“Oh, a novel!” said Mrs Mickleby. “I must confess I am an enemy to that class of literature, but I daresay that you, Miss Trent, are partial to romances.”

“When they are as well-written as this one, ma’am, most certainly!” returned Ancilla.

“Oh, and he brought a dissected map!” Charlotte said. “I had never seen one before! It is all made of little pieces which fit into each other, to make a map of Europe!”

The Misses Mickleby had not seen one either, so Miss Trent, feeling that she had a score to pay, advised their mama, very kindly, to procure one for them. “So educational!” she said. “And quite exceptionable!”

Then Sir Waldo arrived, and although he did not single Miss Trent out for any particular attention Mrs Mickleby, who was just as quick as Mr Calver to recognize the signs of an affaire,was convinced that if she had not outstayed him he would have found an excuse to take Miss Trent to walk round the gardens, or some such thing.

“And it’s my belief, sorry though I am to think it, that she would have gone with him,” she told Mrs Banningham later. “I was watching her closely, and I assure you, ma’am, she coloured up the instant his name was announced. I never saw anyone look more conscious!”

“It doesn’t astonish me in the least,” replied Mrs Banningham. “There was always something about her which I couldn’t like. You,I know, took quite a fancy to her, but for my part I thought her affected. That excessive reserve, for instance, and her airs of gentility—!”

“Oh, as to that,” said Mrs Mickleby, a trifle loftily, “the Trents are a very good family! That is what makes it so distressing to see her showing such a want of delicacy. All those rides! Of course, she was said to be playing propriety, but I thought at the time it was very odd, very imprudent!”

“Imprudent!” said Mrs Banningham, with a snort. “Very sly, I call it! She has been on the catch for him from the outset. A fine thing it would be for her, without a penny to bless herself with! If he makes her an offer, which I don’t consider a certain thing at all. A carte blanche, possibly; marriage, no!”

“Someone should warn her that he is merely trifling. I should not wish her to be taken in, for however much I may deplore her conduct in luring him on to sit in her pocket, I do not think her fast.”

“If it isn’t fast to dance twice with him—the waltz, too!—besides going in to supper with him, and sending him to fetch her shawl, not to mention the way she looked up at him over her shoulder when he put it round her, which quite put meto the blush—!”

“Most unbecoming!” agreed Mrs Mickleby. “But you must own that before Sir Waldo came to Broom Hall she behaved with all the propriety in the world. I fear that he may have deceived her into believing that he was hanging out for a wife, merely because he paid her attention; and in her situation, you know, it must have seemed to her worth a push to bring him to the point. One can only pity her!”

Mrs Banningham was easily able to refrain. She said acidly: “I dislike ninnyhammers, and that she must certainly be if she imagines for one moment that a man of his consequences would entertain the thought of marriage with her!”

“Very true, but I fancy her experience of the Corinthian set is not large. It would be useless, of course, to suppose that Mrs Underhill would ever give her a hint.”

“That vulgar female! She does not give her own niece a hint! I should be sorry to see any daughter of mine behave as Tiffany does. Wild to a fault! There is something very disgusting, too, in her determination to attach every man she meets to her apron-strings. First it was Lord Lindeth, now it is Mr Calver: he, if you please, is teaching her to drive! I saw them with my own eyes. No groom, no Miss Trent to chaperon her! Oh, no! Miss Trent only thinks it her duty to chaperon her when Sir Waldo is with her!”

“I shall be thankful when that wretched girl goes back to her uncle in London! As for Miss Trent, I have always said that she was by far too young for her position, but in this instance it must be allowed that her time has been taken up by Charlotte. If Mrs Underhill preferred her to devote herself to Charlotte rather than to Tiffany, the blame is hers. Far be it from me to suggest that Sir Waldo’s daily visits have anything to do with the case! And so Tiffany is playing fast and loose with Lord Lindeth, is she? I daresay Mr Calver is much more in her style. A Macaroni merchant is what Mr Mickleby calls him, but no doubt she thinks him quite up to the nines.”

