It was with these tangled thoughts jostling against each other in her head that she joined Lady Wychwood and Miss Farlow to partake of a light luncheon, but she was too well-bred to allow the least sign of her mental perturbation to appear either in her face or in her manner. To invite anxious questions which she had no intention of answering would be to show a lamentable want of conduct: no woman of consideration wore her heart on her sleeve, or made her guests uncomfortable by behaving in such a way as to lead them to think she was blue-devilled, or suffering from a severe headache. So neither Lady Wychwood nor Miss Farlow suspected that she was not in spirits. She listened to their everyday chit-chat, responded to such remarks as were addressed to her, made such comments as occurred to her, all with her lovely smile which hid from them her entire lack of interest in what they were discussing. It was second-nature to her to maintain a boring conversation with the better part of her mind otherwhere, but she would have been hard put to it when she rose from the table to tell an enquirer what had been the subjects under discussion.

It was Lady Wychwood’s custom to retire to her own bedchamber for an hour’s repose in the early afternoon before spending the next hour with her much loved offspring; Miss Farlow, for reasons which she frequently gave at tedious length, never rested during the daytime, and brightly detailed the several tasks which awaited her. They ranged from mending a broken toy for Tom to darning a sad rent in the flounce of one of her dresses. “How I came to tear it I cannot for the life of me conjecture!” she said. “I haven’t the smallest recollection of having caught it on anything, and I am persuaded I couldn’t have done so without noticing it, and I am always careful to raise my skirt when I go upstairs so I cannot have trodden on it, for even if I did I should very likely have fallen, which I did once, when I was young and thoughtless. And I must have noticed that,for I daresay I should have bruised myself. Yes, and talking of bruises,” she added earnestly, “it has me in a puzzle to know how it comes about that one can bruise oneself without having the least recollection of having done so! It seems to me to be most extraordinary that this should be so, for one would suppose it must have hurt one when it happened, but it is so. I well remember—”

But what it was she well remembered Miss Wychwood never knew, for she slipped away at this point, and sought refuge in her book-room, with the intention of dealing with her accounts. She did indeed make a determined effort to do so, but she made slow progress, because her mind wandered in an exasperating way which put her out of all patience with herself. Mr Carleton’s swarthy countenance, and his trenchant voice kept on obtruding themselves so that she continually lost count in the middle of a column of figures, and was obliged to start adding it up again. After she had arrived at three different answers to the sum, she was so cross that she uttered in a far from ladylike manner: “Oh, the devil fly away with you! You needn’t think I like you, for I don’t! I hate you!”

She bent again to her task, but ten minutes later Mr Carleton again intruded upon her, this time in person. Limbury came into the room, carefully shutting the door behind him, and informed her that Mr Carleton had called, and begged the favour of a few words with her. She was immediately torn between conflicting emotions: she did not wish to see him; there was no one whom she wished to see more. She hesitated, and Limbury said, in deprecating accents: “Knowing that you was busy, Miss Annis, I informed him of the circumstance, and ventured to say that I doubted if you was at home to visitors. But Mr Carleton, miss, is regrettably not one to take a hint, and instead of leaving his card with me, and going away, he desired me to convey to you the tidings that he had come to see you on a matter of considerable importance. So I agreed to do so, thinking that it was on some question concerning Miss Lucilla.”

“Yes, it must be, of course,” replied Miss Wychwood, with all her usual calm. “I will join him immediately.”

Limbury coughed in a still more deprecating manner, and disclosed that he had been obliged to leave Mr Carleton in the hall. Encountering an astonished stare from Miss Wychwood, he explained this extraordinary lapse by saying: “I was on the point, Miss Annis, of conducting him upstairs to the drawing-room, as I hope I have no need to tell you, when he stopped me by asking me in his—his forthright way if there was any danger of his finding Miss Farlow there.” He paused, and a slight quiver disturbed the schooled impassivity of his countenance, which Miss Wychwood had no difficulty in interpreting as barely repressed sympathy for a fellowman faced with the prospect of encountering her garrulous cousin. He continued smoothly: “I was obliged to tell him, Miss Annis, that I believed Miss Farlow to be occupied with some stitchery there. Upon which, he desired me to carry his message to you, and said that he would await your answer in the hall. What would you wish me to tell him, miss?”

