“Should I? But I have such a shockingly bad memory!”

“Not when you wish to remember anything!”

“Oh, no, not then!” he agreed. He looked across at her, and at sight of her tightened lips and rising colour, laughed suddenly. “What a chucklehead you are, dear sister! I never yet cast my line over a fish that rose more readily to the fly than you do! What is it to be? The Malaga?”

“I will take half a glass of ratafia, if you will be so good as to pour it out for me,” she answered stiffly.

“It does considerable violence to my feelings, but I will be so good. What an appalling thing to drink at this hour! Or, indeed, at any hour,” he added reflectively. He brought the glass to her, moving in his leisurely way, but with the grace of the born athlete. “Now, what is it this time? Don’t beat about the bush! I don’t want my horses to take cold.”

“I wish you will sit down!” she said crossly.

“Very well, but do, for God’s sake, cut line,” he replied, choosing an armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace.

“It so happens, Alverstoke, that I do desire your assistance,” she said.

“That, dear Louisa, I apprehended when I read your letter,” he retorted, with horrid affability. “Of course, you might have summoned me to stun me with one of your rake-downs, but you couched your missive in such affectionate language that that suspicion was banished almost instantly from my mind, leaving me with the only alternative: that you wanted me to do something for you.”

“I should be grateful, I collect, that you remembered that I had written to ask you to visit me!” she said, glaring at him.

“You can’t think, Louisa, how strongly tempted I am to accept your gratitude with a becoming smirk!” he told her. “But never shall it be said of me that I stole another man’s honours! Trevor gave me the office.”

“Do you mean to tell me that Mr Trevor read my letter?” demanded Lady Buxted indignantly. “Your secretary?”

“I employ him to read my letters,” explained his lordship.

“Not those written by your nearest and dearest!”

“Oh, no, not them!” he agreed.

Her bosom swelled. “You are the most abom — ” She stopped, with a gasp; visibly wrought with herself; and contrived, by a heroic effort, to force the smile back to her lips, and to say, with a tolerable assumption of amusement: “Wretch! I shan’t allow you to take a rise out of me! I want to talk to you about Jane!”

“Who the devil is — Oh, yes, I know! One of your girls!”

“My eldest daughter, and, let me remind you, your niece, Alverstoke!”

“Unjust, Louisa, I needed no reminder!”

“I am bringing the dear child out this season,” she announced, ignoring the interpolation. “I shall present her, of course, at one of the Drawing-rooms — if the Queen holds any more, but they say her health is now so indifferent that — ”

“You’ll have to do something about her freckles — if she’s the one I think she is,” he interrupted. “Have you tried citron-water?”

“I didn’t invite you to come here to discuss Jane’s appearance!” she snapped.

“Well, why did you invite me?”

“To ask you to hold a ball in her honour — at Alverstoke House!” she disclosed, rushing her fence.

“To do what?”

“I know very well what you are going to say, but only consider, Vernon! She is your niece, and what place could be more suitable for her come-out ball than Alverstoke House?”

“This house!” he responded, without hesitation.

“Oh, don’t be so disagreeable! I am persuaded they could not dance above thirty couples in this room, and only think of all the fuss and botheration!”

“I am thinking of it,” said his lordship.

“But there can be no comparison! I mean, here, where I should be obliged to remove all the furniture from my drawing-room, besides using the dining-room for supper, and the parlour for the ladies’ cloaks — and Alverstoke House, where there is such a splendid ballroom! And it is my own old home, too!”

“It is also my home,” said the Marquis. “My memory is occasionally faulty, but I retain the liveliest recollection of what you so rightly term the fuss and botheration that attended the balls given there for Augusta, for yourself, and for Eliza, and my answer, dear sister, is No!”

“Have you no proper feeling?” she said tragically.

He had drawn an enamel snuff-box from his pocket, and was critically studying the painting on its lid. “No, none at all. I wonder if I made a mistake when I purchased this? I liked it at the time, but I begin to find it a trifle insipid.” He sighed, and opened the box, with a practised flick of his thumb. “And I most assuredly do not like this mixture,” he said, inhaling an infinitesimal pinch, and dusting his fingers with an expression of distaste. “You will say, of course, that I should have known better than to have permitted Mendlesham to thrust his Sort upon me, and you are perfectly right: one should always mix one’s own.” He got up. “Well, if that’s all, I’ll take my leave of you.”

