‘I’m not so highhanded, Thomas. I only asked him to tell me if he was quite happy in my service.’

‘Oh, was that all?’ exclaimed Tom. ‘No wonder he was looking so tyburn-faced! And you say you’re not highhanded! Well, I think you’re mediaeval!’

That made Sylvester laugh. ‘But in what way am I mediaeval? I pay him a handsome wage, you know.’

‘But you didn’t hire him to take care of me!’

‘My dear Thomas, what in the world has he to do besides?’ Sylvester interrupted, a little impatiently. ‘All the work he has to do for me in this hedge-tavern could not occupy him for as much as a couple of hours out of the twenty-four!’

‘No, but he is your valet, not mine! You might as well have ordered him to groom your horses, or sweep the floor. And beyond all else you told him he must share Keighley’s room! Now, Salford, you must know that your valet is much above your groom’s touch!’

‘Not in my esteem.’

‘Very likely not, but-’

‘But nothing, Thomas! In my own household my esteem is all that signifies. Does that seem mediaeval to you? If it seems so to Swale he may leave me: he’s not my slave!’ He smiled suddenly. ‘Keighley is more my slave, I assure you-and I never engaged him, and could never dismiss him. Now, what is there in that to make you frown at me?’

‘I wasn’t-I mean, I can’t explain it, only my father always says one should take care not to offend the sensibilities of inferior persons, and though I daresay you didn’t intend to do so, it does seem to me as if- But I should not say so!’ Tom ended, rather hurriedly.

‘Well, you have said so, haven’t you?’ said Sylvester, quite gently, but with the smile hardening on his lips.

‘I beg your pardon, sir!’

Sylvester made no reply to this, but remarked in a thoughtful tone: ‘To have become acquainted with you and with Miss Marlow ought to do me a great deal of good, I hope. What a number of faults I have of which I was never previously made aware!’

‘I don’t know what more I can do than beg your pardon,’ Tom said stiffly.

‘Why, nothing! Unless you like to instruct me how I should treat my servants?’ He paused, as Tom looked at him with belligerence in his eyes, and his lips very resolutely closed, and said quickly: ‘Oh, no! What an unhandsome thing to say to you! Forgive me: I didn’t mean it!’

There could be no resisting that coaxing note, or the softened expression, half contrite, half quizzical, that put to rout the satyr look. Tom had been conscious of a thin film of ice behind which Sylvester had seemed to withdraw; he had resented it; but it had melted, and he found himself no longer angry, but stammering: ‘Oh, stuff! Besides, I had no business to be criticising you! Particularly,’ he added rather naively, ‘when you have been so devilish kind to me!’

‘Humdudgeon!’

‘No, it ain’t. What’s more-’

‘If you mean to be a dead bore, Thomas, I’m off!’ Sylvester interrupted. ‘And let me tell you that if you are trying to turn me up sweet you will be speedily bowled out! Kind was not the epithet you chose to describe my charitable attempt to make your bed more comfortable this morning!’

‘Oh, well, I see I can’t please you!’ Tom said, grinning. ‘First, I’m ungrateful, and now I’m a dead bore! But I’m not ungrateful, you know. I thought the trap was down when you arrived here, and so it was, for I’m in no case to help Phoebe. But you mean to do so, don’t you?’

‘Do I? Oh, convey her to London! Yes, I’ll do that,’ Sylvester replied. ‘If she still wishes it-though what she now hopes to achieve by it I don’t immediately perceive.’

Tom was unable to enlighten him, but Phoebe told him frankly that she hoped never to return to Austerby. This was sufficiently startling to make him put up his brows. She said, her eyes searching his face: ‘My grandmother told me once that she wished she might have me to live with her-had always wished it! Only when my mother died it was not possible, from some cause or another, for her to make that offer to Papa. And then, you know, he married Mama, which made it, she thought, unnecessary, as well as grossly uncivil, to remove me from Austerby.’

A slightly sardonic gleam of amusement flickered in his eyes. ‘But she did not, last year, invite you to remain with her?’ he suggested.

A look of anxiety came into her face; her eyes, still fixed on his, seemed to question him. She said: ‘No. But she thought-Sir Henry Halford warning her against any unusual exertion-well, she thought it not right to ask Papa to leave me in her charge, since she is unequal to the task of taking me to balls, and- But I think- I am sure-she didn’t perfectly enter into my sentiments upon that head! I don’t care for balls, or fashionable life. At least, it was very agreeable when I went out with my aunt Ingham, for she is excessively good-natured, and doesn’t scold, or watch one all the time, or- But indeed I don’t hanker after gaiety, and although, at that time, it didn’t occur to me to ask her if I might live with her, when-’ She paused, feeling the ice thin under her feet, and coloured.

