Cards of invitation were sent out from Stanyon; Marianne was in transports, and if it did not quite suit Lady Bolderwood’s sense of propriety to permit her to appear at a regular ball before she had been brought out in London at a ball of her own parents’ contriving, Sir Thomas could not be brought to see that such niceties mattered a jot. Lady Bolderwood’s scruples were overborne, and Marianne could be happy, and had only to decide between the rival merits of her white satin dress with the Russian bodice, fastened in front with little pearls; and one of white crape, trimmed with blonde lace, and worn over a satin slip.

Her happiness, with that of every other lady who had been honoured with an invitation to the ball, very soon became alloyed by anxiety. The weather underwent a change, and in place of bright spring days, with the wind blowing constantly from the east, a stormy period threatened to set in. A gay little party of damsels, seeking violets in the woods about Whissenhurst, were caught in such a severe downpour that they were soaked almost to the skin; and when anxious questions were put to such weather-wise persons as gardeners and farmers, these worthies would only shake their heads, and say that it showed no sign of fairing-up. The date of the ball had been carefully chosen to coincide with the full moon, but not even so indulgent a parent as Sir Thomas would for a moment consider the possibility of driving some six miles to a party of pleasure if the moon were to be obscured by clouds, and the coachman’s vision still further impaired by driving rain.

“Do we despair, Miss Morville?” asked the Earl.

“No, but if the weather continues in this odious way, I fear you will find your rooms very thin of company,” she replied. “The people who are coming from a distance, and are to sleep here, will come, because they will set out in daylight, you know, and they will hope that the rain won’t come on, or that they may drive away from it. I should think you may be sure of the party from Belvoir, but I do feel that you should perhaps fortify your mind to the likelihood of your immediate neighbours not caring to set forth in wet, cloudy weather.”

“I will endeavour to do so,” promised the Earl gravely.

Three days before the ball, the weather, so far from showing signs of improvement, promised nothing but disaster. The prophets said gloomily that it was banking up for a storm, and they were right. The day was tempestuous; and when the Stanyon party assembled for dinner even Martin, who had hitherto refused to envisage the possibility of the inclement weather’s persisting, took his place at the table with a very discontented expression on his face, and announced that he thought the devil had got into the skies.

“Well, if it continues in this way, we must postpone the ball,” Gervase said cheerfully.

“Yes! And find everyone gone off to London!” retorted Martin.

He could talk of nothing but the probable ruin of their plans; and since no representation sufficed to make him think more hopefully of the prospects, not even his mother was sorry when, shortly after the party rose from the table, he said, after a series of cavernous yawns, that he rather thought he would go to bed, since he had the head-ache, and everything was a dead bore.

The usual whist set had been formed, and so fierce were the battles fought over the table that none of the four players noticed that the wind was no longer rattling the shutters, and moaning round the corners of the Castle, until Miss Morville, who sat quietly stitching by the fire, lifted her head, and said: “Listen! the wind has dropped!”

“I rather thought it would,” observed the Dowager, gathering up her trick. “Indeed, I said as much this morning. ‘Depend upon it,’ I said to Abney, ‘the wind will drop, and we shall have it fine for our party.’ I flatter myself I am seldom at fault in my calculations. Dear me, St. Erth, I am sure if I had known you had the King of Diamonds in your hand we might have taken a couple of tricks more!”

“I am very much afraid, ma’am, that this is the lull before a storm,” said Theo.

So indeed it proved. After a brief period of quiet, a distant but menacing rumble of thunder was heard; and the Dowager instantly said that she had suspected as much, since nothing so surely gave Martin the head-ache as a thunderstorm.

After half an hour, during which time thunder grumbled intermittently, Miss Morville announced that she too would go to bed. She said that she could wish that, if a storm there must be, it would lose no time in bursting into full force, and thus be the more quickly finished.

“Poor Drusilla!” Theo said, smiling. “Do you dislike it so very much?”

“I do dislike it,” she replied, with dignity, “but I am well aware that to be afraid of the thunder is unworthy of any person of the least intelligence. The noise is certainly disagreeable, but it cannot, after all, harm one!” With these stout words, she folded up her needlework, bade goodnight to the company, and went away to her bedchamber.

