He brought his open hand down on the table. ‘If I have, the more reason for you to have refused to come with me on this insane journey! Were you mad, Miss Morland?’

‘Oh, by no means!’ she replied, cutting her bread and butter into thin strips. ‘Of course, it is not precisely what I should have chosen, but you offered me a way of escape from a house in which I was determined not to spend another night.’

‘You must have relatives—someone to whom—’

‘Unfortunately I have no one,’ said Miss Morland composedly.

The Marquis leaned his head in his hand, and said: ‘My poor girl, you do not appear to realize the scandal this escapade will give rise to! I must get you to some place where you will be safe from it’

Miss Morland bit into one of her strips of bread and butter. ‘As your wife, sir, I shall expect you to protect me from slanderous tongues,’ she said blandly.

The Marquis raised his head, and said with a groan: ‘Helen, the notice of my engagement is in today’s Gazette!’

There was just a moment’s silence. The faintest tremor shook Miss Morland’s hand, and she grew rather white. But when she spoke it was in a voice of mild interest. ‘Dear me, then what can have possessed you to accept my brother’s stake?’

He looked at her with a queer hungriness in his eyes, and answered: ‘I have told you that I was drunk. Drunk, I only knew what I wanted, not what I must not do.’ He got up, and began to walk about the room. ‘No use talking of that. We are in the devil of a fix, my girl.’

‘May I ask,’ enquired Miss Morland, ‘who is the lady to whom you are so lately become engaged?’

‘Miss Fanny Wyse,’ he answered. ‘It is a long-standing arrangement. I can’t, with honour, draw back from it. That accursed notice in the Gazette—It is impossible for me to repudiate it.’

She regarded him rather inscrutably. ‘Are you attached to Miss Wyse, sir?’

‘It is not that!’ he said impatiently. ‘Our parents made this match for us when we were in our cradles. It has been an understood thing. Yesterday I made a formal offer for Miss Wyse’s hand, and she accepted me.’

‘I suppose,’ remarked Miss Morland thoughtfully, ‘that your excesses last night were in the nature of a celebration?’

He gave an ugly little laugh. ‘My excesses, ma’am, were an all too brief escape from reality!’

Miss Morland looked meditatively at the coffee-pot. ‘If you do not care for Miss Wyse, my lord, why did you offer for her?’

‘You don’t understand!’ he said. ‘She has been brought up to think herself destined to become my wife! I could do no less than offer for her.’

‘Oh!’ said Miss Morland. ‘Is she very fond of you?’

He flushed slightly. ‘It is not for me to say. I believe—I think she wishes to marry me.’ A somewhat sardonic smile crossed his lips; he added: ‘And God help both of us if ever this adventure should come to her ears!’

Miss Morland poured herself out some more coffee. ‘Do you mean to abandon me, sir?’ she asked.

‘Certainly not,’ replied his lordship. ‘I shall put you in charge of a respectable female, and compel your brother to make provision for you.’

She raised her brows. ‘But you told my brother you would marry me,’ she pointed out.

He paused in his striding to and fro, and said: ‘I can’t marry you! God knows I would, but I can’t elope with you the very day my engagement to Fanny is published!’

She smiled at that, but not very mirthfully, and got up from the table. ‘Calm yourself, my lord. I have only been—punishing you a little. I came away with you because I was a great deal too angry to consider what I was about. What I really wish you to do is to convey me to London where I shall take refuge with my old governess.’ She picked up her hat, and added: ‘I think—I am sure—that she will be very willing to engage me to teach music and perhaps painting in her school.’

He strode over to the window, and with his back to her said: ‘A Queen’s Square boarding-school! Helen, Helen—’ He broke off, biting his lips, and staring with unseeing eyes at a chaise that had just drawn up outside the inn. The chaise door opened, a young lady looked out, and the Marquis recoiled from the window with a startled oath.

Miss Morland was tying the strings of her cloak, and merely looked an enquiry.

‘Fanny!’ the Marquis ejaculated. ‘Good God, what’s to be done?’

Miss Morland blinked at him. ‘Surely you must be mistaken!’

‘Mistaken! Do you think I don’t know my promised wife?’ demanded his lordship savagely. ‘I tell you it is she! Someone must have sent her word—that meddling fool, Fort, I dare say!’

‘But surely Miss Wyse would not pursue you?’ said Miss Morland, rather aghast.

‘Wouldn’t she?’ said Carlington grimly. ‘You don’t know her! If she does not have hysterical spasms we may count ourselves fortunate!’ He looked round the room, saw a door at the opposite end of it, and hurried across to open it. A roomy cupboard was disclosed. ‘Go in there, my dear,’ commanded Carlington. ‘I must get hold of that landlord, and warn him to keep his mouth shut.’ With which he thrust Miss Morland into the cupboard, closed the door on her, and went quickly towards the other leading into the coffee-room.

