“Good gracious, Bonamy, you must be rich!” she countered.

“I am,” he said simply. “Richest man in the kingdom, for I fancy I have a trifle the advantage of Golden Ball. Much good it does me! I had as lief be living on a mere competence, for I’ve not a soul to spend it on, Amabel, and it didn’t win me the only thing I wanted. You may say it’s of no consequence—no consequence at all!”

Since she was well aware that he lived in the height of luxury, maintaining, in addition to his mansion in Grosvenor Square, establishments at Brighton, Newmarket, York and Bath (to which slightly outmoded resort he occasionally retired, when his constitution demanded rehabilitation); stabling teams of prime cattle on no fewer than five of the main post-roads; and gaming for preposterous stakes either at Watier’s, or at Oatlands, the residence of his extremely expensive crony, the Duke of York, she had no overmastering desire to avail herself of this permission. But, although her lips quivered, and there was just the suspicion of a choke in her voice, she responded, with a shake of her head: “No, indeed! How very sad it is, my dear friend! How empty your life has been! How lonely!”

“Ay, so it has!” he agreed, struck for the first time in many years by the truth of this sympathetic remark. He took her hand again, pressing it in his own very warm and slightly damp one, and said with great earnestness: “All the use I ever had for my wealth was to bestow it upon you, my dear! It’s yours for the asking, and always will be. Only let me take your debts on my shoulders! Let me—”

She interrupted him, raising her beautiful eyes to his face, and saying: “Bonamy, are you—after all these years—asking me to marry you?”

There was a stunned pause. Sir Bonamy’s round eyes stared down into hers. They were never expressive, but they were now more than ordinarily blank; and the rich colour faded perceptibly from his pendulous cheeks. Twenty-six years earlier he had been a suitor for her hand; during the years of her marriage he had been her constant and devoted cavaliere servente, and very agreeably had those years slipped past. She was indeed the only woman he had ever wished to marry; but although the disappointment he had suffered when the late Lord Baverstock had preferred the Earl of Denville’s offer to his had been severe it had not been very long before his cracked heart had mended sufficiently for him not only to appreciate the advantages of his single state, but to offer a carte blanche to a charming, if somewhat rapacious, ladybird, universally acknowledged to be a dasher of the first water. But throughout this left-hand connexion, and the many which had succeeded it, he had maintained his devotion to the lovely Countess of Denville, earning for himself the envious respect of his less favoured contemporaries, and, in due course, the reputation of being a man who, having once lost his heart, would never again offer it (with his enormous fortune) to any other lady. After a couple of years, even the most determined matron, with marriageable daughters on her hands, considered it a waste of time to throw out lures to him, and observed his light, elegant flirtations without a flicker either of hope or of jealousy.

Such a state of affairs exactly suited his indolent, hedonistic disposition. He had settled down into a state of opulent bachelordom, enjoying every luxury which his wealth could provide, rapidly becoming the intimate of the Prince of Wales, and of his scarcely less expensive brother, the Duke of York; abandoning the struggle to overcome a tendency to corpulence; and achieving, by his impeccable lineage, his amiable manners, his lavish hospitality, the genius of his tailor, and the favour of the most admired lady in the land, the position of being a leader of fashion, and one whom any ambitious hostess was proud to include amongst her guests.

Credited by his world with an undying passion for his first love, it had never until this moment occurred to him to question his own heart; and had it been suggested to him that his original infatuation had gently but inevitably declined into fondness he would have been much affronted. But now, staring down into Lady Denville’s beautiful face, an even more beautiful kaleidoscope of his comfortable, untrammelled existence intervened.

Lady Denville’s soft laughter recalled him from this vision; she said, in a voice of affectionate chiding: “Oh, Bonamy, what a complete hand you are! A Banbury man, no less! You don’t wish to marry me, do you?”

He pulled himself together, declaring valiantly: “The one wish of my heart!”

“Well, you didn’t look as if it was! Confess, now! You’ve been shamming it—all these years!”

He rejected this playful accusation with vehemence. “No, that I haven’t! How can you say such a thing, Amabel? Haven’t I stayed single for your sake?”

A provocative smile hovered about the corners of her mouth; she seemed to consider him. “That’s what you say,but are you perfectly sure it wasn’t for your own sake, abominable palaverer that you are, my dear?”

