The doubt vanished from Arabella’s face. She ran forward, and caught Deborah’s hands, exclaiming! “There! I knew I should like you! Oh, how badly you did behave, to be sure! But I told my aunt you had such laughing eyes that I could not but like you! Do you mind my coming to see you without my Mama? She will never go anywhere, you know, and besides that, she is against you, just like all of them! Only Adrian said you were not like that in the general way, and I made up my mind I would come and see you for myself.”

Deborah coloured, and said: “You should not have come, Miss Ravenscar. I am persuaded your brother would not wish you to visit this house.”

“Oh, pooh! Who cares for Max?” said his sister scornfully.

“He will know nothing about it, in any event. And if you are going to be my cousin, there can be no objection to my visiting you. I must tell you that I am very glad you are to marry Adrian.”

“Are you?” asked Deborah, surprised. She led Arabella to the sofa. “I cannot think why you should be!”

“Well, I am glad now, because I like you,” replied Arabella, seating herself, and turning towards Deborah with a pretty, confiding air. “I was glad before, because my Mama, and Aunt Selina, had made the stupidest plan to marry me to Adrian, which is a thing neither of us wanted in the very least. Of course, they could not have prevailed with us, because we decided long ago that we should not suit, but you have no idea how tiresome it is to have people making such schemes for one!”

“Your brother too, no doubt, desired this marriage?”

“I daresay he does, not that he has ever said a word to me about it, for the only thing he said to me about being married was that I am too young and silly to think of such a thing, which is absurd. But I don’t care for what Max says, in any event. I shall marry whom I choose, and when I choose! I have very nearly run away to be married several times already.”

Miss Grantham could not help laughing at this. “Do you change your mind so often, Miss Ravenscar?”

“Yes; isn’t it dreadful?” sighed Arabella, shaking her head. “I have been in love a score of times already! And the odd thing is that each time it happens I do truly feel quite sure that it is for always. But somehow it never is. That is why Mama has brought me to London. She has such poor health, you see, that she finds me a sad trial. She said Max must look after me, and naturally I was transported, because I like being in London, and going to parties. In fact, it is just what I hoped would happen!”

“You do not anticipate, I collect, that your brother may look after you too strictly?”

“Oh no!” said Arabella blithely. “Max is a great dear, and he is never unreasonable! He does not like to be crossed, of course, but we deal delightfully together, I assure you.”

“I fear that he would be very angry if he knew you had come to visit me.”

“Max is never angry with me,” replied Miss Ravenscar confidently. “Besides, why should he care? You are charming!” Miss Grantham blushed. “Thank you! I beg you will not tell him that you have been here, however. You must be aware that he dislikes me very much.”

“Yes, I am, of course, and I cannot conceive why he should! I thought it might be a good thing if I were to tell him that he is quite mistaken in you.”

“No, no!” said Deborah quickly. “I beg you will not do so! It must sound odd to you, I know, but I have a very particular reason for not wishing him to be informed of this visit!”

“Well, I won’t say a word about it, then,” said Arabella obligingly. “I daresay I had better not, indeed, for if he has taken one of his stupid dislikes to you he won’t listen to any thing anyone says. But why did you behave in that shocking way at Vauxhall? Do tell me! You made me want to laugh so!”

Miss Grantham, finding herself quite unable to explain her conduct at Vauxhall, said vaguely that she had had a reason, which she could not well divulge. Arabella looked as though she would have liked to probe farther into the mystery, but was too well-bred to do so. Instead, she remarked that she was acquainted with a Mr Grantham, and wondered if he might be related to Deborah. “I met him at the Assemblies at Tunbridge Wells,” she said. “He is in the 14th Foot.”

“Indeed!” Deborah said. “Then you have met my brother, Miss Ravenscar. Do you know him well?”

“Oh, I have danced with him several times!” responded Arabella carelessly. “Tunbridge Wells was abominably flat, you know, until the 14th were stationed there!”

She was interrupted by the entrance of Lucius Kennet, who had been told by Silas who was abovestairs, and had come up in a spirit of the liveliest curiosity to behold the guest with his own eyes.