“I fear we must expect to spend a disturbed night,” said Mr. Clowne, shaking his head. “There has been a feeling of oppression in the atmosphere throughout the day which presages a very considerable storm. I trust your ladyship’s rest will not be impaired.”

“I have no apprehension of it,” she responded. “I do not fear the elements, I assure you. Indeed, I should think it a very remarkable circumstance if I were to lose my sleep on account of them. We have very severe storms at Stanyon: I have often observed as much. Ah, here is the tea-table being brought in at last! What a pity Drusilla should not have waited, for she might have dispensed the tea, you know, and now I shall be obliged to do so myself.”

As the evening wore on, the storm increased in violence, the reverberations of one crash of thunder hardly dying away before another, and even more severe clatter, seeming to roll round the sky above the Castle, succeeded it. Powerful gusts of wind buffeted the windows, and drove the smoke downwards in the chimneys; the howl of the gusts, sweeping round the many angles of the Castle, rose sometimes to a shriek which could be heard through the loudest peals of the thunder.

The Chaplain having meekly retired to bed when his patroness sought her own couch, the Earl and his cousin were left to amuse themselves as best they might. The Earl lit one of his cigarillos, but Theo declined joining him. “And I wish you may not repent your temerity, when my aunt detects — as I promise you she will! — the aroma of tobacco in this room tomorrow!” he added.

Gervase laughed. “Will she give me one of her tremendous scolds, do you think? I shall shake in my shoes: she is the most terrifying woman!”

His cousin smiled. “What a complete hand you are, St. Erth! Much you care for her scolds! All this mild compliance is nothing but a take-in: you engage her at every turn!”

“Military training, Theo: a show of strength to deceive the enemy!” said Gervase firmly. “But the room will reek of wood-smoke in the morning, and my iniquity may be undiscovered. It is a very bad habit, however: one that I learned in Spain, and have tried in vain to abandon. I don’t find that snuff answers the purpose at all. Good God, what a gust! You will be blown out of your turret!”

“Not I! The walls are so thick I shall spend the night very much more snugly than you will, I daresay.”

“Don’t think it! I became inured to this kind of thing in Spain, and very soon learned to sleep peacefully through a veritable tornado — in a draughty billet, too, with no glass in the windows, but only a few boards nailed across them to protect us from the worst of the weather. I have taken the precaution, too, of telling Turvey to let the fire die down in my room, and thus need not fear to be smothered by smoke. Like her ladyship, I guessed how it would be!”

“At all events, there is a very good chance that it will blow itself out, and we may expect better weather after it. You need not despair of your ball! But it is not, I fancy, so violent a storm as you might suppose from the way the wind screeches round us. I am accustomed to it, but, after so long an absence, you,I imagine, might well believe yourself to be listening to the screams of souls in torment.”

“No, I well recall the discomforts of Stanyon in inclement weather. I shall go to bed. I am sure I know not how it is, but an evening spent in the company of my stepmother fatigues me more than a dozen cavalry charges!”

“To that also I am accustomed,” Theo said gravely.

They left the Saloon together, the Earl’s hand tucked lightly into his cousin’s arm. The candles and the lamps were still burning in the galleries and on the Grand Staircase, the Earl having, in the gentlest manner possible, informed his household that, since it was not his habit to retire at ten o’clock, he did not wish to find the Castle plunged in darkness at this hour. A couple of footmen were hovering about in a disinterested way, their purpose being to extinguish the lights as soon as he should have shut his bedchamber-door. The Earl smiled faintly, and murmured: “My poor Turvey! He cannot reconcile himself to the rigours of life in the country, and wonders that he should be required to grope his way to bed by the light of a single candle. I wish he may not leave my service, as a result of all these discomforts! He understands my boots as no other valet has ever done.”

“And your neckcloths?” said Theo quizzically.

“No, no, how can you do me such an injustice? Mine is the only hand employed in their arrangement! But you have set my doubts at rest, Theo! This Oriental style, which you so rightly deprecate, is too high — by far too high! You shall see tomorrow how beautifully I am able to tie a trone d’amour!”