No, decided Sylvester, turning neatly into the yard of the Blue Boar: that was rather too much to expect him to bear! Miss Marlow should not exhibit her poor opinion of him to the interested ton. Miss Marlow, in fact, should exhibit something very different from contempt: he was damned if he was going to be the only one to learn a salutary lesson!

His expression, when he alighted from the curricle, and stood watching, with a merciless eye, the exact carrying out of his curt orders, was unamiable enough to make the ostler break into a sweat of anxiety; but when he presently strolled into Tom’s room all traces of ill-humour had vanished from his countenance.

He entered upon a scene of constraint. The Squire, peckish after his ride, had just disposed of a substantial nuncheon, and Tom, having talked himself out of arguments, had been preserving for the past ten minutes a silence pregnant with resentment. He looked round at the opening of the door, his eyes still smouldering, and as soon as he saw that it was Sylvester who had come in, burst out: ‘Salford! The-the most damnable thing! Perhaps you can prevail upon my father to listen to reason! I never would have believed it possible he could-oh, this is my father!’

‘I don’t know what you would never have believed possible,’ said the Squire, getting up from his chair, and bowing to Sylvester, ‘but let me tell you, my boy, I wouldn’t have believed you had only to be away from home for a week to lose your manners! I should think your grace must be wondering if he was reared in a cow-byre, and I’m sure I don’t blame you. He wasn’t, however-and a thundering scold he’d get from his mother if she were here!’ He saw that Sylvester, advancing into the room, was holding out his hand, and shook it warmly. ‘I’m honoured to make your grace’s acquaintance-and feel myself to be devilish obliged to you, as you may guess! You’ve been a great deal too kind to Tom, and how to thank you I don’t know!’

‘But there’s no need to thank me at all, I assure you, sir,’ Sylvester said, at his most charming. ‘I’ve spent a most entertaining week-and made a new friend, whom I can’t allow you to scold! It would be most unjust, you know, for he abandoned his really oppressive civility only at my request. Besides, he has endured six days of boredom without a murmur of complaint!’

‘Ay, and serve him right!’ said the Squire. ‘A bad business this, my lord Duke! I left Marlow in a rare taking, I can tell you. Well, well! he’s the best man to hounds I ever saw, but I never thought his understanding more than moderate. Gretna Green, indeed! Of all the harebrained notions to have taken into his head!’

‘I wish to God I had taken her to Gretna Green!’ said Tom savagely. ‘Salford, my father is determined to carry her back to Austerby! I can’t make him understand that only a regular brute would do so, after such an escapade as this!’

‘Now, now!’ said the Squire. ‘There’s been no harm done, and no one but ourselves any the wiser-thanks to his grace!-and so I shall tell her ladyship.’

‘As though she would pay the least heed! And what a figure I must cut! I wouldn’t let her go on the stage, and if I had she would have been with Lady Ingham days ago! I promised to take her there myself, and all I’ve done is to land her in a worse case than ever! Father-’

‘Calm yourself, Galahad!’ interposed Sylvester. ‘There is really no occasion to be cast into despair. Miss Marlow left for London an hour ago.’

An astonished silence succeeded these words. Tom broke it with a shout of triumph. ‘Oh, you Trojan, Salford!’

This made Sylvester laugh; but an instant later he was putting up his brows, for the Squire, after staring at him fixedly, said bluntly: ‘If that was your grace’s doing, as I collect it must have been, I shall take leave to tell you it was wrong of you, my lord Duke-very wrong!’

Tom, recognizing that look of withdrawal, intervened quickly. ‘You mustn’t say that, Father-indeed you must not! Pray-!’

‘I shall say just what I think, Tom,’ said the Squire, still looking at Sylvester from under his brows. ‘If his grace don’t like it, why, I’m sorry for it, but I’ve said it, and I stand by it!’

Tom glanced apprehensively at Sylvester, but his intervention had been more successful than he knew. Meeting his eyes Sylvester realized, with a slight shock, that he was trying to prevent the Squire’s being wounded by a snub. He had been unaware of his own stiffening; for an instant he remembered Phoebe’s words. He had dismissed them as an impertinent attempt to vex him; he wondered now if it could be true that he, who prided himself on his good manners, appeared to others to be insufferably high in the instep. He said, smiling: ‘Well, I don’t like it, for you are doing me an injustice, sir! You may have pledged your word to Marlow, but I pledged mine to his daughter!’

‘Ay, that’s very pretty talking!’ retorted the Squire. ‘But what the devil am I to tell him, Duke?’

