Accepting this familiarity with unruffled calm, Cressy replied: “No, I am thought to resemble my mother. Now, what is it that you wish to say to me, if you please?”

“As to that,” said Mrs Alperton, “it’s not my wish to say anything to you, not bearing you any ill-will, nor being one to tell tales, unless I’m pushed to it.” She transferred her gaze to Kit’s face, and said: “Maybe you’d prefer I kept mum, my lord?”

“But I shouldn’t,” intervened Cressy.

Mrs Alperton paid no heed to this, but continued to watch Kit maliciously. He met her eyes, and his own hardened. “I should infinitely prefer it,” he said, “but I have warned you already that I am not a pigeon for your plucking! Take care what you’re about, Mrs Alperton! The glue won’t hold: you’ll bowl yourself out.”

“Not before I’ve bowled you out!” she declared venomously. “Which I’ll be glad to do, for I’m a mother myself, and it would go to my heart to see an innocent girl deceived like my poor Clara has been! Ah, my dear, you little know what a cozening rascal has been casting out his wicked lures to you!”

Kit leaned his shoulders against the wall, folded his arms across his chest, and resigned himself.

“No, indeed!” agreed Cressy. “Is Clara your daughter, ma’am?”

“My daughter!” said Mrs Alperton, in a throbbing voice. “Seduced by that villain, and left to starve without so much as a leave-taking!”

“How very dreadful!” said Cressy. “I must say I am astonished! I should never have thought he would have behaved so shabbily.”

Mrs Alperton was considerably taken aback. So too was Kit. He had hoped that Cressy would discredit the greater part of the story; but none of it was fit for the ears of a gently nurtured girl, and he had not dared to hope that she would not suffer a severe shock, attended by painful embarrassment. But neither he nor Mrs Alperton had taken into account the peculiar circumstances of her girlhood, or the undisguised gallantries of her father.

“Very improper indeed!” pursued Cressy. “I do most sincerely pity her—and you, too, ma’am, for nothing, I dare say, could be more disagreeable than to feel yourself compelled to remind Lord Denville of his obligations.”

“No,” said Mrs Alperton, a little dazed. “No, indeed!”

“But perhaps there is a misunderstanding?” suggested Cressy hopefully. “The thing is that he is abominably forgetful, you know. You did very right to put him in mind of the matter, for I am persuaded he will do just as he ought, now that he has remembered it, won’t you, sir?”

“Just as I ought!” corroborated Kit.

“Well, upon my word!” gasped Mrs Alperton. “I never did, not in all my life! I’m telling you he’s a rake, miss!”

“Yes, but do you think you should, ma’am?” asked Cressy diffidently. “I perfectly understand your telling him so, but it doesn’t seem to be quite the thing to tell me, for it is not in the least my affair—though I am naturally very sorry for your daughter.”

“I might have known it!” said Mrs Alperton terribly. “It wouldn’t make a bit of difference to you if he was a murderer, I dare say! Oh, the sinful hollowness of the world! That I should have lived to hear a lady of consequence—and single, too!—talk so bold and unblushing! Well, they didn’t do so in my day, whatever they may have thought! Not those that held themselves up as the pink of gentility! And very right they shouldn’t,” she added, moved to a moment of sincerity. She seemed to be about to expatiate on this point, but changed her mind, and instead said, reverting to her original style: “And me coming to warn you, believing you was but an innocent, and my heart wrung to think of you married to one such as he is! You’ll live to regret it, my girl, for all his gingerbread, and his grand title!”

“Good God, I should think so indeed!” exclaimed Cressy. “Marry Lord Denville? But I’ve no such intention!”

Mrs Alperton was fast losing control of the situation, but she made a gallant attempt at a recover. “Oh, you haven’t? Then perhaps you’ll tell me, Miss Stavely, what this means?”

Cressy, blinking at the scrap of print held up before her, presented for a moment all the appearance of one wholly bewildered. Then her puckered brow cleared, and she fell into laughter. “Now I understand!” she said. “Do you know ma’am, I have been quite in a puzzle to know why you should have wished to talk to me? It seemed the oddest thing! But I see it all now! You have read that absurd paragraph in the Morning Post, which has had us all in whoops! Oh dear, was there ever anything so nonsensical? But it is a great deal too bad!” she said, resolutely schooling her countenance to an expression of gravity. “I beg your pardon, ma’am! Infamous of me to laugh, when the tattling wretch who wrote that ridiculous farrago has been the cause of your being put to so much pain and inconvenience! How very kind it was in you to have come to see me! Indeed, I am excessively obliged to you, and shockingly distressed to think you should have undertaken such a disagreeable task for nothing.”

