“Ay, willingly!” responded Lucius. “But you’ll find his wife won’t permit him to go with us, if I know my cousin Albinia!”

“Nabble him when she ain’t looking,” said Lord Melksham hopefully. “Very partial to a quiet rubber, Ralph!”

“No, it can’t be done.” Captain Staple spoke with decision. “We must—shall!—stay, and listen to your sister’s performance.”

“But she’ll sing for ever!” objected his lordship. “Dismal stuff, too: assure you!”

But Captain Staple, with a shake of his head, moved away towards the group gathered about the fair harpist, and, obedient to an inviting smile, sat down on a small sofa beside his cousin Lettice.

“This will be dreadful” Miss Yatton whispered.

“Yes, very likely,” he agreed. He turned his head to look down at her, a smile in his eyes. “You’ve grown very fine since I saw you last, Letty. I suppose you’ve come out, have you?”

“Good gracious, yes! At the beginning of the Season! If you had been in London, you would know that I enjoyed a considerable success!” said Miss Yatton, never one to hide her light under a bushel. “Only fancy! Papa received three offers for my hand! Quite ineligible, of course, but just think of it! Three, and in my first Season!” He was amused, but he checked her, Lady Charlotte having by this time disposed herself at the harp. He covered one of his lively young cousin’s hands with his own large one, and gave it an admonishing squeeze. Miss Yatton, who was bidding fair to become an accomplished flirt, obeyed the unspoken command, but cast up at him so roguish a look that his sister, observing it, and the smile with which it was received, took instant fright, and determined at the earliest opportunity to draw her mother’s attention to a danger she had perhaps not perceived.

But Mrs. Staple, visited by her daughter some two hours later, listened to her warning with unshaken placidity, merely saying: “Dear me, did you get me to send my maid away only to tell me this, Fanny?”

“Mama, she ogled him throughout dinner! And the way in which he took her hand, and smiled at her—! I assure you—”

“I observed the whole, my love, and was most forcibly put in mind of the way he has with his puppies.”

“Puppies?” exclaimed Lady Lichfield. “Letty is not a puppy, Mama! Indeed, I think her an arrant flirt, and I cannot but be uneasy. You will own that she would not do for my brother!”

“Do not put yourself in a taking, my love!” replied Mrs. Staple, tying the strings of her nightcap under her chin. “I only hope she may amuse him enough to keep him here over the weekend, though I don’t scruple to say that I very much doubt it. My dear Fanny, was there ever such an insipid affair?”

“Oh, there was never anything like it!” readily agreed her daughter. “But, Mama, how shocking a thing it would be if John were to fall in love with Letty Yatton!”

“I have no apprehension of it,” replied Mrs. Staple calmly.

“He seemed to be quite taken with her,” said Fanny. “I cannot but wonder, ma’am, if Letty’s vivacity may not make dear Elizabeth’s gentler manners seem to him—well, tame!”

“You are making a piece of work about nothing,” said Mrs. Staple. “If he should feel a partiality for Elizabeth I shall be excessively happy. But I hope I am not such a goose as to set my heart upon the match. Depend upon it, your brother is very well capable of choosing a wife for himself.”

“Mama! How can you be so provoking?” exclaimed Fanny. “When we have both of us been at such pains to bring John and Elizabeth together, and you have actually invited Elizabeth to Mildenhurst next week!”

“Very true,” returned Mrs. Staple imperturbably. “I should not think it wonderful if John were to find Eliza’s quiet good sense welcome after three days spent—if the chit can contrive it!—in Letty’s company.”

Fanny looked a little dubious, but she was prevented from making any rejoinder by a knock on the door. Mrs. Staple called to this late visitor to come in, adding, In an under-voice: “Take care! This is John: I know his knock.”

So, indeed, it proved. Captain Staple entered, saying: “May I come in, Mama? Hallo, Fan! Talking secrets?”

“Good gracious, no! Unless you think it a secret that this is the most insipid party that ever was given!”

“Well, that’s just it,” said John confidentially. “If you don’t object, Mama, I think I shall be off in the morning.”

“Not remain until Monday!” cried Fanny. “You can’t cry off like that!”

“I’m not crying off. I was invited to meet the bride, and I have met her.”

“But you can’t tell Bevis you don’t mean to stay!”

“As a matter of fact, I have told him,” said John, a little guiltily. “Told him I had arranged to visit friends—not having understood that I was expected to remain here above a night. Now, there’s no need to pull that face, Fan! If you’re thinking Bevis was offended, you’re quite out.”

