“He made it up out of his head,” explained Mr Ringwood kindly. “Ought to have been an abigail.”

“Yes, by Jove, and that’s another thing I shall have to arrange!” exclaimed Sherry. “’Pon my soul, there’s no end to it! Where the deuce does one find abigails, Gil?”

“She’ll find one,” Mr Ringwood said. “Bridegroom don’t have to engage the abigails. Butler and footmen, yes. Not abigails.”

His lordship shook his head. “Won’t do at all. She wouldn’t know how to go about it. I tell you, she’s the veriest chit out of the schoolroom. Not up to snuff at all.”

Mr Ringwood eyed him uneasily. “Dear old boy, you haven’t run off with a schoolgirl, have you?”

A rueful grin stole into the Viscount’s eyes. “Well, she ain’t quite seventeen yet,” he admitted.

“Sherry, there’ll be the devil of a dust kicked up!”

“No, there won’t. That old cat of a Bagshot woman don’t care a rap for the poor little soul. If it hadn’t been for me, she’d have packed her off to be a governess at some rubbishing school in Bath. Hero! Chit who used to go bird’s-nesting with me! I couldn’t have that, damme if I could! Besides, if I must marry someone, I’d as lief marry Hero as anyone.”

This heresy was too much for his cousin, who uttered in shocked accents: “Isabella!”

“Oh, well, yes, of course!” said Sherry hastily. “But I can’t marry her, so it might as well be Hero. But that’s neither here nor there. Where do I get a special licence, Gil?”

Mr Ringwood shook his head. “Damned if I know, Sherry!” he confessed.

The Viscount appeared much dashed by this reply. Fortunately, the door opened at that moment, and Mr Ringwood’s man came in with the Honourable Ferdinand’s coat, which he laid reverently across a chair back.

“Chilham will know!” said Mr Ringwood triumphantly. “Extraordinary fellow, Chilham! Knows everything! Chilham, where may his lordship get a special licence?”

The valet betrayed not the smallest sign of surprise at this question, but bowed, and replied in refined accents: “I believe, sir, that the correct procedure will be for his lordship to apply to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“But I don’t know the fellow!” protested his lordship, looking very much alarmed.

The valet executed another of his prim bows. “I apprehend, my lord, that acquaintanceship with his grace need not be a requisite preliminary to the procuring of a licence from him.”

“I’ll tell you what, Sherry,” said his cousin, with a good deal of decision, “I wouldn’t go near him, if I were you.”

“Should his lordship prefer it, I fancy, sir, that any bishop will answer his purpose as well,” said Chilham. “Will there be anything further, sir?”

Mr Ringwood waved him away, just as a violent knocking sounded on the street-door. “No, nothing! If that’s anyone wanting to see me, I’m not at home!”

“Very good, sir. I will endeavour to intercept the gentleman,” said Chilham, and withdrew.

His efforts at interception were not crowned with success. Sounds of an altercation penetrated to the parlour, to be followed an instant later by the eruption into the room of a startlingly handsome young man, dressed in riding-breeches and top-boots, and a long-tailed blue coat, with a Belcher handkerchief carelessly knotted round his throat, and his luxuriant black locks in a state of disorder which allowed one ringlet to tumble across his brow. His fiery dark eyes swept the room, and singled out the Viscount. “I knew it!” he said, in a throbbing voice. “I saw your phaeton!”

“Did you?” said Sherry indifferently. “If Jason’s forked your purse again, there’s no need to get in such a taking. I’ll tell him to hand it over.”

“Don’t try to trifle with me, Sherry!” the newcomer said warningly. “Don’t try it, I say! I know where you have been! You have taken a damned advantage of me, by God!”

“No, he hasn’t,” said Mr Ringwood. “Now, sit down, George, for God’s sake, and don’t put yourself in a pucker over nothing! I never saw such a fellow!”

“Nothing to be in a pucker about,” said Mr Fakenham, adding his helpful mite. “Sherry’s going to be married.”

“What?” gasped Lord Wrotham, turning a ghastly colour, and rolling his eyes towards the Viscount.

“No, no, not to Isabella!” Mr Ringwood assured him, touched by the sight of such agony. “Really, Ferdy, how can you? Sherry’s going to marry another female.”

Lord Wrotham staggered to a chair, and sank into it. Anxious to make amends, Mr Fakenham poured out some ale, and pushed the tankard towards him. He took a pull, and sighed deeply. “My God, I thought — Sherry, I have wronged you!”

“Well, I don’t mind,” said the Viscount handsomely. “Got too much else to think about. Besides, you’re always doing it.”

