demanded, her mind darting down this promising alley. “One hears people talk of going into convulsions, but have you ever seen anyone do so, dearest?”

“No, thank God!”

“Well, I haven’t either—in fact, I thought they were something babies fell into! Not that my babies ever did anything so alarming. At least, I don’t think you did. I must ask Pinner.”

“Yes, Mama,” he agreed, removing the hat from her hands, and setting it down carefully on a table. “But are you quite positive that this very beautiful bonnet is to blame for your headache? Might it not be the outcome of your journey? You never did like being shut into a post-chaise, did you?”

“No!” she exclaimed, much struck. “I wonder if you could be right? It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Quite captivating!” he assured her. “Did you purchase it to console yourself for all the troubles which have descended on you? What, by the way, was the particular trouble which brought you here in such a bang?”

“Kit!” uttered her ladyship. “That terrible old woman is coming to visit us here next week, and she is bringing Cressy with her!” She waited for him to speak, but as he appeared to have been struck dumb, and merely stood staring at her, she sank into a chair, saying: “I knew how it would be if I were obliged to visit her! Well, I knew that no good would come of it, though I didn’t foresee such an ordeal as this. If I had had the smallest notion of it, I would have said I was going to stay at Baverstock—and, what’s more, I would have done so, much as I detest your aunt! But I had already told her that I was coming here, and so the mischief was done. How could I say I wasn’t coming here after all? You must perceive how impossible!”

“Mama!” interrupted Kit, finding his voice. “Do you mean that Lady Stavely is going to give us a look-in on her way to Worthing?”

“No, no, what would there be in that to dash one down? She and Cressy are coming to spend a week or two here!”

“A week or two? But they can’t! they mustn’t be allowed to! Good God, what can have induced you to consent to such a scheme? You surely didn’t invite them?”

“Of course I didn’t!” she said. “Lady Stavely invited herself!”

“But, Mama, how could she have done so’?”

“Good gracious, Kit, I should have thought five minutes in her company would have been enough to show you that there’s nothing she’s not very well able to do! Besides, she led me into a trap. She is the most odious old witch in the world, and she always overpowers me, ever since I was a child, and positively dreaded her! Oh, she is too abominable! Would you believe it?—the instant she clapped eyes on me, she said that she saw I had taken to dyeing my hair! I was never more shocked, for it is quite untrue! It is not dyeing one’s hair merely to restore its colour when it begins to fade a little! I denied it, of course, but all she did was to give the horridest laugh, which made me feel ready to sink, as you may suppose!”

“I don’t suppose anything of the kind!” said Kit, roused to unwonted callousness. “Why should you care a straw for anything Lady Stavely chose to say? It is too absurd!”

His mama’s magnificent eyes flashed. “Is it, indeed?” she said tartly. “I marvel that you should have the effrontery to say such an unfeeling thing, when you know very well that never did your Great-aunt Augusta visit us but what she put you and Evelyn out of countenance within two minutes of seeing you!”

His formidable (and happily defunct) relative having been thus ruthlessly recalled to his mind, Mr Fancot had the grace to retract his unkind stricture. “Less!” he acknowledged. “I beg pardon, love! So then what happened?”