“You are mistaken, Mr Carleton! I am nine-and-twenty years of age!”

He put up his glass again, and looked her over critically before saying: “Yes, obviously I was mistaken, for which your youthful appearance is to blame. Your countenance belongs to a girl, but your assured manner has nothing to do with infantry. You will allow me to say, however, that being nine-and-twenty years old doesn’t render you a fit guardian for my niece.”

“Again you are mistaken, Mr Carleton! I am neither Lucilla’s guardian, nor have I the least ambition to supplant Mrs Amber in that post. I conclude, from your remarks, that you have come here from Chartley Place, where, I don’t doubt, you have heard—”

“Well, that, Miss Wychwood, is where you are mistaken! What the devil should take me to Chartley Place? I’ve come from London—and damnably inconvenient it was!” His penetrating gaze searched her face; he said: “Oh! Are we at dagger-drawing? What have I said to wind you up?”

“I am not accustomed, sir, to listen to the sort of language you use!” she replied frostily.

“Oh, is that all? A thousand pardons, ma’am! But your brother did warn you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, and also that you don’t hesitate to ride rough-shod over people you think beneath your touch!” she flashed.

He looked surprised. “Oh, no! Only over people who bore me! Did you think I was trying to ride rough-shod over you? I wasn’t. You do put me out of temper, but you don’t bore me.”

“I am so much obliged to you!” she said, with ironic gratitude. “You have relieved my mind of a great weight! Perhaps you will add to your goodness by explaining what you imagine I have done to put you out of temper? That, I must confess, has me in a puzzle! I had supposed that you had come to Bath to thank me for having befriended Lucilla: certainly not to pinch at me for having done so!”

“If that don’t beat the Dutch!” he ejaculated. “What the deuce have I to thank you for, ma’am? For aiding and abetting my niece to make a byword of herself? For dragging me into the business? For—”

“I didn’t!” she broke in indignantly. “I did what lay within my power to scotch the scandal that might have arisen from her flight from Chartley; and as for dragging you into the business, nothing, let me tell you, was further from my intention, or, indeed, my wish!”

“You must surely have known that that fool of a—that Clara Amber would write to demand that I should exercise my authority over Lucilla!”

“Yes, Ninian Elmore told us that she had done so,” she agreed, with false affability. “But since nothing Lucilla has said about you led me to think that you had either fondness for her, or took the smallest interest in her, I had no expectation of receiving a visit from you. To own the truth, sir, my first feeling on having your name brought up to me was one of agreeable surprise. But that was before I had had the very doubtful pleasure of making your acquaintance!”

The effect of this forthright speech was not at all what she had intended, for instead of taking instant umbrage to it he laughed, and said appreciatively: “That’s milled me down, hasn’t it?”

“I sincerely hope so!”

“Oh, it has! But it’s not bellows to mend with me! I warn you, I shall come about again. Now, instead of sparring with me, perhaps you, in your turn, will have the goodness to explain to me why you didn’t restore Lucilla to her aunt, but kept her here, dam—dashed well encouraging her in a piece of hoydenish disobedience?”

This uncomfortable echo of what Sir Geoffrey had said to her brought a slight flush into her cheeks. She did not immediately answer him, but when, looking up, she saw the challenge in his eyes, and the satirical curl of his lips, she said, frankly: “My brother has already asked me that question. Like you, he disapproves of my action. You may both of you be right, but I set as little store by his opinion as I do by yours. When I invited Lucilla to stay with me, I did what I believed—and still believe!—to be the right thing to do.”

“Fudge!” he said roughly. “Your only excuse could have been that you were bamboozled into thinking that she had suffered ill-treatment at her aunt’s hands, and if that is what she told you she must be an unconscionable little liar! Clara Amber has petted and cossetted her ever since she took her in charge!”

“No, she didn’t tell me anything of the sort, but what she did tell me made me pity her from the bottom of my heart. Little though you may think it, Mr Carleton, there is a worse tyranny than that of ill-treatment. It is the tyranny of tears, vapours, appeals to feelings of affection, and of gratitude! This tyranny Mrs Amber seems to have exercised to the full! A girl of less strength of character might have succumbed to it, but Lucilla is no weakling, and however ill-advised it was of her to have run away I can’t but respect her for having had the spirit to do it!”

