On this triumphant note, she beamed upon the company, and followed Miss Wychwood out of the room. Neither of Miss Wychwood’s youthful guests, both reared from birth in the strictest canons of propriety, returned any answer to this speech, but they exchanged speaking glances, and young Mr Elmore demanded of Miss Carleton, in an undervoice, what the deuce Stonehenge had to say to anything?

Having comfortably installed her guests in the drawing-room, Miss Wychwood said chattily that she had been considering their problem, and had come to the conclusion that the wisest course for Ninian to pursue would be to tell his father, his mother, and Mrs Amber the whole story of his escapade. She could not help laughing when she was confronted by two horrified faces, but said, with a good deal of authority: “You know, my dears, there is really nothing else to be done! If the case had been different—if Lucilla had suffered ill-treatment at Mrs Amber’s hands—I might have consented to keep her presence here a secret, but, as far as I can discover, she has never been ill-treated in her life!”

“Oh, no, no!” Lucilla said quickly. “I never said that! But there is another kind of tyranny, ma’am! I can’t explain what I mean, and perhaps you have never experienced it, but—but—”

“I haven’t experienced it, but I do know what you mean,” Annis said. “It is the tyranny of the weak, isn’t it? The weapons being tears, reproaches, vapours, and other such unscrupulous means which are employed by gentle, helpless women like your aunt!”

“Oh, you do understand!” Lucilla exclaimed, her face lighting up.

“Of course I do! Try, in your turn to understand what must be my feelings on this occasion! I couldn’t reconcile it with my conscience, Lucilla, to hide you from your aunt.” She silenced, by a raised finger, the outcry which rose to Lucilla’s lips. “No, let me finish what I have to say! I am going to write to Mrs Amber asking her if she will permit you to stay with me for a few weeks. Ninian shall take my letter with him tomorrow, and I must trust that he will assure her that I am a very respectable creature, well-able to take care of you.”

“You may be sure I will, ma’am!” said Ninian enthusiastically. Doubt shook him, and his brow clouded. “But what must I do if she won’t consent? She is a very anxious female, you see, and almost never lets Lucy go anywhere without her, because she lives in dread of some accident befalling her, like being kidnapped, which did happen to some girl or other only last year, but not, of course, in Cheltenham, of all unlikely places!”

“Yes, and ever since Uncle Abel died she bolts all the doors and windows every evening,” corroborated Lucilla, “and makes our butler take the silver up to bed with him, and hides her jewellery under her mattress!”

“Poor thing!” said Miss Wychwood charitably. “If she is so nervous a good watch-dog is the thing for her!”

“She is afraid of dogs,” said Lucilla gloomily. “And of horses! When I was young I had a pony, and was used to ride every day of my life—oh, Ninian, do you remember what splendid times we had, looking for adventures, and following the Hunt, which we were not permitted to do, but the Master was a particular friend of ours, and never did more than tell us we were a couple of rapscallions, and would end up in Newgate!”

“Yes, by Jupiter!” said Ninian, kindling. “He was a great gun! Lord, do you remember the time that pony of yours refused, and you went right over the hedge into a ploughed field? I thought we should never get the mud off your habit!”

Lucilla laughed heartily at this recollection, but her laughter soon died, and she sighed, saying in a melancholy voice that those days were long past. “I know Mama would have bought a hunter for me, when I grew to be too big for dear old Punch, but Aunt Clara utterly refused to do so! She said she wouldn’t enjoy a moment’s peace of mind if she knew me to be careering all over the countryside, and if I was set on riding there was a very good livery-stable in Cheltenham, which provides reliable grooms to accompany young ladies when they wish to go for rides—on quiet old hacks! Exactly so!” she added, as Ninian uttered a derisive laugh. “And when I appealed to my—my insufferable Uncle Carleton, all he did was to reply in the vilest of scrawls that my Aunt Clara was the best judge of what it was proper for me to do.”

“I must say, one would take him for a regular slow-top,” agreed Ninian. “He isn’t, though. It might be that he doesn’t approve of females hunting.”

“A great many gentlemen don’t,” said Miss Farlow. “My own dear father would never have permitted me to hunt. Not that I wished to, even if I had been taught to ride, which I wasn’t.”

There did not seem to be anything to say in answer to this, and a depressed silence fell on the company. Lucilla broke it. “Depend upon it,” she said, “my aunt will write to Uncle Carleton and he will order me to do as I’m bid. I don’t believe there is any hope for me.”

“Oh, don’t despair!” said Annis cheerfully. “It wouldn’t surprise me if your aunt were to be too thankful to learn that you are in safe hands to raise the least objection to your prolonging your visit to me. She might even be glad of a respite! And if she thinks the matter over she will surely perceive that to fetch you back immediately would give rise to just the sort of scandal-broth she must be most anxious to avoid. Ninian escorted you here because I invited you: what could be more natural? I wonder where I made your acquaintance?”