“It is not all!” she uttered, her colour much heightened. “I knew how it would be, of course — oh, I knew!”

“I imagine you might, but why the devil you wasted my time — ”

“Because I hoped that for once in your life you might show some — some sensibility! some apprehension of what is due to your family! even some affection for poor Jane!”

“Rainbow-chasing, Louisa! My lack of sensibility has distressed you for years; I haven’t the least affection for your poor Jane, whom I should be hard put to it to recognize, if I met her unawares; and I’ve yet to learn that the Buxted are members of my family.”

“Am I not a member of your family?” she demanded. “Do you forget that I am your sister?”

“No: I’ve never been granted the opportunity to forget it. Oh, don’t fly off the hooks again — you can have no notion how bracket-faced you look when you get into one of your pelters! Console yourself with my assurance that if Buxted had left you purse-pinched I should have felt myself obliged to let you hang on my sleeve.” He looked mockingly down at her. “Yes, I know you’re about to tell me that you haven’t sixpence to scratch with, but the plain truth is that you are very well to do in the world, my dear Louisa, but the most unconscionable pinch-penny of my acquaintance! Now, don’t nauseate me by prating of affection! You’ve no more for me than I have for you.”

Considerably disconcerted by this direct attack, she stammered: “How can you say so? When I am sure I have always been most sincerely attached to you!”

“You deceive yourself, sister: not to me, but to my purse!”

“Oh, how can you be so unjust? And as for my being well to do in the world, I daresay that you, with your reckless extravagance, would be astonished to learn that I am obliged to exercise the strictest economy! Why, pray, do you imagine that I removed from our beautiful house in Albemarle Street when Buxted died, and came to live in this out-of-the-way place?”

He smiled. “Since there was not the least occasion for that removal, I can only suppose that it was from your incurable love of sconcing the reckoning.”

“If you mean that I was obliged to reduce my expenses — ”

“No, merely that you were unable to resist the temptation to do so.”

“With five children left on my hands — ” She broke off, warned by the quizzical look in his eye that it would be unwise to develop this theme.

“Just so!” he said sympathetically. “I think we had better part, don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” said Lady Buxted, with suppressed passion, “I think you must be the most odious, unnatural creature that ever drew breath! No doubt if it had been Endymion who had applied to you you would have been all compliance!”

These bitter words appeared powerfully to affect the Marquis, but after a stunned moment he pulled himself together, and recommended his sister, in faint but soothing accents, to retire to bed with a paregoric draught. “For you are sadly out of curl, Louisa, believe me! Do let me assure you that if ever Endymion should ask me to give a ball in his honour I shall take steps to have him placed under restraint!”

“Oh, how detestable you are!” she exclaimed. “You know very well I didn’t mean — that what I meant — that — ”

“No, no, don’t explain it to me!” he interrupted. “It is quite unnecessary, I promise you! I perfectly understand you — indeed, I’ve done so for years! You — and I rather fancy, Augusta too — have persuaded yourself that I have a strong partiality for Endymion — ”

“That — that moonling!”

“You are too severe: merely a slow-top!”

“Yes, we all know that you think him a positive pattern-card of perfection!” she said angrily, kneading her handkerchief between her hands.

He had been idly swinging his quizzing-glass on the end of its long riband, but was moved by this interjection to rise the glass to one eye, the better to survey his sister’s enflamed countenance. “What a very odd interpretation to put upon my words!” he remarked.

“Don’t tell me!” retorted Lady Buxted, in full career. “Whatever your precious Endymion wants he may have for the asking! While your sisters — ”

“I hesitate to interrupt you, Louisa,” murmured his lordship untruthfully, “but I think that extremely doubtful. I’m not at all benevolent, you know.”

“And you don’t make him an allowance, I collect! Oh, no, indeed!”

“So that’s what’s wound you up, is it? What a very hubble-bubble creature you are! At one moment you revile me for behaving scaly to my family, and at the next you come to cuffs with me for honouring my obligations to my heir!”