His feelings, when, recovering from a momentary stupefaction, he realized that Sir Gareth Ludlow was actually soliciting permission to marry his daughter, almost overcame him. He had given up all hope of seeing her respectably married: that she should achieve a brilliant match had never for an instant occurred to him. An unwelcome suspicion that Sir Gareth must be a trifle bosky crossed his mind, but there was nothing in Sir Gareth’s manner or appearance to lend the slightest colour to it, and he banished it. He said bluntly: “Well, I should be very well pleased to give her to you, but I’d better tell you at the outset that her portion isn’t large. In fact, I shall be devilish hard put to it to raise the wind at all.”

“It is really quite immaterial,” responded Sir Gareth. “If Lady Hester will do me the honour to accept me, I shall of course make whatever settlement upon her that our attorneys think proper.”

Greatly moved by these beautiful words, the Earl gave Sir Gareth’s suit his blessing, invited him to Brancaster Park the following week, and himself cancelled three sporting engagements, leaving London on the very next day to prepare his daughter for the singular stroke of good fortune which was about to befall her.

Lady Hester was surprised by his sudden arrival, for she had supposed him to be on the point of going to Brighton. He belonged to the Prince Regent’s set, and in general was to be found, during the summer months, residing in lodgings on the Steyne, or at the Pavilion itself, where it was his affable practice to share in all his royal friend’s more expensive pastimes, and to play whist, for extremely high stakes, with his royal friend’s brother of York. Such female companionship as he sought in Brighton had never included that of his wife, or of his daughter; so, at the end of the London Season, Lady Hester had removed, with her brother and her sister-in-law, to Cambridgeshire, whence, in due course, she would proceed on a round of yearly and very dull visits to various members of her family.

Her amiable parent, having informed her that it was a father’s concern for her welfare which had brought him, at great inconvenience, to his ancestral home, said, by way of preamble to the disclosure he was about to make, that he hoped she would furbish herself up a trifle, since it would not do for her to receive guests in an old gown, and a Paisley shawl.

“Oh, dear!” said Hester. “Are we to have visitors?” She focused her slightly myopic gaze upon the Earl, and said, with more resignation than anxiety in her voice: “I do hope no one whom I particularly dislike, Papa?”

“Nothing of the sort!” he replied testily. “Upon my soul, Hester, you are enough to try the patience of a saint! Let me tell you, my girl that it is Sir Gareth Ludlow whom we are to entertain here next week, and if you dislike him you must be out of your senses!”

She had been somewhat aimlessly disposing the despised shawl about her shoulders, as though, by rearranging its shabby folds, she could render it less objectionable to her father, but at these words she let her hands fall, and said incredulously: “Sir Gareth Ludlow,sir?”

“Ay, you may well stare!” said the Earl. “I daresay you will stare more when I tell you why he comes!”

“I should think it very likely that I should,” she agreed, in a reflective tone. “For I cannot imagine what should bring him here, or indeed, how he is to be entertained at this season.”

“Never mind that! He is coming, Hester, to make you an offer!”

“Oh, is he?” she said vaguely, adding, after a thoughtful moment: “Does he want me to sell him one of Juno’s pups? I wonder he should not have told me so when we met in town the other day. It is not worth his while to journey all this distance—unless, of course, he desires first to see the pup.”

“For God’s sake, girl—!” exploded the Earl. “What the devil should Ludlow want with one of your wretched dogs?”

“Indeed, it has me quite in a puzzle,” she said, looking at him enquiringly.

“Paperskull!” said his lordship scathingly. “Damme if I know what he wants with you! He’s coming to offer for your hand!”

She sat staring at him, rather pale at first, and then flushing, and turning away her face. “Papa, pray—! If you are funning, it is not a kind jest!”

“Of course I’m not funning!” he answered. “Though it don’t surprise me you should think so. I don’t mind owning to you. Hester, that when he broke it to me that it was my permission to address you that he was after I thought either he was foxed, or I was!”

“Perhaps you were—both of you!” she said, trying for a lighter note.

“No, no! No such thing! But for him to be taking a fancy for you, when I daresay there are a dozen females trying to fix his interest, and everyone of ‘em as well-born as you, besides being younger, and devilish handsome into the bargain—well, I never was nearer to being grassed in all my life!”

