“I doubt if I could,” she said ruefully. “But if you and Geoffrey mean to quarrel over me—”

“It takes two to make a quarrel. I can’t answer for Wychwood, but I have no intention of quarrelling, so you may be easy on that head!”

“Easy? When you spend your life quarrelling, and being disagreeable to people for no reason at all? I am not in the least easy!”

“Hornet!” he said, and went out of the room, thrusting Sir Geoffrey before him. “I don’t think much of your strategy, Wychwood,” he said, as they began to descend the stairs. “Abusing me won’t answer your purpose: it will merely set up her bristles.”

Sir Geoffrey said stiffly: “I must make it plain to you, Carleton, that the thought of my sister’s marriage to a man of your reputation is—is wholly repugnant to me!”

“You’ve done so already.”

“Well, I have no wish to offend you, but I don’t consider you a fit and proper person to be my sister’s husband!”

“Oh, that doesn’t offend me! I have every sympathy with you, and should feel just as you do, if I were in your place.”

“Well, upon my word!” gasped Sir Geoffrey. “You are the most extraordinary fellow I’ve ever met in all my life!”

“No, am I?” said Mr Carleton, grinning at him. “Because I agree with you?”

“If you agree with me I wonder that you should have proposed to Annis!”

“Ah, that’s a different matter!”

“Well, I think it only right to warn you that I think it is my duty—distasteful though it is to speak of such things to delicately nurtured females—to tell Annis frankly why I consider you to be unfit to be her husband!”

Mr Carleton gave a crack of laughter. “Lord, Wychwood, don’t be such a gudgeon!” he said. “She knows all about my reputation! Tell her anything you like, but don’t do so today, will you? I don’t want her to be upset again, and she would be. Goodbye! My regards to Lady Wychwood!”

A nod, and he was gone, leaving Sir Geoffrey at a loss to know what to make of him. He went gloomily up to the drawing-room, and when Lady Wychwood joined him a little later, disclosed to her that she had been right in her forecast, adding, with a heavy sigh, that he didn’t know what was to be done to prevent the match.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done, dearest. I know it isn’t what you like. It isn’t what I like for her either, but when I saw the difference in her! I have just come from her room, and though she is tired, she looks much better, and so happy that I knew it would be useless, and even wrong to try to make her cry off! So we must make the best of it, and pray that he won’t continue in his—his present way of life!”

Sir Geoffrey shook his head. “A man don’t change his habits,” he said. “I don’t believe in reformed rakes, Amabel.”

“I don’t mean to set up my opinion against your judgment, for naturally you must know best, but has it occurred to you, dearest, that although we have heard a great deal about his mistresses, and the shameless way he flaunts them abroad, and the money he squanders on them, we have never heard of his attaching himself particularly to any girl of quality? Indeed, I believe Annis is the only woman to whom he has offered marriage, though lures past counting have been thrown out to him, because even the highest sticklers think that his wealth is enough to make him acceptable. So don’t you think, Geoffrey, that perhaps he never truly loved anyone until he met Annis? Which makes me feel that they were destined for each other, for it has been the same with her. I don’t mean, of course, exactly the same, but only think of the offers she has received, and refused! Such brilliant ones, too! Never, until she met Mr Carleton, has she been in love! Not even with Lord Sedgeley, though one would have said he was the very man for her! You will think me fanciful, I daresay, but it seems to me as if—as if each of them has been waiting for the other for years, and when they at last met they—they fell in love, as though it had been ordained that they should!”

Sir Geoffrey, listening to this speech in frowning silence, was secretly impressed by it, but all he said was: “Well, you may be right, my love, but I do think that you’re being fanciful! All I can say is that if you are right, I wish to God they never had met!”

“It is very natural that you should,” responded the perfect wife. “But don’t let us talk about it any more until you have had time to weigh the matter in your mind! Mrs Wardlow asked me this morning if she should instruct the chef to send up baked eggs for our nuncheon, and, knowing how partial you are to baked eggs, I said it was the very thing. So let us go down to the breakfast-parlour now, before the eggs grow cold!”

Sir Geoffrey got up, but before he had reached the door stopped in his tracks like a jibbing horse, and said: “Is Maria there? Because if she is nothing would prevail upon me—”

“No, no, dearest!” Lady Wychwood hastened to assure him. “Mrs Wardlow and I have put her to bed, and I have compelled her to drink a glass of laudanum and water, as a sedative, you understand. She fell into a fit of the vapours when you went up to see Annis, and what it was that you said to her to overset her so completely, I haven’t a notion, for you cannot possibly have accused her of being inebriated, which is what she said you did! But I am sorry to say that when Maria becomes hysterical, one cannot place the least dependence on the ridiculous things she says. She even said that Mr Carleton offered her violence!”

“No, did he?” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey, brightening perceptibly. “Well, damme if I don’t think he’s not by half as black as he’s been painted! But mind this, Amabel! I may not have the power to stop him marrying my sister, but if he thinks he’s going to foist Maria on to us, he will very soon learn that he is mistaken! And so I shall tell him!”

“Yes, dearest,” said Lady Wychwood, gently propelling him towards the door. “You will of course do what you think is right, but do, pray, come and eat your baked egg before it is quite spoilt!”