Two days later Mr. Brummell came to call in Brook Street, and stayed for three-quarters of an hour. Miss Taverner offered him a frank apology for her unwitting rudeness, but he shook his head at her. “A great many people have heard me say rude things, ma’am, but no one has ever heard me commit the folly of apologizing for them,” he told her. “The only apology you should make me is for having mistaken Mr. Frensham for me. A blow, ma’am, I confess. I thought it had not been possible.”

“You see, sir, you came in behind him—and he was so very fine,” she excused herself.

“His tailor makes him,” said Mr. Brummell. “Now I, I make my tailor.”

Miss Taverner wished that Peregrine could have been present to hear this pronouncement.

By the time Mr. Brummell got up to go, all the favourable impressions he had made on her at Almack’s were confirmed. He was a charming companion, his deportment being particularly good, and his manners graceful and without affectation. He had a droll way of producing his sayings which amused her, and either because it entertained him to take an exactly opposite view to Mr. Mills, or because he desired to oblige his friend Worth, he was good enough to take an interest in her debut. He advised her not to abate the least jot of her disastrous frankness. She might be as outspoken as she chose.

Miss Taverner shot a triumphant glance at her chaperon. “And may I drive my own phaeton in the Park, sir?”

“By all means,” said Mr. Brummell. “Nothing could be better. Do everything in your power to be out of the way.”

Miss Taverner took his advice, and straightway commissioned her brother to procure her a perch-phaeton, and a pair of carriage-horses. Nothing in his stables would do for her; she only wished that she might have gone with him to Tattersall’s. She did not trust his ability to pick a horse.

Fortunately, the Earl of Worth took a hand in the affair before Peregrine had inspected more than half a dozen of the sweet-going, beautiful-stepping, forward-actioned bargains advertised in the columns of the Morning Post. He arrived in Brook Street one late afternoon, driving his own curricle, and found Miss Taverner on the point of setting out for the promenade in Hyde Park. “I shall not detain you long,” he said, laying down his hat and gloves on the table. “You have purchased, I believe, a perch-phaeton for your own use?”

“Certainly,” said Miss Taverner.

He looked her over. “Are you able to drive it?”

“I should not otherwise have purchased it, Lord Worth.”

“May I suggest that a plain phaeton would be a safer conveyance for a lady?”

“You may suggest what you please, sir. I am driving a perch-phaeton.”

“I am not so sure,” he said. “You have not yet convinced me that you are able to drive it.”

She glanced out of the window at his tiger, standing to the heads of the restless wheelers harnessed to the, curricle. The Earl was not driving his chestnuts to-day, but a team of greys. “Let me assure you, sir, that I am not only capable of handling a pair, but I could drive your team just as easily!” she declared.

“Very well,” said the Earl unexpectedly. “Drive it!”

She was quite taken aback. “Do you mean—now?”

“Why not? Are you afraid?”

“Afraid! I should like nothing better, but I am not dressed for driving.”

“You may have twenty minutes,” said the Earl, moving over to a chair by the table.

Miss Taverner was by no means pleased at this cool way of dismissing her, but she was too anxious to prove her driving skill to stay to argue the point. She whisked herself out of the room and up the stairs, set a bell pealing for her maid, and informed her astonished chaperone that there would be no walk in the Park. She was going driving with my Lord Worth.

She joined his lordship again in just a quarter of an hour, having changed her floating muslins for a severely cut habit made of some dark cloth, and a small velvet hat turned up on one side from her clustering gold ringlets, and with a curled feather hanging down on the other. “I am ready, my lord,” she said, drawing on a pair of serviceable York tan gloves.

He held open the door for her. “Permit me to tell you, Miss Taverner, that whatever else may be at fault, your taste in dress is unimpeachable.”

“I do not admit, sir, that there is anything at fault,” flashed Miss Taverner.

At sight of her the waiting tiger touched his hat, but bent a severely inquiring glance on his master.

Miss Taverner took the whip and reins in her hands, and mounted into the driving-seat, scorning assistance.

“Take your orders from Miss Taverner, Henry,” said the Earl, getting up beside his ward.

“Me lord, you ain’t never going to let a female drive us?” said Henry almost tearfully. “What about my pride?”

“Swallow it, Henry,” replied the Earl amicably.