“It isn’t true. Sir Gareth never had a fancy for me. Not even when I was young, and, I think, quite pretty,” said Hester, with the ghost of a smile.

“Oh, lord, no! Not then!”said his lordship. “You were well-enough, but you couldn’t have expected him to look at you when the Lincombe chit was alive.”

“No. He didn’t look at me,” she agreed.

“Well, well!” the Earl said tolerantly. “She had ’em all beaten to flinders. By all accounts, he never cast so much as a glance at any other girl. And I’ve made up my mind to it that that’s why he’s offered for you.” He saw that she was looking bewildered, and said with some impatience: “Now, don’t be a pea-goose, girl! It’s as plain as a pikestaff that what Ludlow wants is a quiet, well-bred female who won’t have her head stuffed with romantic nonsense, or expect him to be thrown into a transport of passion. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that he’s acting like a man of sense. If he’s still hankering after Clarissa Lincombe, it wouldn’t suit him at all to offer for some out-and-outer who would expect him to be dangling after her for ever, carried away by the violence of his feelings, or some such flummery. At the same time, it’s his duty to marry, and you may depend upon it he made up his mind to that when that brother of his got himself killed in Spain. Well, I don’t scruple to tell you that I never thought to see such a piece of good fortune befall you, Hester! To think that you should make a better match than any of your sisters, and at your age, too! It is beyond anything great!”

“Beyond anything—oh, beyond anything!”she said, in a queer voice. “And he is coming here, with your consent! Could you not have asked me first what my sentiments were? I do not wish for this splendid match, Papa.”

He looked as though he could hardly credit his ears. “Don’t wish for it?” he repeated, in a stupefied tone. “You must be out of your senses!”

“Perhaps I am.” The ghostly smile that was at once nervous and mischievous again flitted across her face. “You should have warned Sir Gareth of it, sir. I am persuaded he cannot wish to marry an idiot.”

“If,” said his lordship awfully, “you fancy that that is a funny thing to say, let me tell you that it is not!”

“No, Papa.”

He eyed her in uncertainty, feeling that in some strange way she was eluding him. She had always been an obedient, even a meek, daughter, but he had several times suffered from the uncomfortable suspicion that behind the cloud of gentle compliance there existed a woman who was quite unknown to him. He saw that it behoved him to tread warily, so he curbed his exasperation, and said, with a very fair assumption of paternal solicitude: “Now, what maggot has got into your head, my dear? You won’t tell me you don’t wish to be married, for every female must wish that!”

“Yes, indeed!” she sighed.

“Can it be that you dislike Ludlow?”

“No, Papa.”

“Well, I was sure of that! I daresay there isn’t a better liked man in England, and as for you ladies—I The caps that have been set at him! You will be the envy of every unmarried woman in town!”

“Do you think so indeed, Papa? How delightful that would be! But perhaps I might feel strange, and unlike myself. It wouldn’t be comfortable, not to be acquainted with myself.”

This baffling, and (he considered) very nonsensical observation, threw him out of his stride, but he persevered, saying with as much patience as he could command: “Well, never mind that! To be sure, I never thought he was trying to fix your interest, but I am sure I have seen him stand up with you at balls a hundred times! Ay, and sit talking to you, when one might have supposed that he would have been making up to one of the beauties that have been hanging out lures to him for ever!”

“He is very civil,” she agreed. “He was used to talk to me of Clarissa, because I knew her too, and no one else would ever mention her name within his hearing.”

“What, is he still doing so?” exclaimed the Earl, feeling that here must be the clue to the mystery.

“Oh, no!” she replied. “Not for a long time now.”

“Then why the devil, if he don’t want to talk of the Lincombe beauty, should he seek you out?” he demanded. “Depend upon it, it has been to attach you!”

“He does not precisely seek me out,” she responded. “Only, if we meet at parties, he is too kind, and, I think, too great a gentleman, to pass me by with no more than a common bow.” She paused, and sighed, blinking at her father. “How silly! I expect you are quite right, and he has had this notion of offering for me ever since Major Ludlow was killed.”

“Of course I am right, and a fine compliment he is paying you!”

“Oh, no!” she said, and relapsed into silence, gazing thoughtfully before her.