“Sherry,” said Wrotham, fixing him with a hungry gaze, “I insulted you! If you want satisfaction, I will give it to you.”

“If you think it would afford me satisfaction to stand up for you to blow a hole through my chest, you’re mightily mistaken, George!” said Sherry frankly. “I’ll tell you what: if you don’t stop trying to pick quarrels with your best friends, you won’t have any left to you!”

“I think I am going mad!” said Wrotham, with a groan, and dropping his head in his hands. “I thought you was gone into Kent to steal a march on me with the Incomparable!” He raised his head again, and directed one of his fiery stares at Mr Fakenham. “It was you who told me so!” he cried accusingly. “Now, upon my soul, Ferdy — ”

“All a mistake!” said Ferdy feebly. “Never at my best before noon!”

“Well, as a matter of fact, that’s what I did do,” said Sherry, with a candour bordering, in the opinion of his friends, on the foolhardy. “Only she wouldn’t have me.”

“She refused you!” Wrotham cried, his haggard countenance suddenly radiant.

“That’s what I’m telling you. It’s my belief she’s got better game in view than either of us, George. If she can bring him up to scratch, she’ll have Severn, you mark my words!”

“Sherry!” thundered the distraught lover, springing to his feet and clenching his fists, “one word of disparagement of the loveliest, the most divine, the most perfect woman, and I call you out to answer for it!”

“Well, you won’t get me out,” responded the Viscount.

“Am I to call you a coward?” demanded Wrotham.

“No, no, George, don’t do that!” begged Ferdy, much alarmed. “Can’t call poor Sherry a coward because he don’t want to go out with you! Be reasonable, old fellow!”

“Oh, lord, let him call me what he likes!” said the Viscount, quite disgusted. “If I weren’t going to be married today, damned if I wouldn’t draw your claret, George! It’s time someone let a little of that hot blood of yours!”

“What’s more,” said Mr Ringwood severely. “Sherry never said a word you could take amiss. Suppose she does mean to marry Severn? What of it? No harm in that, is there? Dare say she’s taken a fancy to be a duchess. Anyone might!”

“I will not believe that she could be so worldly!” Wrotham said, striding over to the window, and staring out into the street.

His long-suffering friends, relieved to see that his rage had, for the moment, abated, returned to the consideration of the problem confronting Sherry. Their discussion presently attracted Lord Wrotham’s attention, and he came away from the window, and quite mildly asked the Viscount to explain how he came to be marrying a totally unknown damsel. Sherry very obligingly favoured him with a brief resume of his elopement; and Lord Wrotham, convinced at last that he had relinquished all pretensions to the hand of the Incomparable Isabella, warmly shook him by the hand, and offered him his felicitations.

“Yes, that’s all very well,” said Mr Ringwood, “but it don’t help us to find a likely bishop for this special licence.”

“It’ll have to be a Fleet marriage, Sherry,” said Mr Fakenham mournfully.

“No,” said Mr Ringwood. “Won’t do at all. Not legal.”

At this point, Lord Wrotham shocked the company into silence by saying that he was acquainted with a bishop. He explained this extraordinary lapse by adding apologetically that his mother had been as thick as thieves with the fellow any time these past ten years; and, being still under the revulsion of feeling brought about by the realization that the Viscount was no longer one of his rivals, offered to introduce him to this cleric.

The Viscount at once closed with the offer, and proceeded to enlist the services of Mr Ringwood. Mr Ringwood, learning that his task was to escort his friend’s bride on a tour of the milliners’ and mantua-makers’ shops which graced the town, and to dissuade her from purchasing garments unsuited to her station, goggled at the Viscount in dismay. His expostulations went quite unheeded. The Viscount assured him that he would deal famously with Miss Wantage; and, after appointing a rendezvous with Lord Wrotham, bore him off in his phaeton to Grillon’s Hotel.

Chapter Five

MISS WANTAGE, IN SPITE OF HER NATURAL TERROR at being left without support in such a formidable place as Grillon’s Hotel, had passed a peaceful night, the unaccustomed excitement of the previous day having made her tired enough to sink into a sleep from which not all the strange noises of a London street had the power to rouse her. The Viscount had very kindly stayed to partake of dinner in her company before leaving the hotel for his own lodging; and since he had promised to visit her betimes next morning she was able to part from him with tolerable composure. But the high-bred stares of several dowagers sojourning in the hotel, coupled with the overt curiosity of the chambermaid who waited on her, made her feel very ill-at-ease, and it took all the comfort afforded by the knowledge of being dressed in a modish new gown to sustain her spirits until the arrival, at eleven o’clock, of the Viscount, with the shrinking Mr Ringwood in tow.