“Only if I can also have too much pride to let anyone suspect my secret!” stipulated Evelyn. “Not even for you am I going to languish with a broken heart, Kester!”

Sir Bonamy, who had listened in rapt interest to the tale, said: “Well, if ever I knew you had it in you, Kit! Why, I shouldn’t wonder at it if you could write a book, or a play, or some such thing!” He perceived, with faint surprise, that Cressy had collapsed into helpless giggles. “I’m bound to say I don’t see what there is to laugh at: in my opinion you made a dashed moving thing of it, my boy! You know, Amabel, I begin to think he’ll go a long way after all!”

“I know he will!” she responded proudly. “I’ve frequently told you that Kit was always equal to anything!”

Kit’s lips twitched at these tributes, but he was looking at the Dowager. “Will it do, ma’am?”

She was not attending, and vouchsafed no answer. He waited; and after a short interval she said abruptly: “I’ll write to Stavely: no sense in leaving anything to chance! You’ll give the letter to him, and take care he reads it! I never in my life listened to a sicklier, stupider story, but, from what I’ve seen of you, all you would do, if I was to tell you I wouldn’t have it, would be to think of something even more outrageous! Cressy, you may give me your arm! I’m going to bed, for I’m fagged to death!” She bade the assembled company a cursory good night, but informed Kit, holding open the door for her, that she would thank him not to get himself hanged while she was still alive, and able to feel the shame of being connected with a gallows-bird. After that, she allowed him to kiss her hand, and withdrew, leaning heavily on Cressy’s arm.

“Kester, if you do indeed mean to spread this story, we must give it a new touch! You could no more tell it as it stands than I could. Anyone who knows us would guess we were cutting a sham!”

“Good God, we aren’t going to spread it!” replied Kit. “That’s the last thing we should do, if it happened to be true! There’s no need to dress it up. We have only to put Fimber and Challow in possession of the bare bones of it, and leave them to tell it as they please. Give Challow half-an-hour amongst his cronies at the Running Footman, and I’ll lay you any odds you like that there’ll be upwards of a dozen garbled versions spreading all over London within a day! Lord, how many times has Challow favoured you with a choice morsel of gossip? If Stavely consents to Cressy’s marriage, he’ll be only too glad to adopt the story; and I don’t mean to tell Mama what sort of touch to give it!”

“Oh, no!” agreed Lady Denville. “I know just how I shall tell it, if anyone ventures to ask me any questions, when the advertisement of the engagement appears! Of course, only my particular friends will venture, but I know one who will, and it won’t matter a rush if not another soul does!”

“For my part,” said Sir Bonamy firmly, “I shall say I ain’t on the high gab!”

“That’s the ticket, sir!” said Kit, grinning at him. “Give ’em a set-down!”

“Yes, but do you think it might give people quitea wrong notion?” suggested Lady Denville. “Could you, perhaps, say that it is a—a most touching romance?”

“I might do that,” conceded Sir Bonamy, having subjected the proposition to careful consideration.

“What do you think Evelyn should say, Kit?” asked her ladyship anxiously.

“Nothing whatsoever!” he replied.

“That’s fortunate!” remarked his twin.

“All Evelyn has to do,” said Kit, answering the doubtful question in her ladyship’s eyes, “is to behave exactly as he would if the story were true! Poker up, assume an air of distant civility, look down his nose—You know what he is when he gets on his high ropes, Mama!”

“And how, you uppish Jack-in-the-pulpit, do you mean to answer the curious?” inquired Evelyn.

“If it please your lordship—or even if it doesn’t!—” retorted Kit, “I shan’t be obliged to answer them, because by the time the news is out, I shall be in Vienna! Now, don’t eat me! Before I make good my escape, I am going to divulge my apocryphal story to the person for whose benefit it was principally designed. And if you imagine, Eve, that—” He broke off, as the door opened, and looked quickly round.

But it was Cressy who came into the room, and, as she told him, only to bid him goodnight, and to tell him that she had left the Dowager chuckling. “I said I was positive you would make a stir in the world, and that’s what set her off: she said she hadn’t a doubt you would, and fell into such a fit of choking that I was in the greatest dread that it would carry her off! Kit, only a Fancot could have fabricated such a story! Of all the—No, I will not start laughing again!” Her hands were clasped in his, and her slender fingers tightened. “When shall I see you again?” she asked, looking up into his face.

“Tomorrow, love,” he answered, smiling tenderly down at her.