He was so indignant at having a doubt cast on his fidelity that the colour surged up into his face, and he almost glared at her. “No! I mean, yes! I am sure! Upon my word, Amabel—! Have I ever formed an attachment for anyone but yourself? Have I—”

“Often!” she said cordially. “First, there was that ravishing creature, with black curls and flashing eyes, who was used to drive in the park in a landaulet behind a pair of jet-black horses, perfectly matched, and such beautiful steppers that everyone said they must have cost you a fortune! Then there was that languishing female—the one with the flaxen hair, who was certainly of a consumptive habit! And after her—”

“Now, that will do!” interposed Sir Bonamy, aghast at these accurate recollections. “Bachelor’s fare! Good God, Amabel, you should know that they don’t mean anything, those little connexions! Why, your own father—Well, well, mum for that!”

The laughter was quenched in her eyes; she turned her head away, and said in a low voice: “And Denville. Did it mean nothing? It seemed to me to mean so much! What a goose-cap I was!”

“Amabel!” pronounced Sir Bonamy, controlling himself with a strong effort, “I have never permitted myself to utter a word in dispraise of Denville, and I’ll keep my tongue between my teeth now, but had you married me, the most dazzling bird of Paradise amongst the whole of the muslin company would have thrown out her lures in vain to me!”

“But it is too late,” she said mournfully. “I’ve worn out your love, my poor Bonamy! I read it in your face, and indeed I cannot wonder at it!”

“Nothing of the sort!” he replied stoutly. “You misunderstood! I had come to believe that my case was hopeless—can you wonder at it that I was knocked acock? My heart stood still! Was it possible, I asked myself, that its dearest wish might yet be granted? A moment’s rapture, and my spirits were dashed down again, as I realized how absurd it was to think that at my age I could win what was denied me when I was young, and—I fancy—not an ill-looking man!”

“Very true! Even then you had a decided air of fashion—though it wasn’t until much later that you became of the first stare!”

“Well, well!” he said, visibly gratified, “I was always one who liked to have everything prime about me, but propriety of taste, you know, comes to one in later years! But I am growing old, my pretty—too old for you, I fear! Alas that it should be so!”

“Fudge!” said her ladyship briskly. “You are three-and-fifty, just ten years older than I am! A very comfortable age!”

“But of late years I have grown to be a trifle portly! I don’t ride any more, you know, and I get fagged easily nowadays. Ticklish in the wind, too—I might pop off the hooks at any moment, for I have palpitations!”

“Yes, you eat too much,” she nodded. “My poor dear Bonamy, it is high time you had me to take care of you! I have thought for years that your constitution must be of iron to have withstood your excesses, and so it is, for you don’t even suffer from the gout, which Denville did, although for every bottle he drank you drank two, if not three!”

“No, no!” protested Sir Bonamy feebly. “Not three, Amabel! I own I eat more than he did, but recollect that he was of a spare habit! Now, I have a large frame, and I must eat to keep up my strength!”

“So you shall!” said her ladyship, smiling seraphically upon him. “But not to send yourself off in an apoplexy!”

Regarding her with eyes of fascinated horror, he played his last ace. “Evelyn!” he uttered. “You are forgetting Evelyn, my pretty! Ay, and Kit too, I dare say, though he don’t seem to hold me in such aversion as Evelyn does! But you must know Evelyn wouldn’t stomach it! Why, he never sees me but he looks yellow! Well do I know there ain’t a soul you dote on more, and never would I cause a rift between you!”

Wholly unimpressed by this noble self-abnegation, she replied: “You couldn’t! Besides, he is going to be married!”

“What?” he ejaculated, momentarily diverted. “But it’s as plain as a pack-saddle the gal’s head over ears in love with Kit!”

“Yes, and was there ever anything so delightful? Dear Cressy! she might have been made for Kit! Evelyn has formed what he declares to be a lasting passion for quite another sort of girl. Kit believes it may well be so, but she sounds to me to be positively Quakerish! The daughter of a mere country gentleman—perfectly genteel, but only picture to yourself how ineligible Brumby will think her!—and one of those pale, saintly females, reared in the strictest respectability!”