“Not going to marry him?” Mrs Alperton said incredulously. She looked from Cressy to Kit; and then, as she saw the smile in his eyes, as they rested on Cressy, said roundly: “Humdudgeon! And I collect he’s not nutty upon you either!”

“Oh, no! At least, I sincerely trust he is not, for I am persuaded we should not suit.”

“That’s a loud one!” ejaculated Mrs Alperton, with a scornful crack of laughter. “You won’t gammon me so easily! Why, anyone could see—”

“Pray say no more!” begged Cressy, suddenly assailed by maidenly shyness. “There is no possibility of my marrying Lord Denville, ma’am, as you will understand when I tell you that my affections are—are already engaged!”

There was a moment’s frozen silence, during which Mrs Alperton seemed to wilt where she sat. Kit, withdrawing his intent gaze from Cressy’s face, quietly left the room, feeling that she stood in no need of support, and that no time should be lost in summoning Mrs Alperton’s chaise to the door. He despatched a footman on this errand, desiring him at the same time to send Challow up to the house.

That worthy arrived speedily. He evinced no surprise at the curt question which greeted him, but replied: “Yes, sir, I do know where it came from. According to what the postboy told me, it was hired in Tunbridge Wells. And a regular saucebox he is, but he’d got no reason to tell me a whopper, so we may as well believe him as not. Also according to him, Master Kit, the party which hired it had quite an argle-bargle with Norton before he let her into the house, saying as how his lordship would regret it to his dying day if he didn’t see her. Very full of it, the lad was! Well, it made me prick up my ears, as I don’t need to tell you, but by what the lad says, the party was naught but an old griffin: not by any manner of means one of his lordship’s convenients—asking your pardon, Master Kit, if I’m speaking too bold!”

“Not one of his convenients: her mother!” said Kit, his brows knit.

“You don’t say!” exclaimed Challow, shocked. “Whatever brought her here, sir?”

“It seems his lordship hasn’t visited her daughter for nearly a month. She thinks he has abandoned her. I hoped that perhaps—But if she comes from the Wells we are no better off than we were before, for we know that wasn’t where he went!”

“I’ll take my affy-davy it wasn’t,” asserted Challow. “And a very good thing too if he has abandoned that one! All the same, Master Kit, it looks like you’re in a case of pickles—if her ma’s half the archwife the postboy says she is! Seems to me you’ll have to hang up your axe.”

Kit’s frown disappeared, and the ready laughter sprang into his eyes. “Yes, it looked like a case of pickles to me too,” he admitted. “In fact, I thought it was all holiday with me! But I was rescued in the very nick of time—and the arch-wife is about to depart: beaten at all points!”

13

When he re-entered the Blue saloon Kit gathered, from what he heard, that Mrs Alperton had been regaling Cressy with nostalgic reminiscences of her past glory. By the expression of sympathetic interest on Miss Stavely’s serene countenance he was encouraged to hope that Mrs Alperton’s frequently asserted regard for innocent girls had prompted her to withhold the more lurid details of her career, together with the information that she had been pretty well acquainted with Lord Stavely. Nor was he mistaken: Mrs Alperton had interrupted her narrative several times, with apologies for having allowed herself to run on more than was seemly; and she took care to assure Cressy that although she had more than once entertained Stavely at her parties their association had never ripened into anything beyond what she called company-acquaintance. She was describing these parties, explaining that however nobly born a gentleman might be there were times when he took a fancy for a bit of jollification, when Kit came in. Cressy had exercised a soothing influence upon her, but the sight of Kit brought her wrongs back to her mind. She cut short her reminiscences, and glowered at him.

“Denville, Mrs Alperton, as you may suppose, is anxious to return to her daughter,” said Cressy, before that lady could re-open hostilities. “She has been telling me, too, how very ill-able she is to afford the post-charges, and I have ventured to say that I am persuaded you will see the propriety of discharging that obligation for her—since all the trouble and expense she has been put to was caused by your stupid forgetfulness!”