“You don’t mean it!” gasped Sir Bonamy, staggered by this disclosure.

“I do mean it!” she asserted, tears sparkling on her curling eyelashes. She brushed them hurriedly away. “Evelyn thinks I shall love her, but I have the most melancholy conviction that I shan’t, Bonamy! And, what is more, I don’t think she will love me, do you?”

“No,” he replied candidly. “Not if she’s Quakerish! You wouldn’t deal well at all!”

“Exactly so! I knew you would understand! Evelyn declares I must continue to live in Hill Street, but that I was determined not to do, even if he had married Cressy! I had quite made up my mind to it that I must retire to an establishment of my own, and dwindle into a mere widow, until you came here, my dear friend, only because I begged you to, and not wanting to leave Brighton in the least, which I know very well you didn’t, and it struck me, like a flash of lightning, that never had you wavered in your attachment to me, and never had you received the smallest reward, or even looked for one, for all your goodness to me, and your exceeding generosity!”

“I see what it is!” he exclaimed. “Kit blabbed to you that I didn’t have that brooch of yours copied, silly chub that he is! Now, put it out of your mind, my pretty! Yes, yes, you think you must make a sacrifice of yourself, but I won’t permit you to do so!”

She interrupted him, staring at him with widened eyes. “You didn’t—Do you mean to tell me that I lost the real brooch to Silverdale? And you gave me £500 for it, saying that—Bonamy, did you sell any of my jewellery? Kit has never breathed a word of this! Bonamy—did you?”

“No, no, of course I didn’t!” he answered, much discomposed. “Now, is it likely I’d let you sell your jewels, and replace ’em with paste and pinchbeck? It was nothing to me, Amabel, so, if Kit didn’t tell you, you may forget it, and oblige me very much!”

“Oh, Bonamy!” she cried, impulsively stretching out her hands to him, “how good you are! How much, much too good!”

He responded instinctively, and, the next instant, found himself clasping a fragrant armful to his massive bosom. Lady Denville, adapting her slim form, not without difficulty, to his formidable contour, lifted her face invitingly. His senses swimming, Sir Bonamy tightened his hold about her, and fastened his lips to hers. At the back of his mind lurked the conviction that he would regret this yielding to temptation, and the premonition that the sybaritic pleasures of his life stood in jeopardy; but never before had he been encouraged to venture more than a chaste salute upon her ladyship’s hand, or, upon rare occasions, her cheek, and he surrendered to intoxication.

He came to earth again when she gently disengaged herself, saying: “How comfortable it is to reflect that we need neither of us look forward to a lonely old age, which I have always thought the most lowering prospect!”

His countenance would not have led anyone to suppose that he was deriving much comfort from this reflection, but he replied heroically: “You have made me the happiest man on earth, my beautiful!”

The irrepressible laughter, inherited from her by her sons, bubbled up. “No, I haven’t: I’ve thrown you into gloom! But I shall make you happy. Only consider how alike are our tastes, and how very well we are acquainted! Naturally it will seem strange at first, because you are so much accustomed to being a bachelor. To own the truth, I didn’t think I should ever marry again, for I have enjoyed being a widow amazingly! But I am persuaded it will be the best thing for everyone! Particularly for Evelyn!”

“I hope he may think so!” Sir Bonamy said gloomily.

“It isn’t of the least consequence if he doesn’t, because it will be. I dare say he won’t care nearly as much now that his mind is full of his angelic Patience. In any event, he’s at the end of his rope, poor love, on account of my wretched debts, which he is determined to discharge, and which he would never be able to do until he is thirty, if he marries Patience, because you may depend upon it Brumby will utterly disapprove of the match! But if he were not obliged to pay my debts that wouldn’t signify in the least, and although he made me promise I would never again borrow money from you, he couldn’t refuse to let you pay the debts if I were your wife, could he?”

“Well, it won’t make a ha’porth of odds if he does!” said Sir Bonamy, accepting without resentment this unflattering reason for the marriage proposed to him, but regarding his prospective bride with tolerant cynicism. “I might have known that resty young bellows-blower of yours was behind this!”