“Very well, my dear,” interposed his mother, before Fanny could speak. “Do you mean to go home? For I must tell you that although I should like nothing better than to bring my visit to an end to-morrow I cannot do it without putting your Aunt Maria into a miff.”

“No, no, I don’t mean to drag you off with me, Mama!” he assured her. “To tell you the truth, I thought I might take a trip into Leicestershire, to see Wilfred Babbacombe. Bound to be there, now cubbing has started.” He read condemnation in his sister’s eye, and added hastily: “It seems a pity I shouldn’t do so, now that I’m in the district.”

“In the district! Easterby must be sixty miles from Leicester, and very likely more!”

“Well, now that I’m in the north,” amended the Captain.

“But you will not let Mama return to Mildenhurst without an escort!”

“No, of course I won’t. My man shall go with her. You won’t object to having Cocking to ride beside the chaise in my stead, will you, Mama? You’ll be quite safe with him.”

“By all means, my dear. But had you not better take him with you?”

“Lord, no! I’ll take what I want in a saddle-bag, and shan’t have the least need of him,”

“When,” demanded Fanny, a look of foreboding in her eyes, “do you mean to return to Mildenhurst?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” said her maddening brother. “In a week or so, I daresay. Why?”

Fanny, prohibited by a quelling glance from her mama from answering this question, merely looked her disapprobation. Mrs. Staple said: “It is not of the smallest consequence. I have friends coming to stay at Mildenhurst next week, so you are not to be thinking that I may be lonely, John.”

“Oh, that’s famous, then!” he said, relieved. “You know. Mama, I don’t know how it is—whether it’s my uncle, with his bamboozling ways, or Aunt Caroline, or Lucius’s laugh, or Ralph Tackenham prosing on for ever, or young Geoffrey aping the dandy-set, or just the devilish propriety of Easterby—but I can’t stand it here!”

“I know just what you mean,” his mother assured him.

He bent, giving her a hug and a kiss. “You are the best mother in the world!” he said. “What’s more, that’s a very fetching nightcap, ma’am! I must go: Melksham wants to start a faro-bank now, and Bevis don’t like it above half. Poor old fellow! he’ll never be able to handle Melksham—not when Melksham’s muddled, which he is, six days out of the seven. Christened with pump-water, that lad! He’ll be as drunk as an artillery-man before morning.”

With this ominous prophecy, the Captain then took himself off, leaving his parent unperturbed, and his sister seething. Hardly had the door closed behind him, than she exclaimed: “I think John is the most vexatious creature alive! How could you let him go, Mama? You know what he is! I daresay you won’t set eyes on him again for a month! And now he won’t even meet Elizabeth!”

“It is unfortunate, but I don’t despair,” replied Mrs. Staple, smiling faintly. “As for letting him go, a man of nine-and-twenty, my love, is not to be held in leading-strings. Moreover, had I obliged him to come home to meet Elizabeth I am persuaded he would have taken her in aversion from the outset.”

“Well,” said Fanny crossly, “I think he is odiously provoking, ma’am!”

“Very true, my dear: all men are odiously provoking,” agreed Mrs. Staple. “Now I am going to bed, and you had best do the same.”

“Yes, or Lichfield will wonder what has become of me,” Fanny said, getting up from her chair.

“Not at all,” responded her mother coolly. “Lichfield, dear child, is no less provoking than any other man, and is at this moment—I have no doubt—playing faro downstairs.”

Fanny acknowledged the probable truth of this pronouncement by bidding her parent a dignified goodnight.

Chapter 2

CAPTAIN STAPLE was not destined to leave Easterby at an early hour on the following morning. Thanks to the nocturnal habits of Lord Melksham, it was daylight before he went to bed. That amiable but erratic peer, dissuaded from opening a faro bank, had challenged the company to a quiet game of loo; and since the elders of the party, who included besides the Archdeacon, his brother-in-law, Mr. Yatton, and Mr. Merridge the Earl’s chaplain, had retired soon after the ladies, and the Earl was plainly unable to keep the situation within bounds, Captain Staple had not the heart to desert him. The Earl was grateful, but he would not permit him to break up the party, which he was perfectly willing to do. He said: “No, no! If Melksham is determined——He is my guest, you know, and, besides—Well, you will understand how it is!”

“No, I don’t,” said John bluntly. “And if I were you, old fellow, I would order things as I liked in my own house!”