“If I thought that — !” said George, thrusting back the lock of hair from his brow.

“She would not be so cruel!” said Hero indignantly. “Don’t heed him, George!”

“If I thought it,” George said, “if I believed that she was trifling with me so heartlessly, I would — I would grind the rose under my heel!”

“No need to make a damned mess on our new carpet,” said Sherry. “Throw it out of the window!”

“Sherry, I don’t know how you can be so unfeeling!” Hero said reproachfully.

“Well, dash it, what is he to do with it?” asked Sherry. “A fellow can’t carry a lot of withered rose leaves about in his pocket! Just look at the thing already!”

George appeared to be a little daunted by this point of view. “I suppose it will fall to pieces,” he said disconsolately.

“No, no, there is not the least need!” Hero assured him. “You must press it between the leaves of a book, and then it will keep its shape. Sherry, George desires us to go with him to witness a balloon ascension! We are to take Isabella along with us, if she cares to come. You will like to go, will you not?”

“What, to watch a curst balloon go up?” exclaimed Sherry. “No, I wouldn’t!”

“But, Sherry, if you will not accompany us I do not know how we are to contrive!”

“Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll make such a cake of myself! If George wants to look like a Johnny Raw he may do so, but he ain’t going to drag me into it!”

Hero was about to argue the point when she suddenly recollected that Sherry too had been one of the Incomparable’s suitors. She thought that perhaps he was trying to mask a natural disinclination to spend a whole afternoon in the company of the unattainable, and tactfully forbore to press him any further. She suggested to George that they should invite Mr Fakenham to make a fourth in their party. George agreed to this, but when he had had a moment in which to think it over he remembered that Ferdy also formed one of Miss Milborne’s court, and he said that he fancied balloons were not much in Ferdy’s line, and would instead bring his friend, Algernon Gumley, to share in the treat. The Viscount let out a most unseemly crack of laughter at this, but refused to explain why. George informed Hero, a trifle stiffly, that she would find Mr Gumley a very good humoured fellow, and took himself off, carefully carrying his rose with him.

Hero sat down at the writing-table to compose a suitable note to Isabella. Sherry said: “What a fellow George is! Dead roses and balloon ascensions! You wouldn’t think it, but he used to be as game a man as you would meet in a twelve-month before he clapped eyes on Isabella. I’ll swear she means to have Severn, too — if she can get him! They’re laying bets against it at the clubs, you know.”

“Oh, Sherry!” Hero said, turning round to look at him. “She could not be so heartless as to bestow a flower upon him if her affections were not seriously engaged!”

“Much you know about it!” he responded. “Why, she’s the most heartless girl I ever met in my life! Look at the way she treated me!”

“Yes,” Hero said, hanging down her head a little. “She was very unkind to you, of course. I am sorry I teased you to go with us this afternoon. I forgot that it must give you pain.”

“Give me pain?” repeated Sherry. “Oh — ah! Exactly! Slipped my mind for the moment. Do you mean to be writing letters for ever, or are we to drive round to Grosvenor Square?”

Hero assured him that she would be ready to set forth with him in a quarter of an hour, so he went off to send a message to the stables, while she finished her note, and despatched it by the hand of her page.

The visit to the dowager was not a success. She was discovered reclining on a sofa, with the blinds half lowered and Hervey’s Meditations Among the Tombs significantly open on her knee. She greeted her daughter-in-law with a visible shudder, and embraced her son with all the tenderness of one conveying speechless sympathy for a victim of fate. A suggestion put forward by Sherry that she might present Hero at Court brought on all her most alarming symptoms. She held out no hope of her health’s permitting her to visit the house in Half Moon Street; and a blunt request from Sherry for the family emeralds apparently brought up a series of the most affecting memories, which obliged her to have recourse to her vinaigrette, and to dab at the corners of her perfectly dry eyes.

“But you never wear ’em, ma’am!” Sherry protested. “Dash it, you were always used to say green was not your colour, and you teased my father into giving you the diamond set in their stead! Besides, you know very well they belong to me — have done, ever since my father died!”