He said, rather contemptuously: “An unnecessarily dramatic way of showing her spirit. I am sufficiently well acquainted with Mrs Amber to know that she would not indulge in tears and vapours if Lucilla had not offered her a good deal of provocation. I conclude that the tiresome chit has been imposing on her aunt’s good-nature yet again. Mrs Amber has frequently complained of her wilfulness to me, but what else could she expect of a girl brought up with excessive indulgence? I guessed how it would be from the outset.”

“Then I wonder at it that you should have given your ward into her care!” exclaimed Miss Wychwood hotly. “One would have supposed that if you had had the smallest regard for her welfare—” She stopped, aware that she had allowed her indignation to betray her into impropriety, and said: “I beg your pardon! I have no right, of course, to censure either your conduct, or Mrs Amber’s!”

“No,” he said.

Her eyes flew to his in astonishment, a startled question in them, for she was quite taken aback by this uncompromising monosyllable.

“No right at all,” he said, explaining himself.

For a perilous moment, she hovered on the brink of losing her temper, but her ever-ready sense of the absurd came to her rescue, and instead of yielding to the impulse to come to points with him she broke into sudden laughter, and said: “How unhandsome of you to have given me such a set-down, when I had already begged your pardon!”

“How unjust of you to accuse me of giving you a set-down when all I did was to agree with you!” he retorted.

“It is to be hoped,” said Miss Wychwood, with strong feeling, “that we are not destined to see very much more of each other, Mr Carleton! You arouse in me an almost overmastering desire to give you the finest trimming you have ever had in your life!”

Her laughter was reflected in his eyes. “Oh, no, you would be very unwise to do that!” he said. “Recollect that I am famous for my incivility! I should instantly give you your own again, and since I am an ill-mannered man and you are a well-bred woman of consequence you would be bound to come off the worse from any such encounter.”

“That I can believe! Nevertheless, sir, I am determined to do what lies within my power to bring you to a sense of your obligations towards that unfortunate child. For fobbing her off on to Mrs Amber, when she was still a child, there may have been some excuse, but she is not a child now, and—”

“Permit me to correct you, ma’am!” he interrupted. “I should undoubtedly have fobbed her off on to Mrs Amber if she had been left to my sole guardianship, but it so happens that I had no choice in the matter! My brother appointed Amber to share the guardianship with me; and it was the expressed wish of his wife that, in the event of her death, her sister should have charge of Lucilla!”

“I see,” she said, digesting this. “But did you also delegate your authority over Lucilla’s future? Were you willing to see her coerced into a distasteful marriage?”

“No, of course not!” he replied irritably. “But as marriage doesn’t come into the question I fail to see—”

“But it does!” she exclaimed, considerably astonished. “That is why she ran away from Chartley! Surely you must have known what was intended? I had supposed you to be a party to the arrangement!”

He stared at her from under frowning brows. “What arrangement?” he demanded.

“Good gracious!” she uttered. “Then she never told you! Oh, how—how unprincipled of her! It makes me more than ever convinced that I did the right thing when I kept Lucilla with me!”

“Very gratifying for you, ma’am! Pray gratify me by telling me what the devil you are talking about!”

“I have every intention of telling you, so you have no need to bite off my nose!” she snapped. “For goodness’ sake, sit down! I can’t think why we are standing about in this absurd way!”

“Oh, can’t you? Did you expect me to sit down before you invited me to do so? You do think me a ramshackle fellow, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t! I don’t know anything about you!” she said crossly.

“Except that I am famed for my incivility.”

She was obliged to laugh, and to say, with engaging honesty, as she sat down: “I am afraid it is I who have been uncivil. Pray, will you not be seated, Mr Carleton?”

“Thank you!” he responded politely, and chose a chair opposite to hers. “And now will you be kind enough to tell me what is the meaning of this farrago of nonsense about Lucilla?”

“It isn’t nonsense—though I own anyone could be pardoned for thinking so! I collect that you don’t know why Mrs Amber took her on a visit to Chartley Place?”

“I didn’t know she had taken her there, until I received a blotched and impassioned letter from her, written from Chartley. As for the reason, I don’t think she divulged it. It seemed to me a perfectly natural thing: Lucilla’s own home is in the immediate vicinity, and until her mother’s death she was as much a part of Iverley’s household as her own, and no doubt formed friendships with his children—particularly, as I recollect, with Iverley’s son, who is the nearest to her in age.”