“Ah, yes, but after that?”

“As soon as I can contrive it. That’s something I must discuss with your father. If the abominable Albinia could be cajoled into thinking she would enjoy a trip abroad—But we won’t pin our hopes to that chance! Stewart, I’m persuaded, would give me leave in August.”

She said, resolutely smiling: “Not so very long, then! We shall leave for Worthing almost immediately. I suppose, you couldn’t—No, of course not!”

He shook his head. “I’ve still something to do, love, and I’ve lingered too long already.”

“Cressy, my dear, forgive me if I run away!” interposed Lady Denville. “I have suddenly remembered that I have something most important I must say to Evelyn, before he goes back to Pinny!”

Evelyn, instantly and accurately interpreting this as an excuse hurriedly conjured up to leave Kit alone with his prospective bride, responded without hesitation. Sir Bonamy was a little harder to move, but it was not long before he grasped that her ladyship was trying to convey a silent message to him, and no time at all after that, before complete enlightenment dawned upon him. “Oh!” he said, hoisting himself to his feet: “Yes, yes, my pretty! To be sure! I’ll bid you goodnight, my dear Miss Stavely! It’s been a tiring day, you know—devilish tiring!”

“Yes, indeed!” said Kit, perceiving that his love was once more in dire straits. “Eve, wait for me!”

“Why, Kester, of course! What’s an hour to me? Don’t hesitate to wake me if I should happen to have fallen asleep!” responded his twin, strategically retiring in Sir Bonamy’s wake, and closing the door behind him.

It was not, however, many minutes before Kit joined him. “Hell-hound!” Kit said, entirely without rancour. “Eve, I racked my brains to hit upon a way to speed your affair, but it can’t be done! The only way to enable us to get there with both feet is for me to marry Cressy before you allow my uncle even to know that Miss Askham exists.”

“I might have guessed you’d stab me in the back!” said Evelyn mournfully. “First you tried to usurp my place; then you stole my bride—Kester, remember my shoulder, remember I’m the head of the family, you unnatural brute!”

“Will you be serious?” demanded Kit wrathfully.

“I swear I will be, if only you won’t talk balderdash! Good God, you great gudgeon, I haven’t yet so much as made the smallest push even to fix Patience’s interest!”

“I know that, but I know you too, twin! However, it can’t be helped, and if you join Mama in Brighton presently you won’t be so far off that you can’t visit the Askhams, will you?”

“No, Kester, I shan’t. So, now that that’s off your mind, let us consider your affairs! I’ve an uneasy conviction that you should have been in Vienna days ago. Yes?”

“Yes,” Kit admitted, “I don’t think Stewart will cut up stiff, however, so don’t tease yourself! I made my godfather’s death my excuse for wanting leave of absence, and couldn’t have hit on a surer card! He almost ordered me not to hesitate to extend my furlough, if I found myself unable to settle my affairs as soon as I’d thought I should. So, as I hadn’t the smallest notion where you were, or how long it would be before you reappeared, I took the precaution of writing to him, before I left London, telling him that I’d found things in the deuce of a tangle! Never mind that! What I was going to tell you when Cressy came into the room, was that the moment I’ve settled things with Stavely, I’m going to post off to present my uncle with my moving story. That ought to make all tidy!”

“Make all tidy—! You’d ruin yourself with him!”

“Not a bit of it!” said Kit cheerfully. “You think that because you can’t deal with him no one can, but that’s where you’re out! You leave him to me—but for God’s sake, don’t forget the part you played in the epic! Perhaps I’d better write it down for you.”

“Perhaps you had,” agreed Evelyn. “After all, there’s no saying what I might do, when you aren’t here to—Listen! That’s not Fimber’s step!”

He got up, as a knock fell on the door, and prepared to slip behind the bed-curtains. Kit strode over to the door, and opened it, to find Sir Bonamy standing outside, his nightcap already on his head, and his uncorseted form swathed in his gorgeous dressing-gown. “Oh, it’s you, sir!” Kit said. “Come in! Is there anything amiss?”

“No, no, I wouldn’t say there was anything amiss!” replied Sir Bonamy. “The thing is—” He broke off, as his eyes fell upon Evelyn. “I thought you was alone!” he told Kit. “Well, well, never mind! It wasn’t important!”

Evelyn, stunned by the monstrous figure presented by Sir Bonamy en deshabille, said faintly: “Don’t go on my account, sir! Or shall I go?”