“Well, I am very busy, but no doubt you are right in thinking he has come to consult with me on some business connected with Miss Lucilla,” she replied. “I had better see him, I suppose. Pray show him in!”

Limbury bowed and withdrew, reappearing a minute later to usher Mr Carleton into the room. Miss Wychwood rose from the chair behind her desk, and came forward, holding out her hand, and with a faint questioning lift to her brows. Nothing in her demeanour or in her voice could have given the most acute observer reason to suspect that her pulses had quickened alarmingly, and that she was feeling strangely breathless. “For the second time today, how do you do, sir?” she said, with a faintly mocking smile. “Have you come to issue some further instructions on how I am to treat Lucilla? Ought I to have asked your permission before permitting her to spend the day with the Stinchcombes? If that is the case, I do beg your pardon, and must hasten to assure you that Mrs Stinchcombe has promised to see her safely restored to me!”

“No, my sweet hornet,” he retorted, “that is not the case! I’ve no wish to see her, and I don’t care a straw for her present whereabouts, so don’t try to stir coals, I beg of you!” He shook hands with her as he spoke, and continued to hold hers in a strong grasp for a moment or two, while his hard, penetrating eyes scanned her countenance. They narrowed as he looked, and he said quickly: “Did I hurt you this morning? I didn’t mean to! It was the fault of my unfortunate tongue: pay no heed to it!”

She drew her hand away, saying as lightly as she could: “Good God, no! I hope I have too much sense to be hurt by the rough things you say!”

“I hope so, too,” he said. “If my tongue is not to blame, what has happened to cast you into the doldrums?”

“What in the world makes you think I have been cast into the doldrums, Mr Carleton?” she asked, in apparent amusement, sitting down, and inviting him with a slight gesture to follow her example.

He ignored this, but stood looking down at her frowningly, in a way which she found disagreeably disconcerting. After a short pause, he said: “I can’t tell that. Suffice it that I know something or someone has thrown a damp on your spirits.”

“Well, you are mistaken,” she said. “I am not in the doldrums, but I own I am somewhat out of temper, because I can’t make my wretched accounts tally!”

His rare smile dawned. “Let me see whether I can do so!”

“Certainly not! That would be to acknowledge defeat! I wish you will sit down, and tell me what has brought you here!”

“First, to inform you that I am returning to London tomorrow,” he replied.

Her eyes lifted swiftly to his face, and as swiftly sank again. She could only hope that they had not betrayed the dismay she felt, and said at once: “Ah, you have come to take leave of us! Lucilla will be very sorry to have missed you. If only you had told us that you were going back to London she would certainly have stayed at home to say goodbye to you!”

“Unnecessary! I don’t expect to be absent from Bath for very many days.”

“Oh! She will be glad of that, I expect.”

“Doubtful, I think! Lucilla’s sentiments upon this occasion don’t interest me, however. Will you be glad of it?”

Something between panic and indignation seized her: panic because a proposal was clearly imminent, and she was as far as ever from knowing how she was to respond to it; indignation because she was unaccustomed to dealing with sledge-hammer tactics, and strongly resented them. He was an impossible creature, and the only fit place for any female crazy enough to consider becoming his wife for as much as a second was Bedlam. Indignation made it possible for her to say, with a tiny shrug, and in a voice whose indifference matched his own: “Why, certainly, Mr Carleton! I am sure we shall both of us be happy to see you again.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—!” he uttered explosively. “What the devil has Lucilla to do with it?”

She raised her brows. “I imagine she has everything to do with it,” she said coldly.

He apparently managed to get the better of his spleen, for he gave a short laugh, and replied: “No, not everything, but certainly a good deal. I am going to London to try if I can discover amongst my numerous cousins one who will be willing to take charge of her until her come-out next year.”

Her eyes flashed, colour flooded her cheeks, and she said, in a shaking voice: “I see! To be sure, it is stupid of me to feel surprise, for you have repeatedly informed me that you consider me to be totally unfit to take care of Lucilla. Alas, I had flattered myself into thinking that your opinion of my fitness had undergone a change! But that, of course, was before you flew up into the boughs when you learned that Denis Kilbride had accompanied Lucilla to Laura Place! I perfectly understand you!”