He took the letter from her. “I will read it, but will you not sit down, Miss Grantham? Let me first get you a glass of wine. You are dreadfully pale!”

“No, no, I want nothing, I thank you! Only read that letter I beg of you!” she said, sinking down on to the sofa.

He looked at her with a good deal of concern, but as she merely signed to him to open the sheet of paper he was holding, he did so, and read Mr Kennet’s startling message.

He raised his eyes when he had come to the end of the letter and fixed them on Miss Grantham’s face, saying in an odd voice: “Why have you brought me this, ma’am?”

“Good God, do you not understand?” she cried. “Your sister has run off with him, believing that he means to marry her! It is all a plot to get money from you! I came at once, because it is my fault! It was at my aunt’s house that she met him, but I never dreamed—but there is no excusing my part in this! I said I did not care what Lucius might do to you! I said I hoped he would ruin you. But indeed, indeed I never meant such wicked mischief as this!” She stopped, trying to regain command over her voice, which was shaking pitiably. “He won’t hurt her,” she managed to say. “He is not as bad as that! You see he says that he does not mean her any harm, but only to hold her to ransom. You must trust me, sir! I can help you, and I will. Silas knows all the places where he might be found. You must do nothing. You must leave it to me! It would be fatal if you were to meet Lucius! The story would be bound to leak out, and whatever happens no one must ever know the truth! Once Silas has found them, I can do the rest. I give you my word Lucius will not dare to breathe a word of it to a soul. If he does, I shall swear that there is no word of truth in it, but that Miss Ravenscar was all the time in my company. But he will not speak! I know things about him that would ruin him if I chose to divulge them, and I will do so if ever he should dare to try to extort money out of you by threatening to publish the story to the world! Oh, do please trust me, sir! I know that none of it would ever have happened if I had not refused to give Adrian up at the outset, just to punish you, and you must, you must let me help you now!”

Mr Ravenscar, who had listened to this speech with remarkable composure, now laid Mr Kennet’s letter aside, and sat down beside Miss Grantham, calmly possessing himself of both her hands, and holding them in a firm clasp. “Deb, my darling, there’s no need for you to distress yourself like this! Don’t tremble so, my poor girl! Arabella is not such a fool as to be taken in by a man of Kennet’s kidney.”

“Oh, don’t you understand?” she cried, in an agony of impatience. “He can be very fascinating to a girl of her age! He—”

“My dearest heart, will you listen to me?” said Mr Ravenscar. “Arabella is upstairs, and very likely asleep, and if you don’t believe me I will take you up to see her with your own eyes!”

She stared at him in a dazed way. “Are you sure?” she uttered.

“Yes, I am perfectly sure,” he replied. “She told me all about it last night.”

“She—she told you?” said Miss Grantham, apparently dazed.

“You see,” explained Mr Ravenscar, “she has always been in the habit of telling me things, and she sometimes even takes my advice. I advised her to beware of the man who tried to persuade her to elope with him, because such a man could only be a fortune-hunter. You will perhaps have noticed that my sister is a minx. I regret to say that it seemed good to her to dupe Kennet into believing that she meant to fly with him tonight. I understand that after waiting in the rain for an hour at the appointed rendezvous, he was joined by a link-boy who had been bribed to deliver a note into his hands which can have done nothing, I imagine, to heighten his self-esteem.”

“Oh, thank God!” whispered Miss Grantham, and burst into overwrought tears.

Mr Ravenscar promptly took her in his arms, and held her tightly that she was quite unable to break free. After making a half-hearted attempt to do so, and uttering a confused protest, to which he paid no heed at all, she subsided in a very weak way, and cried into his shoulder. Mr Ravenscar endured this with great forbearance for several minutes, but when Miss Grantham made various muffled and wholly unintelligible marks into his coat, he commanded her to look up. Miss Grantham then gulped in an unromantic manner, sniffed, and looked for her handkerchief. Evidently feeling that she was incapable of drying her own cheeks, Mr Ravenscar performed the office for her. After that, he kissed her, and, when she tried speak, kissed her again, extremely roughly.

“Oh, no!” said Miss Grantham faintly.

“Be quiet!” said Mr Ravenscar, kissing her for the third time.

Quite cowed, Miss Grantham submitted, making no attempt say anything more for an appreciable time. When she did speak again, she had discarded her bonnet, and was sitting with her head on Mr Ravenscar’s shoulder, and her hand tucked in his. Notwithstanding these circumstances, she said: “You can’t possibly marry me! You know you cannot!”

“My beautiful idiot!” said Mr Ravenscar lovingly.

Deeply pleased by this form of address, Miss Grantham: “You have no notion of the money I owe! You are mad even to think of marrying me!”

“I beg your pardon. I have a very good notion of the money you owe.”

“Do but consider what your relatives would say!”

“I have not the slightest interest in anything they may say.”

“You cannot marry a—a wench out of a gaming-house!”

Mr Ravenscar’s arm tightened about her. “I shall marry a wench out of a gaming-house with as much pomp and ceremony as I can contrive.”

She gave a rather watery chuckle. “Oh, no! Think of your sister!”

“I am thinking of her. I am wholly incapable of controlling her, and trust that you may succeed where I have failed. My stepmother has informed me that it is my duty to marry, to provide Arabella with a suitable chaperon.”

Miss Grantham lifted his hand to her cheek. “I may ruin you,” she warned him.

“You may try,” retorted Mr Ravenscar.

“I shall expect you to pay all Aunt Lizzie’s debts.”

“I mean to do so.”

“And to remove her from that dreadful house.”

“That also.”

“And to be civil to my poor brother.”

“I’ll try to be.”

“And of course to let me set up a faro-bank of my own!” said Miss Grantham, in a small, provocative voice.

“If I ever find you playing anything but commerce or silver loo, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born!” said Mr Ravenscar, kissing her hand. “Jade!”

Miss Grantham heaved a sigh of satisfaction, and abandoned any further attempt to bring him to a sense of his own folly.