In this she was right: Tiffany was greatly impressed by Laurence, whom she had recognized instantly as belonging to the dandy-set. During her brief sojourn in London she had seen several of these exquisites on the Grand Strut in Hyde Park, and she was well aware that to win the admiration of an out-and-out Pink of the Ton added enormously to a lady’s consequence. It was not an easy thing to do, because in general the dandies were extremely critical, more likely to survey with boredom, through an insolently lifted quizzing-glass, an accredited beauty than to acclaim her. She was impressed also by his conversation; and flattered by his assumption that she was as familiar with the personalities and the on-dits of the ton as he was himself. Had it been he, and not Lindeth, who was a Peer, she would have preferred him, because he was so much more fashionable, and because he never bored her by talking about his home in the country, as Lindeth too often did. She would, in any event, have tried to attach him to her apron-strings, because it was torment to her if any young man, even so negligible a one as Humphrey Colebatch, either showed himself to be impervious to her charms, or betrayed a preference for some other girl. In Laurence’s case there was an added reason for encouraging his advances: Lindeth, in whom she had detected, since the Leeds adventure, a certain reserve, probably discounted such rivals as Mr Ash, Mr Jack Banningham, and Mr Arthur Mickleby, but she could not believe that he would be indifferent to the rivalry of his fashionable cousin. She had realized almost immediately that he did not like Laurence: not because he uttered a word in his disparagement, but because, when questioned, he spoke of him in a temperate manner far removed from the eager enthusiasm which any mention of his other cousin kindled in him. Since Tiffany much admired Laurence she had no hesitation in ascribing Lindeth’s dislike of him to jealousy; it did not so much as cross her mind that Lindeth might be contemptuous of Laurence; and had anyone suggested such a solution to her she would have been utterly incredulous.

When Lindeth called at Staples to leave compliment cards, she told him, with a provocative look under her lashes, that his cousin, learning that although she was an accomplished horsewoman in the saddle she had never found anyone capable of teaching her how to handle the reins in form, had begged to be allowed to offer his services.

He stared at her blankly. “Mr Calver says he will teach me to drive to an inch,” she added, with one of her sauciest smiles.

“Laurence?”he demanded, the oddest expression on his face.

“Why not?” she countered, lifting an eyebrow at him.

He opened his mouth, shut it again, and turned away to pick up his hat and gloves.

“Well?” persisted Tiffany, pleased with the success of her gambit. “Pray, have you any objection?”

“No, no, not the least in the world!” he said hastily. “How should I? I only—but never mind that!”

That was quite enough to confirm Tiffany in her belief that she had roused a demon of jealousy in his breast. She never knew that his lordship, whom Laurence stigmatized as a bagpipe, snatched the first opportunity that presented itself of admitting his cousin Waldo into a joke which was much too rich to be kept to himself. “I don’t know how I contrived to keep my countenance! Laurie! Driving to an inch! Oh, lord, I shall be sick if I laugh any more!”

But Tiffany, with no suspicion that she had afforded Lindeth food for laughter, was very well satisfied. Her former suitors, who had gloomily but unresentfully watched Lindeth’s star rise, were roused to violent jealousy by Laurence; and she saw no reason to suppose that Lindeth would not be similarly stirred. For several days she was intoxicated by success, believing herself to be irresistible, and queening it over her court with ever-increasing capriciousness. And since, like Mrs Mickleby, she discarded without hesitation the ostensible reason for the Nonesuch’s daily visits, and had never for an instant suspected that he might prefer her companion to her peerless self, she was sure that he too was unable to stay away from her. This seemed so obvious that she did not pause to consider that his behaviour, when he came to Staples, was not in the least that of a man dazzled by her charms. She had always found him incalculable, and if she had thought about it at all she would have supposed that he was content merely to look at her.

Courtenay, revolted by her self-satisfaction and indignant with his friends for making such fools of themselves, told her that she was no better than a vulgar lightskirt, and prophesied that she was riding for a fall; and when she laughed said that Lord Lindeth was only the first man to become disgusted: there would be others soon enough.

“Pooh!”

“Mighty pot-sure, aren’t you? But it seems to me that we don’t see so much of Lindeth these days!”

“When I want him,” boasted Tiffany, smiling in a way which made him want to slap her, “I shall just lift a finger! Then you’ll see!”