“Alas, that you should have so little sensibility!” quavered his parent. “The jewels which your dear pap clasped about my throat when we were first married — ”

“No, he didn’t,” interrupted Sherry. “My grandfather was alive then, and, what’s more, my father had the devil of a work to induce my grandmother to give ’em up when the old man died! Yes, and you went into one of your miffs, ma’am, and said she had no right to ’em! Remember it as it was yesterday.”

Perceiving that the widow showed every sign of sinking into a swoon, Hero hastily said that indeed she did not wish to have the emeralds until her mama-in-law was dead. But this turned out to have been an unfortunate remark, as it gave the widow an opportunity of saying that she had no doubt her son and his wife were eagerly awaiting that day. She added that it could not be far distant, and this so much annoyed Sherry that he became quite obstinate about the emeralds, and said that if they were not delivered at his house within a week he should instruct old Ditchling to collect them.

“Perhaps,” said the dowager, her colour much heightened, “you would also wish me to send your wife the pearl set and the diamond studs?”

“Yes, by Jupiter, I would!” declared Sherry. “I’m glad you put me in mind of them: they’re just the things for Hero!”

“Oh, Sherry, don’t, please!” whispered Hero.

“Nonsense! The pearls are always handed over to the brides in my family: nothing new in that!” said Sherry briskly. “Come along! If you are to go on this expedition with George, it is time we took our leave!”

The dowager was so overcome by the reflection that she had tumbled into a pit of her own digging that she could barely master her voice sufficiently to bid her visitors farewell. Hero curtsied, as though she had still been a little girl in the schoolroom; the Viscount dropped a chaste salute upon the trembling hand held out to him; and they both withdrew with feelings of great relief at having, as Sherry put it, “brushed through the ordeal tolerably well.”

A civil note from Isabella, accepting Hero’s obliging invitation, was reposing upon the spindle-legged table in the passage which served the house in Half Moon Street as a front hall, and at three o’clock George arrived, with his friend, Mr Gumley. One glance at this gentleman sufficed to enlighten Hero as to the cause of Sherry’s rude laughter: he had plainly been chosen for his lack of address, and palpable terror of the female sex. He was a plain young man, and although George assured Hero, in an under-voice, that when he overcame his shyness he could be perfectly conversable, he stammered so much that whenever he made a remark, which was not often, it was even more painful for his listeners than for himself. However, he appeared to derive deep, if silent, satisfaction from the spectacle he had been brought to witness, and managed to tell Hero, when they finally parted company, that he had enjoyed himself excessively.

Hero, although she was naturally interested in the first balloon she had ever seen, did not spend an afternoon of unmixed enjoyment. For this the behaviour of Miss Milborne was to blame. Nothing could have been more affectionate than Miss Milborne’s manner towards her hostess, and nothing more wayward than her behaviour towards her maddened lover. Hero was unable to acquit her of coquetry, and was indeed quite shocked to see how she would blow first hot and then cold upon the unfortunate Lord Wrotham. Whether she regretted having given him as much encouragement as lay in a rose dropped from her corsage, or whether she resented the introduction into the party of so unprepossessing a gentleman as Mr Gumley, no one could tell, but although she relented towards him from time to time, even allowing her hand to rest in his for a moment longer than was necessary when he handed her down from the barouche, she was for the most part a little pettish in her manner, and made it plain that he could do nothing to please her. Hero, who had a warm affection for George, could not refrain once from looking at her in a very speaking way, but the Beauty seemed not to notice the reproach in her old friend’s eyes. She launched into a sprightly description of a masquerade she had attended a week earlier, and although Hero might be extremely young and unversed in the ways of spoiled beauties, she could not but recognize that Miss Milborne’s reason for introducing this topic lay in the circumstance of her having been gallanted to this party by his Grace of Severn.

It was no wonder, Hero thought, that George should look worn and stormy at the end of the expedition. She was impelled to clasp his hand between both of hers when he left her at her door, and to say shyly: “Don’t mind her, dear George! I dare say she may have had the headache.”

He flushed, muttered something inarticulate, and strode off down the street. Hero was left to reflect that perhaps her adored Sherry was not so much to be pitied as she had supposed.

Chapter Nine