The Viscount stared at her in the liveliest astonishment. “Why the devil should I mean anything of the sort? Of course I don’t! Of all the nonsensical girls, you’re the worst, Hero!”

Miss Wantage accepted this rebuke meekly enough, but said: “Well, I think it’s a nonsensical notion too, but Cousin Jane says it must be the curate, or that horrid school.”

“You don’t mean to tell me that the curate wants to marry you?” demanded Sherry.

Miss Wantage nodded. “He has offered for me,” she said, not without pride.

“It seems to me,” said his lordship severely, “that you have been getting devilish flighty since I saw you last! Marry the curate, indeed! I dare say he kissed you behind the door too?”

“Oh no,Sherry!” Miss Wantage assured him. “He has behaved with the greatest propriety, Cousin Jane says!”

“So I should hope!” said his lordship, rather spoiling the austerity of this remark, however, by adding reflectively, a moment later: “Sounds to me like another dull dog.”

“Yes, he is,” agreed Hero. “I quite think he may be very kind, but oh, Sherry, if you won’t be offended with me, indeed I would rather be a governess, for I don’t at all want to marry him!”

“What beats me,” said his lordship, “is why he should want to marry you! He must be a curst rum touch, Hero. You’d never do for a parson’s wife! You can’t have told him how you glued the Bassenthwaites’ pew that time everyone was in such a pucker.”

“Well, no, I didn’t,” admitted Hero. “But it was you who did the glueing really, Sherry.”

“If that isn’t a female all over!” exclaimed Sherry. “Next you’ll say you had nothing to do with it!”

Miss Wantage tucked a small, confiding hand into his arm. “I did help, didn’t I, Anthony?”

“Yes, and spilled the glue over my new smalls because you thought you heard someone coming, silly chit!” said the Viscount, recalling this incident with a darkling look in his eye.

Miss Wantage gave a little chuckle. “Oh, how you did slap my cheek! It was red for hours and hours, and I had to make up such a tale to account for it!”

“No, did I really?” said the Viscount, rather conscience-stricken, and giving the cheek a friendly rub. “What a deuced young brute I was! Not but what you’d have tried the patience of a saint, brat, often and often!”

“Yes, that is what my cousins say, and I can’t but feel that I should try the curate’s patience even more, Sherry, because I do seem always to be getting into a scrape, though indeed I don’t mean to. At least, not every time.”

“Don’t keep on harping on the curate!” ordered the Viscount. “The whole idea of your marrying him is the greatest piece of nonsense I ever heard! In fact, it’s a very good thing I chanced to come down here, for the lord knows what silly trick you’d have tried to play off if I hadn’t caught you in time!”

“No, and I am so glad to see you again, Anthony,” she replied. “I thought perhaps you would come.”

“Good God, did you? Why?”

“To wait on Isabella,” she replied innocently.

“Ha!” uttered his lordship, with a harsh and bitter laugh.

Miss Wantage looked wonderingly up at him. “You don’t sound very pleased, Sherry. Would she not see you?”

“Pleased!” ejaculated his lordship. “Much I have to be pleased about!”

“I know she wouldn’t receive any of the other gentlemen, though they came all the way from London for the purpose, but I did think she would see you.”

“Well, she did,” said the Viscount shortly. “And for all the good I got by it, I might as well have stayed — Here, who told you I wanted to marry Bella?”

“You did,” answered Miss Wantage simply. “It was when you came down last year. Don’t you remember?”

“No, I can’t say that I do, but it don’t signify. She won’t have me.”

“Sherry!” cried Miss Wantage, quite shocked. “You don’t mean that you have offered, and she has refused you?”

“Yes, I do. And that’s not all!” said the Viscount, his wrongs rising forcibly to his mind. “She said my character was unsteady, and I’d no delicacy of principle! That, from a girl I’ve known all my life!”

“It isn’t true!” Hero said, warmly clasping his hand.

“I’m a gamester, and a libertine, and she don’t like the company I keep. I’m — ”

“Sherry,” interrupted Hero anxiously, “can she have heard about your opera dancer, do you think?”

“Well, upon my word!” gasped the Viscount. “What the devil do you know about my opera dancer? And don’t say I told you, because that I never did!”

“No, no, Edwin told me! That is, he told Cassy, because they had a quarrel, and it was really she who told me.”

“You’ve no business to be talking of such things!” said his lordship sternly. He thought it over, his brow creasing. “Besides, it don’t make sense! Edwin told Cassy, because they had a quarrel? Where’s the sense in that?”

“Why, Sherry, because he said that before she set her cap at you, she might as well know — ” Miss Wantage broke off,flushing deeply. “Oh, I wish I didn’t say things I ought not to!” she said, much mortified. “Truly, I didn’t mean to be such a cat!”