The tiger’s chest swelled. He gazed woodenly at a nearby lamppost and said in an ominous voice: “I heard as how Major Forrester was wanting me for his tiger. Come to my ears, it did. Lord Barrymore too. I dunno how much he wouldn’t give to get a hold of me.”

“You had much better go to Sir Henry Payton,” recommended Worth. “I will give you a note for him.”

The tiger turned a look of indignant reproach upon him. “Yes, and where would you be if I did?” he demanded.

Miss Taverner gave her horses the office to start, and said imperatively: “Stand away from their heads! If you are afraid, await us here.”

The tiger let go the wheelers and made a dash for his perch. As he scrambled up into it he said with strong emotion: “I’ve sat behind you sober, guv’nor. and I’ve sat behind you foxed, and I’ve sat behind you when you raced Sir John to Brighton, and never made no complaint, but I ain’t never sat behind you mad afore!” with which he folded his arms, nodded darkly, and relapsed into a disapproving silence.

On her mettle, Miss Taverner guided the team down the street at a brisk trot, driving them well up to their bits. She had fine light hands, knew how to point her leaders, and soon showed the Earl that she was sufficiently expert in the use of the whip. She flicked the leader, and caught the thong again with a slight turn of her wrist that sent it soundlessly up the stick. She drove his lordship into Hyde Park without the least mishap, and twice round it. Forgetting for the moment to be coldly formal, she said impulsively: “I was used to drive all my father’s horses, but I never handled a team so light-mouthed as these, sir.”

“I am thought to be something of a judge of horse-flesh, Miss Taverner,” said the Earl.

Strolling along the promenade with his arm in the Honourable Frederick Byng’s, Sir Harry Peyton gave a gasp, and exclaimed: “Good God. Poodle, look! Curricle Worth!”

“So it is,” agreed Mr. Byng, continuing to ogle a party of young ladies.

“But with a female driving his greys! And a devilish fine female too!”

Mr. Byng was sufficiently struck by this to look after the curricle. “Very odd of him. Perhaps it is Miss Taverner—his ward, you know. I was hearing she is an excessively delightful girl. Eighty thousand pounds, I believe.”

Sir Harry was not paying much attention. “I would not have credited it! Worth must be mad or in love! Henry, too! I tell you what, Poodle: this means I shall get Henry at last!”

Mr. Byng shook his head wisely. “Worth won’t let him go. You know how it is—Curricle Worth and his Henry: almost a byword. They tell me he was a chimney-sweep’s boy before Worth found him.”

“He was. And if I know Henry he won’t stay with Worth any longer.”

He was wrong. When the curricle drew up again in Brook Street, Henry looked at Miss Taverner with something akin to respect in his sharp eyes. “It ain’t what I’m used to, nor yet what I approves of,” he said, “but you handles ’em werry well, miss, werry well you handles ’em!”

The Earl assisted his ward down from the curricle. “You may have your perch-phaeton,” he said. “But inform Peregrine that I will charge myself with the procuring of a suitable pair for you to drive.”

“You are very good, sir, but Peregrine is quite able to choose my horses for me.”

“I make every allowance for your natural partiality, Miss Taverner, but that is going too far,” said the Earl.

The butler had opened the door before she could think of a crushing enough retort. She could not feel that it would be seemly to quarrel with her guardian in front of a servant, so she merely asked him whether he cared to come into the house. He declined it, made his bow, and descended the steps again to his curricle.

Miss Taverner was torn between annoyance at his highhanded interference in her plans, and satisfaction at being perfectly sure now of acquiring just the horses she wanted.

A few days later the fashionable throng in Hyde Park was startled by the appearance of the rich Miss Taverner driving a splendid match pair of bays in a very smart sporting phaeton with double perches of swan-neck pattern. She was attended by a groom in livery, and bore herself (mindful of Mr. Brummell’s advice) with an air of self-confidence nicely blended with a seeming indifference to the sensation she was creating. As good luck would have it Mr. Brummell was walking in the Park with his friend Jack Lee. He was pleased to wave, and Miss Taverner pulled up to speak to him, saying with a twinkle: “I am amazed, sir, that you should be seen talking to so unfashionable a person as myself.”

“My dear ma’am, pray do not mention it!” returned Brummell earnestly. “There is no one near us.”

She laughed, allowed him to present Mr. Lee, and after a little conversation drove on.