He was not, however, in time to warn the landlord. As he stepped out of the parlour that worthy was escorting Miss Wyse into the coffee-room.

Carlington, realizing that it would be useless now to deny his extraordinary elopement, greeted his betrothed with biting civility. ‘Good morning, Fanny,’ he said. ‘An unexpected pleasure!’

Miss Wyse was a plump little lady, just nineteen years old, with huge, soulful brown eyes, and a riot of dark curls. When she saw Carlington she let fall a very pretty muff of taffeta, and clasped her hands to her bosom. ‘You!’ she gasped, with a strong suggestion of loathing in her voice. ‘Carlington!’

The Marquis grasped her wrist in a somewhat cavalier fashion, and said angrily: ‘Let me have no vapours, if you please! Come into the parlour!’

Miss Wyse uttered a throbbing moan. ‘How could you, Granville? Oh, I wish I were dead!’

The Marquis fairly dragged her into the parlour, and shut the door upon the landlord’s scarcely-veiled curiosity. ‘You do not waste much time, Fanny,’ he said. ‘Is this a sample of what I am to expect in the future? The very day our engagement is announced!’

‘Do not speak to me!’ shuddered Miss Wyse, who seemed to have a leaning towards the dramatic. ‘I am so mortified, so—’

‘I know, I know!’ he interrupted. ‘But you would have done better to have stayed at home.’

Miss Wyse, who had tottered to the nearest chair, sprang up again at this, and said: ‘No! Never! Do you hear me, Carlington? Never!’

‘I hear you,’ he replied. ‘So, I imagine, can everyone else in the place. There is a great deal I must say to you, but this is not the moment. My whole object now is to avert a scandal. Explanations—oh yes, they will be hard enough to make!—can come later.’

‘I don’t care a fig for scandal!’ declared Miss Wyse stormily. ‘People may say what they please: it is nothing to me! But that I should find you here—that you should have—Oh, it is cruel of you, Carlington!’

‘I’m sorry, Fanny,’ he said. ‘You’ll find the truth hard to believe, but I promise you you shall hear the truth from me. I beg of you, be calm! I will myself escort you back to town—’

‘Do not touch me!’ said Miss Wyse, retreating. ‘You shan’t take me back! I won’t go with you!’

‘Don’t be such a little fool!’ said the Marquis, exasperated. ‘I warn you, this is no moment to play-act to me! I shall take you home, and there shall be no scandal, but help you to create a scene, I will not!’

Miss Wyse burst into tears. ‘I dare say you’re very angry with me,’ she sobbed, ‘and I know I have behaved badly, but indeed, indeed I couldn’t help it! I meant to be sensible—really, I did Carlington!—but I couldn’t bear it! Oh, you don’t understand! You’ve no s-sensibility at all!’

Rather pale, he answered: ‘Don’t distress yourself, Fanny. Upon my soul, there is no need! This escapade means nothing: I will engage to give you no cause for complaint when we are married.’

‘I can’t!’ said Miss Wyse desperately. ‘You shan’t escort me home!’

He regarded her with a kind of weary patience. ‘Then perhaps you will tell me what you do mean to do?’ he said.

Miss Wyse lowered her handkerchief and looked boldly across at him. ‘I’m going to Gretna Green!’ she announced. ‘And nothing you can say will stop me!’

‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ he demanded. ‘There’s no question of going to Gretna! And if there were what in the name of heaven could possess you to go there?’

‘I’m going to be married there!’ said Miss Wyse in a rapt voice.

‘Oh no, you are not!’ replied the Marquis forcibly. ‘Though it is just like you to do your best to turn everything to dramatic account! If you go to Gretna, you’ll go alone!’

Miss Wyse gave a shriek at this. ‘Good God, what do you mean to do?’ she cried, running forward, and clasping her hands about his arm. ‘Granville, I implore you, have mercy!’

The Marquis disengaged himself, looking down at her in the liveliest astonishment. Even supposing her to be on the verge of a fit of strong hysterics her behaviour seemed to him inexplicable. He was just about to inquire the reason for her last outburst when the door into the coffee-room was thrust open, and a young man in a bottle-green coat strode into the parlour, and checked on the threshold, staring in a challenging way at Carlington.

His bearing, though not his dress, proclaimed the soldier. He was about five-and-twenty years old, with a fresh, pleasant countenance, and a curly crop of brown hair brushed into the Brutus style made fashionable by Mr Brummell.