“Oh!” said his lordship. “So that’s what’s in the wind, is it? As a matter of fact, I knew it,” he added, momentarily abandoning the grand manner. “And you may tell your cousin Cassy, with my compliments, that she may as well spare herself the trouble, for I haven’t come to that yet! Now, don’t go blurting that out at her the first time you see her again! And stop chattering about my opera dancer! I’ve a very good mind to go up to the house and have a word with Edwin! Prating about my affairs all round the countryside! Now I know where my damned meddling uncle had it from! Pack of lies!”

“Haven’t you got an opera dancer after all?” asked Miss Wantage. “Because if you haven’t, I will tell Isabella so myself, and then perhaps you can be comfortable.”

“You won’t say anything about it at all!” said the harassed Viscount.

“Yes, but Sherry — ”

“No, I tell you! For one thing, a pretty behaved female don’t mention such subjects; and for another — Well, you wouldn’t understand!” He encountered an inquiring look from the eyes which met his so frankly, and cast about in his brain for a suitable explanation. “Confound you, Hero, there’s nothing in it! Everyone has a fancy piece or two, but it don’t signify a jot, take my word for it!”

Miss Wantage was perfectly ready to take his word, but she felt that the question had not been thoroughly thrashed out. “Well, but, Sherry, perhaps you did not explain it to Isabella quite well? Don’t you think — ”

“No, I don’t,” said his lordship hastily. “The long and the short of it is that Bella don’t care a rap for me.”

Miss Wantage, finding this hard to believe, suggested that poor Isabella must have had the headache.

“No, it wasn’t that. Not but what she did look a trifle pale, now you put me in mind of it. But Incomparable as ever!” he added loyally.

“She is very pretty,” said Miss Wantage. “She even looked pretty when she had spots.”

“Spots?” repeated the Viscount, in a stunned voice. “She never had a spot in her life!”

“Well, not ordinary spots, like Sophy, but the ones you have with the measles, I mean.”

“Isabella didn’t have the measles!”

“Yes, she did,” replied Hero. “That’s why her Mama brought her home. She felt dreadfully poorly, and Mrs Milborne told Cousin Jane that the spots came all over her.”

“No!” said the Viscount, revolted.

“They do, you know,” explained Hero.

“Of course I know that! But Isabella can’t have had the measles! They said she was worn down by the gaieties of London!”

Hero looked surprised at this. “Well, I don’t know why they should have said that, because they must have known it was the measles. Two of the abigails had it as well, besides Mrs Milborne’s page.”

“Good God!” said the Viscount. A grin dispelled the look of shocked dismay on his face. “So that’s why she wouldn’t receive anyone! Poor girl! By Jove, I’d give a monkey to see Severn’s face, if he knew! Deuced romantic fellow, Severn! Wouldn’t like it at all!”

“Is he the Duke?” inquired Hero interestedly.

Gloom descended once more upon her companion. He nodded.

“Is — is she going to marry him, Sherry?”

“It’s my belief he won’t come up to scratch,” replied the Viscount frankly. “Not that I care. My hopes are quite cut-up!”

“Oh, Sherry, do you mind very much?” asked Hero, her heart wrung.

“Of course I mind!” said his lordship testily. “My whole life is blighted! Might as well go to the devil without more ado. Which is what I very likely shall do, because if I don’t get my hands on my fortune I shall be punting on tick before you know where you are, and we all know what that means!”

Hero nodded wisely. The Viscount laughed, and pinched her nose. “You haven’t a notion what it means! Never heard of a cent-per-cent in your life, have you, brat? Or of a poor devil finding himself in the basket?”

“Yes, I have! That’s on all the stagecoaches, and you ride in it if you are very poor!”

“Well, it may come to that yet,” grimaced Sherry. “The thing is that my principal’s tied up in the stupidest Trust anyone ever thought of. Would you believe it, I’m kept on a beggarly allowance until I reach the age of twenty-five, unless I’m married before then? A couple of my damned uncles manage everything — or they should, but Prosper’s too curst lazy to keep an eye on the other old scoundrel! He can’t stand the fellow any more than I can — none of my father’s relatives can bear the sight of my mother’s family, and God knows I don’t blame them, for a bigger set of spongers I’ll swear you never clapped eyes on! — but will he bestir himself to get rid of the fellow? Not he! There he sits, in my house, living at my expense, and ten to one feathering his nest with my money, not to mention putting a lot of nonsensical notions into my mother’s head, and pretending he’s disappointed Bella wouldn’t have me! Disappointed! He was so glad he couldn’t keep the smile off his greasy face! Damme if I know why I haven’t napped him a rum’un any time these past six years!” He broke off, the look of bewilderment on Hero’s face recalling him to a sense of his company. “Here, don’t you let me hear you using cant like that!” he admonished her. “If they hadn’t made me as mad as Bedlam between the lot of them, I shouldn’t have said it. At least, I should, but not to a female.”