‘When you feared to be forced into a distasteful marriage?’ he supplied helpfully.

Her colour deepened, but his words brought her engaging twinkle into her eyes. ‘Well, yes!’ she acknowledged. ‘When that happened, I thought suddenly that if Grandmama would let me reside with her I need not be a trouble, but, on the contrary, useful, perhaps. And, in any event, it won’t be so very long now before I come of age, and then I hope-I believe-the case will be quite altered, and I need be a charge on no one.’

He instantly suspected her of having formed an attachment for some hopeless ineligible, and asked her bluntly if she had matrimony in view.

‘Matrimony! Oh, no!’ she responded. ‘I daresay I shall never be married. I have another scheme-quite different!’ She added, in some confusion: ‘Excuse me on that head, if you please! I had not meant to speak of it, and must not! Pray do not regard it! Only tell me if you think-for perhaps you are better acquainted with her than I-that my grandmother will like to have me to live with her?’

He believed that there was nothing Lady Ingham would like less; but he believed also, and maliciously, that she would find it impossible to repulse her granddaughter; and he replied, smiling: ‘Why not?’

She looked relieved, but said very earnestly: ‘Every day I spend away from Austerby strengthens my resolve never to go back there! I was never so happy in my life before! You can’t understand how that should be so, I daresay, but I have felt, these last few days, as though I had escaped from a cage!’ Her solemnity vanished. ‘Oh! what a trite simile! Never mind!’

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Keighley shall escort you to London as soon as the roads are passable.’

She thanked him, but said doubtfully: ‘And Tom?’

‘I shall send a message to his parents, when you are gone. Don’t you trust me? I shan’t leave him until I have handed him over to his father.’

‘Yes, indeed I trust you. I was wondering only whether I ought to accept so much help from you-using your chaise-depriving you of your groom!’ She added naively: ‘When I was not, at first, very civil to you!’

‘But you are never civil to me!’ he complained. ‘You began by giving me a heavy set-down, and you followed that with a handsome trimming! And now you threaten to deny me a chance to retrieve my character!’ He laughed, seeing her at a loss for words, and took her hand, and lightly kissed it. ‘Cry friends, Sparrow! Am I so very bad?’

‘No! I never said that, or thought it!’ she stammered. ‘How could I, when I scarcely knew you?’

‘Oh, this is worse than anything!’ he declared. ‘No sooner seen than disliked! I understand you perfectly: I have frequently met such persons-only I had not thought myself to have been one of them!’

Goaded, she retorted: ‘One does not, I believe!’ Then she immediately looked stricken, and faltered: ‘Oh, dear, my wretched tongue! I beg your pardon!’

The retort had made his eyes flash, but the look of dismay which so swiftly succeeded it disarmed him. ‘If ever I met such a chastening pair as you and Orde! What next will you find to say to me, I wonder? Unnecessary, I’m persuaded, to tell you not to spare me!’

‘Now that is the most shocking injustice!’ she exclaimed. ‘When Tom positively toad-eats you!’

‘Toad-eats me? You can know nothing of toadeaters if that is what you think!’ He directed a suddenly penetrating look at her, and asked abruptly: ‘Do you suppose that that is what I like? to be toad-eaten?’

She thought for a moment, and then said: ‘No, not precisely. It is, rather, what you expect, perhaps, without liking or disliking.’

‘You are mistaken! I neither expect it nor like it!’ She bowed her head, it might have been in acquiescence, but the ghost of a smile on her lips nettled him.

‘Upon my word, ma’am-!’ he said angrily, and there stopped, as she looked an inquiry. A reluctant laugh was dragged out of him. ‘I recall now that I was told that you were not just in the common way, Miss Marlow!’

‘Oh, no! Did someone indeed say that of me?’ she demanded, turning quite pink with pleasure. ‘Who was it? Oh, do pray, tell me!’

He shook his head, amused by her eagerness. It was such a mild compliment, yet here she was, all agog to learn its source, looking like a child tantalised by a toy held out of her reach. ‘Not I!’

She sighed. ‘How infamous of you! Were you hoaxing me?’

‘Not at all! Why should I?’

‘I don’t know, but it seems as though you might do so. People don’t say pretty things of me-or, if they do, I never heard of it.’ She pondered it. ‘Of course, it might mean that I was merely odd-in a gothic way,’ she said doubtfully.