Miss Grantham was not quite pleased at his having come into the room. It was evident, from Arabella’s artless disclosures, that that young lady was extremely susceptible, and Mr Kennet, besides being a good-looking man, had more than his share of male charm. She was obliged to present him to Arabella, but gave him a somewhat minatory look as she did so, which he received with the blandest of smiles. He sat down opposite to the sofa, and engaged both ladies in conversation. His manners were pleasing, and his address very easy and assured, while the smile that lurked in his eyes has been more than one lady’s undoing. However, Miss Grantham was relieved to see that he was behaving with perfect propriety towards her guest, treating her, in fact, in a way that almost bordered on the avuncular.

But nevertheless Miss Grantham was not sorry when Arabella got up to take her leave. She could not think Lucius Kennet a fit companion for a volatile young lady not yet nineteen years of age, and she was a little afraid that his knowledge of the world, the gay stories he told, the cosmopolitan air that clung to him, might have an extremely undesirable effect upon Miss Ravenscar. When Arabella exclaimed that he must have led the most romantic life, and expressed a wish to be a vagabond herself, she said in a dampening fashion that vagabondage was not at all romantic, but, on the contrary, tedious beyond words.

“Oh, I should love to be a gamester, and to travel, and to have adventures!” declared Arabella, drawing on her gloves again. “I must go now, but pray let me come to see you again, dear Miss Grantham! I shan’t say a word to Max, or to Mama, I promise.”

But although Miss Grantham had thought of a number of ways of punishing Mr Ravenscar, the introduction of his half-sister into gaming circles was not one of them, and she told Arabella that she could not permit her to visit the house while her relatives continued to disapprove of its inmates. “It would not be right, my dear,” she said, taking Arabella’s hand, and patting it. “You must do what your Mama and—and your brother think proper.”

Arabella pouted. “Oh, that is so stuffy, and I did not think you would be that! When you are married to Adrian, I shall visit you often, I warn you!”

“Ah, then!” said Deborah, smiling. “That is another matter.”

So Arabella went away, and was handed into her carriage by Mr Kennet, who told her that he for one was very sorry to think he should not see her in St. James’s Square again, since he had had the oddest feeling when he had entered the saloon that the sun had got into it.

“It is a very sunny day,” said Arabella demurely.

“But the saloon looks north,” Mr Kennet reminded her. “Sure, there’s no accounting for it at all!”

Arabella’s dimples peeped out. “It is very strange indeed,” she agreed, as innocent as a kitten.

“I wonder, now, do you ever walk in the Park?” asked Kennet.

“Why sometimes I do!” said Arabella. “In the morning, with my maid.” She paused, and added, with the naughtiest glean in her eye: “The most discreet creature!”

He was still holding her tiny, gloved hand in his, and he pinched one of her fingers, and said, chuckling: “Miss Ravenscar, you’re the prettiest rogue I’ve clapped eyes on this many a day! It will be a queer thing, so it will, if we do not meet in the Park, one of these fine days.”

“Oh, do you walk there too?” asked Arabella ingenuously. “Then I daresay we shall meet—one of these fine days!”

She withdrew her hand, and Mr Kennet laughed, and signaled to the coachman to drive on.

Mr Ravenscar, meanwhile, in happy ignorance of his half sister’s activities, had received another letter from St James’ Square, written in the same sloping characters as the first, but in far more agitated language. The letter hinted at unforeseen complications, held out a vague hope of capitulation, but ex pressed a desire on the part of the writer to meet him for the purpose of explaining the awkwardness of the situation. Mr Kennet, improvising freely in the guise of Miss Grantham wrote that it was imperative that Lady Bellingham should, know nothing either of this correspondence or of the propose negotiations, and desired Mr Ravenscar to be so obliging a to reply under cover to Mr Lucius Kennet, at 66 Jermyn Street.

Mr Ravenscar found himself at a loss to understand either the mysterious references in the letter, or the need for discussion of his ultimatum, and wrote, as requested, to say. This brought forth a distracted note, the gist of which left him with the impression that Lady Bellingham, and not Miss Grantham, was the prime mover in the plot, to entrap Lord Mablethorpe; and indicated a fear of her aunt on Miss Grantham’s part which would have astonished both ladies, had the been privileged to see this remarkable letter. It ended by begging Mr Ravenscar to do Miss Grantham the favour of meeting her at a rendezvous in the Park, on Wednesday afternoon at dusk, when she engaged herself to explain fully to him how matters stood, and to do what lay in her power to comply wit his wishes.