‘If I were you,’ replied Sylvester, ‘I rather think I should merely tell him that I had been unable to bring Miss Marlow back with me because she had already left for town-on a visit to her grandmother.’

The Squire, having thought this over, said slowly: ‘I could say that, of course. To be sure, they don’t know Phoebe has been here all along-and it would be as well, I daresay, if they never did get to know of it. At the same time, I don’t like hoaxing Marlow, for that’s what I should be doing, no question about it!’

‘But, Father, what good would it do to tell them you found Phoebe here?’ asked Tom. ‘Now that she’s gone, it could only do harm!’

‘Well, that’s true enough,’ admitted the Squire. ‘What am I going to tell them?’

‘That Miss Marlow travelled to town in my chaise, escorted by my head groom, and attended by a respectable abigail,’ replied Sylvester fluently. ‘Not even Lady Marlow could demand a greater degree of propriety, surely?’

‘Not if she don’t set eyes on the respectable abigail!’ murmured Tom.

‘Don’t put mistaken notions into your father’s head, Thomas! Let me reassure you, sir! The landlady’s daughter has gone with Miss Marlow. She is unquestionably respectable!’

‘Yes, but such a toadeater!’ said Tom wickedly. ‘Saying you were more important than a gobble-cock-!’

13

Contrary to Sylvester’s expectation Phoebe reached her grandmother’s house at half-past ten that evening. She had been travelling for nearly eight hours, for the state of the roads had compelled the postilions to proceed at a very sober pace, and she was as weary as she was anxious. Her initial reception in Green Street was not encouraging. While she waited in the chaise, with the window let down, watching him, Keighley trod up the steps to the front door and plied the heavy knocker resoundingly. A long, long pause followed, and a nerve-racking fear that Lady Ingham was out of town assailed Phoebe. But just as Keighley raised his hand to repeat his summons she saw him check, and lower his arm again. The quelling noise of bolts being drawn back was next heard, and Phoebe, craning eagerly forward, saw her grandmother’s butler standing on the threshold, with a lamp in his hand, and heaved a sigh of relief.

But if she expected to receive a welcome from Horwich she was the more deceived. Persons who demanded admittance at unseasonable hours were never welcome to him, even when they arrived in a chaise-and-four and escorted by a liveried servant. A street lamp illumined the chaise, and he perceived that for all the dirt that clung to the wheels and panels it was an extremely elegant vehicle: none of your job-chaises, but a carriage built for a gentleman of means and taste. A glimpse of a crest, half concealed by mud, caused him to unbend a trifle, but he replied coldly to Keighley’s inquiry that her ladyship was not at home to visitors.

He was obliged to admit Phoebe, of course. He did it with obvious reluctance, and stood, rigid with disapproval, while she thanked Keighley for his services, and bade him goodbye with what he considered most unbecoming friendliness.

‘I will ascertain whether her ladyship will receive you, miss,’ he said, shutting the door at last upon Keighley. ‘I should inform you, however, that her ladyship retired to rest above an hour ago.’

She tried not to feel daunted, and said as confidently as she could that she was sure her grandmother would receive her. ‘And will you, if you please, look after my maid, Horwich?’ she said. ‘We have been travelling for a great many hours, and I expect she will be glad of some supper.’

‘I will that, and no mistake!’ corroborated Alice, grinning cordially at Horwich. ‘Don’t you go putting yourself out, though! A bit of cold meat and a mug of porter will do me fine.’

Phoebe could not feel, observing the expression on Horwich’s face, that Sylvester had acted wisely in sending Alice to town with her. Horwich said in arctic accents that he would desire the housekeeper-if she had not gone to bed-to attend to the Young Person presently. He added that if Miss would be pleased to step into the morning room he would send her ladyship’s maid up to apprise my lady of Miss’s unexpected arrival.

But by this time Phoebe’s temper had begun to mount, and she surprised the venerable tyrant by saying tartly that she would do no such thing. ‘You need not put yourself to the trouble of escorting me, for I know my way very well! If her ladyship is asleep I shall not wake her, and if she is not I don’t need Muker to announce me!’ she declared.

Her ladyship was not asleep. Phoebe’s soft knock on her door was answered by a command to come in; and she entered to find her grandmother sitting up in her curtained bed, with a number of pillows to support her, and an open book in her hands. Two branches of candles and the flames of a large fire lit the scene, and cast into strong relief her ladyship’s aquiline profile. ‘Well, what is it?’ she said testily, and looked round. ‘Phoebe! Good God, what in the world-? My dear, dear child, come in!’