“Yes, but how fortunate, Bonamy, that my affairs had come to such a pass that I was obliged to consider the advantages of marrying you! But for that I might never have thought of it!” she said. “Or have perceived how much more comfortable I should be if I did marry you! It is all very well now to be a widow, but only think how dismal when I begin to grow hagged, and have to cover up my throat, because it looks exactly like the neck of a plucked hen, and I’ve no flirts left to me! And then, of course, I thought of you, my poor Bonamy, and my heart was wrung! I, at least, have my beloved sons, and I might become wrapped up in my grandchildren—though it seems most unlikely, and quite sinks my spirits—but what, my dear, will be left to you, when your friends drop off—”

“Eh?” exclaimed Sir Bonamy, startled.

“Or die!” continued her ladyship inexorably. “And you find yourself alone, with no one to care a straw what becomes of you—except that odious cousin of yours, who will very likely push you into your grave!—and your whole life wasted? Dear Bonamy I cannot endure the thought of it!”

“No!” he said fervently. “No, indeed!”

She smiled brilliantly upon him. “So you see that it will be much better for you too!”

“Yes,” he agreed, horrified by the picture she had delineated. “Good God, yes!”

20

It was not many minutes before Cressy, dutifully accompanying the Dowager on a sedate drive, realized that an open carriage was hardly the place for an exchange of confidences. The Dowager, with a magnificent disregard for the coachman and the footman, perched on the box-seat in front of her, knew no such reticence, and discoursed with great freedom on the birth of an heir to the barony, animadverting with embarrassing candour, and all the contempt of a matriarch who had brought half-a-dozen children into the world without fuss or complications, on sickly young women who fancied themselves to be ill days before their time, and ended by suffering cross births and hard labours. For herself, she had no patience with such nonsense.

But although she expressed the fervent hope that the heir would not grow up to resemble his mama, it was evident that Albinia (in spite of her hard labour) had grown considerably in her esteem. Lord Stavely’s first wife had been of the Dowager’s choosing, but although she had, naturally, held her up as a pattern of virtue and amiability, she had never been able, in her secret heart, to forgive her for having failed to present her lord with an heir. But Albinia, whom Lord Stavely had married without so much as a by-your-leave, had produced (if his lordship’s ecstatically scribbled letter were to be believed), a bouncing boy, sound in wind and limb, and weighing almost nine pounds; and this feat, notwithstanding her own subsequent exhaustion, raised her pretty high in the Dowager’s esteem. But not so high as to exempt her from censure for her alleged inability to nurse her child. The inescapable duty of a mother to suckle her offspring was one of the Dowager’s hobby-horses; and originated from the shocking discovery that the wet-nurse engaged to supply the wants of her second son (unhappily deceased), had been strongly addicted to spirituous liquors. The Dowager informed her granddaughter, in a very robust way, that she had already written to recommend hot ale and ginger to Albinia.

Cressy bore this with tolerable equanimity, but when the Dowager abruptly deserted the subject of the proper sustenance of the Honourable Edward John Francis Stavely, to warn her that the appearance of this young gentleman on the scene made it imperative for her to withdraw from Mount Street to an establishment of her own, she laid a hand on her outspoken grandmother’s knee, and warningly directed her attention to the stolid, liveried backs on the box of the landaulet.

The Dowager appeared to appreciate the propriety of this reminder. She said: “Drat these open carriages! I never could abide ’em! Coachman! Drive back to Ravenhurst!”

She reinforced this command by digging him in the back with her cane, an indignity which he suffered with perfect good humour, having decided, days previously, that she was a rare old griffin, full of pluck, and game to the scratch.

“I want to talk to you, Cressy,” she said grimly. “It’s high time you emptied the bag! So we’ll go back, and you’ll come with me to my room, and give me a round tale before I take my nap!”

“Yes, ma’am: certainly!” responded Cressy, with smiling composure.

The Dowager favoured her with a searching glance, but refrained from comment. She beguiled the rest of the drive with roseate plans for the future Lord Stavely’s career, in which agreeable occupation she was much encouraged by Cressy; but although this put her into great good humour, it was with marked asperity that she commanded Cressy, as soon as she had removed her sable-plumed bonnet, and sunk into the winged chair, thoughtfully placed in her bedroom by her hostess, to declare herself, and without any roundaboutation.