Lucilla smiled faintly at this, but it was a woebegone effort, and it took a little time to convince her that there was no other way out of her difficulties. Annis felt extremely sorry for her, since it was obvious that Mrs Amber was so morbidly conscious of the responsibility laid on her that she chafed the poor child almost to desperation by the excessive care she took of her.

Before the tea-tray was brought in, Annis took Ninian to her book-room while she there wrote the letter he was to carry to Mrs Amber, and supplied him with enough money to defray the various expenses he had incurred. She told Lucilla that she needed his help in the composition of the letter, but her real object was to discover rather more about Lucilla’s flight than had so far been disclosed. She had mentally discounted much of what Lucilla had told her as the exaggeration natural to youth, but by the time Ninian had favoured her with his version of the affair she had realized that Lucilla had not exaggerated the pressure brought to bear on her, and could easily picture the effect on a sensitive girl such pressure would have. No one had ill-treated her; she had been suffocated with loving kindness, not only by her aunt, but by Lord and Lady Iverley, and by Ninian’s three sisters; even Eliza, a ten-year old, conceiving a schoolgirl passion for her, and doting on her in a very embarrassing way. Cordelia and Lavinia, both of whom Miss Wychwood judged to be two meekly insipid young women, had, apparently, told Lucilla that they looked forward to the day when they could call her sister. This, Ninian said, in a judicial way, had been a mistaken thing to have done; but it did not seem to have occurred to him that his own conduct left much to be desired. It was obvious to Miss Wychwood that his devotion to his parents was excessive; but when she asked him if he had indeed been prepared to marry Lucilla, he replied: “No, no! That is to say—well, what I mean is—oh, I don’t know, but I thought something would be bound to happen to prevent it!”

“But I collect, my dear boy,” said Miss Wychwood, “that your parents love you very dearly, and have never denied you anything?”

“That is just it!” said Ninian eagerly. “My—my every wish has been granted me, so—so how could I be so ungrateful as to refuse to do the only thing they have ever asked me to do? Particularly when my mother begged me, with tears in her eyes, not to shatter the one hope my father had left to him!”

This moving picture failed to impress Miss Wychwood. She said, somewhat dryly, that she was at a loss to understand why his loving parents should have set their hearts on his marriage to a girl he had no wish to marry.

“She is the daughter of Papa’s dearest friend,” explained Ninian, in a reverential tone. “When Captain Carleton bought Old Manor, it was in the hope that the two estates would be joined, in the end, by this marriage.”

“Captain Carleton, I assume, was a gentleman of substance?”

“Oh, yes! All the Carletons are full of juice!” said Ninian. “But that has nothing to do with the case!”

Miss Wychwood thought that it probably had a great deal to do with the case, but kept this reflection to herself. After a moment, Ninian said, flushing slightly: “My father, I daresay, has never had a mercenary thought in his head, ma’am! His only desire is to ensure my—my happiness, and he believes that because, when we were children, Lucy and I were used to play together, and—did indeed like each other very much, we should deal famously together as husband and wife. But we shouldn’t!”declared Ninian, with unnecessary violence.

“No, I don’t think you would!” agreed Miss Wychwood, amusement in her voice. “Indeed, it has me in a puzzle to guess what made your parents think you would!”

“They believe that Lucy’s wildness comes of her being young, and kept too close by Mrs Amber, and that I should be able to handle her,” said Ninian. “But I shouldn’t, ma’am! I never could keep her out of mischief, even when we were children, and—and I don’t wish to be married to a headstrong girl, who thinks she knows better than I do always,and says I have no spirit when I try to stop her doing something outrageous! I did try to stop her running away from Chartley, but, short of taking her back by force, there was no way of doing it. And,” he added candidly, “by the time I caught up with her she had reached a village, and she said if I so much as laid a finger on her she would scream for help, besides biting and scratching and kicking, and if it was pudding-hearted of me to have hung up my axe, very well, I’m a pudding-heart! Only think what a scandal it would have created, ma’am! She would have roused the whole place—and several of the farmworkers were already going to start work in the fields! I was obliged to knuckle down! Then she said that since they would none of them believe her when she said nothing would prevail upon her to marry me, the best way of proving it to them was by running away. And I’m bound to own that I did feel it might be a good thing to do. But when she tried to persuade me to go home, and pretend I knew nothing about her having left the house before dawn, I did not knuckle down! Well, what a miserable fellow I should be to let such a stupid chit jaunter about quite unprotected!”