Mr Carleton, having drawn her hand within his arm, and led her inexorably out of the room, said reproachfully, as they began to go downstairs: “You know, that was quite unworthy of you, my child! To have fobbed your most distinguished suitor off on to your cousin will very likely have made him your enemy for life!”

“I know, but what else could I do, when she was the only lady left in the room, and you had claimed—falsely, as you well know!—that I had promised to go down with you? Heaven knows there is no one I wouldn’t liefer be with!” she said bitterly.

“Come, come, that’s trying it on much too rare and thick!” he told her. “You can’t gammon me into believing that you would prefer Beckenham’s company to mine!”

“Well, I would!” she asserted. “For I know very well you only wish to be with me so that you may pinch at me for having invited Denis Kilbride to my party, and I won’t endure it, and so I warn you! What right have you, pray, to dictate to me on whom I invite or do not invite to my parties?”

“Lay all those bristles!” he recommended. “You are not going to come to cuffs with me, my girl, so don’t be so ready to show hackle for no reason at all! I may deplore your taste in admirers, but I don’t presume to meddle in what is no concern of mine. And when I pinch at you, it won’t be in public, I promise you!”

Slightly mollified, she said, in a more moderate tone: “Well, I will own, sir, that it was no wish of mine to include Kilbride amongst my guests. Indeed, I said all I could, within the bounds of civility, to make him think he would find the party a dead bore. And when that didn’t answer I invited Harry Beckenham, and his friend, and Major Beverley, and—oh, several others as well!”

“In the belief that they might cut Kilbride out, or the hope that I might not notice him amongst so many dashers?”

This hit the nail on the head with sufficient accuracy to surprise a laugh out of her. She said: “Oh, how detestable you are! And the worst of it is that you make me detestable too, which is quite unpardonable!”

“I don’t do any such thing,” he replied, a queer twisted smile hovering at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think I could—even if I wished to.”

They had reached the foot of the stairs by this time, and were about to enter the dining-room, so that she was not obliged to answer, which was just as well, since she could think of nothing to say. She could not even decide whether he had paid her a compliment, or whether she had misunderstood him, for although the words he had spoken were certainly complimentary the tone in which he had uttered them was coldly dispassionate. He left her side as soon as they entered the dining-room, but returned in a very few minutes with various patties for her, and a glass of champagne. She was already the centre of a group, and he did not linger, but was next to be seen exchanging a few words with Lucilla, who was eating ices under the aegis of Harry Beckenham. She greeted him with acclaim, and a demand to know whether he had ever been to a more delightful party. He looked rather amused, but assured her that he hadn’t. Harry said: “‘Evening, sir! I’ve been telling your niece that Miss Wychwood is famous for the first-rate refreshments she gives her guests, but all she will eat is ices! Shall I bring you another, Miss Carleton?”

“Yes, please!” she responded promptly. “And may I have some more lemonade? Oh, sir, should I like champagne? Mr. Beckenham says I shouldn’t.”

“No,” said Mr Carleton. He held out his own glass to her. “Try it for yourself!” he bade her.

She took the glass, and sipped cautiously. The expression of distaste on her face was almost ludicrous. She gave the glass back to her uncle, saying: “Ugh! Nasty! How can people drink anything so horrid? I quite thought Mr Beckenham was hoaxing me when he said I shouldn’t like it, for he, and you, and even Miss Wychwood seem to like it very well.”

“Now you know that he wasn’t hoaxing you.” He looked her over critically, and surprised her by saying: “Remind me, when I return to London, to hand over to you your mother’s turquoise set. Most of her jewels are not suitable for girls of your age, but I imagine the turquoises must be unexceptionable. As I recall, there is also a pearl brooch, and a matching ring. I’ll send them to you.”

The unexpectedness of this took her breath away. She could only regain enough of it to thank him, but this she did so fervently that he laughed, flicked her cheek with one finger, and said: “Ridiculous brat! There’s no need to thank me: your mother’s jewels are yours: I merely hold them in trust for you until you come of age—or until I judge you to be old enough to wear them.”

Mr Beckenham having come back by this time, Mr Carleton left Lucilla to his care, and returned to Miss Wychwood. She had been observing what had passed between him and his niece, and moved forward to meet him, saying in a conscience-stricken voice: “I have been shockingly remiss! I ought to have told Lucilla not to drink champagne!”

“You ought indeed,” he said.

“Well, if you know that, I am astonished that you should have given your glass to her!” she said, with some asperity.

“Did you like your first sip of champagne?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think I did.”

“Exactly so! Young Beckenham had told her she wouldn’t like it, so I proved his point for him.”

“I suppose,” she said thoughtfully, “that that was probably more to the purpose than to have forbidden her to drink it.”

“Certainly more to the purpose!”

She flashed a mischievous smile at him, and murmured: “I feel it won’t be long before you become an excellent guardian!”

“God forbid!”

At this moment, Denis Kilbride, disengaging himself from a group of matrons, bore down upon his hostess and said in deeply wounded accents, belied by the laughter in his eyes: “Now, how could you have misled me so about your party, most cruel fair one? Is it possible you can have been trying to keep me away from it! I cannot believe it!”

“Dear me, no! why should I?” she returned. “I am glad you don’t find it abominably insipid, which I feared you might.”

“No party which you grace with your exquisite presence could be insipid, believe me! I have only one fault to find with this one: I cherished the hope of being permitted to bring you down to supper, only to find myself cut out by Carleton here! But for one circumstance, Carleton, I should ask you to name your friends!”

Mr Carleton was so patently uninterested and unamused by this lively nonsense that Annis was impelled to step into the breach caused by his silence. She said smilingly: “It’s to be hoped the one circumstance was the impropriety of spoiling my party!”

“Alas, no! It was mere cowardice!” he said, mournfully shaking his head. “He is such a devilish good shot!”

Mr Carleton accorded this sally a faint, contemptuous smile, and stepped back politely to allow Major Beverley to approach Miss Wychwood. He then strolled away, and was next seen talking to Mrs Mandeville. He left the party before the dancing began, declining unequivocally to join the whist-players for whose entertainment Miss Wychwood had had two tables set up in the book-room. Nettled by this cavalier behaviour, she raised her brows, when he took leave of her, saying sarcastically: “But dare you leave Lucilla in such dangerous company?”

“Oh, yes!” he replied. “From what I’ve seen, young Beckenham and Elmore will take good care of her. And since the only dangerous company seems to be bent on fixing his interest with you rather than with Lucilla there’s no need for me to play the careful guardian. It’s not a role which suits me, you know. Ah—accept my thanks for an agreeable evening, ma’am!”

He bowed, and left her. She was so much infuriated that it was long before her wrath abated sufficiently to permit the suspicion to enter her head that his outrageous conduct sprang from anger at what he no doubt considered her encouragement of Denis Kilbride’s familiarities. While she continued to move amongst her guests, outwardly as serene as ever, uttering smiling nothings, her brain was seething with conjecture. She had been prepared to play the game of flirtation with Mr Carleton, but it was now plain that idle flirtation was not what he had in mind. It seemed incredible that he could have fallen in love with her, but his anger could only have been roused by jealousy, and such fierce jealousy as had led him to say the most wounding things he could think of to her had nothing to do with flirtation. It clearly behoved her to set him at a distance, but even as she resolved to do this it occurred to her that perhaps he believed her to be ready to accept an offer from Denis Kilbride, and instantly it became a matter of the first importance to disabuse his mind of this misapprehension. It was in vain that she told herself it didn’t matter a button what he believed: for some inscrutable reason it did matter.

The last of her guests did not leave until eleven o’clock, a late hour by Bath standards, for which the success of the impromptu hop was responsible. Several very young ladies were too shy to waltz, or perhaps too conscious of parental eyes of disapproval on them; but although the waltz was barred from both the Assembly Rooms even the starchiest and most old-fashioned of the dowagers knew that it would not be long before it penetrated these strongholds, and confined their objections to sighs and melancholy head-shakings over times past. As for the matrons with daughters to launch into society, few were to be found whose principles were so rigid as to make the spectacle of their daughters seated against the wall preferable to the shocking, but gratifying, sight of these dashing girls twirling round the room in the embrace of a succession of eligible young gentlemen.