“You! Never!” he declared. “It’s no matter—I should not have spoken, but there are times when a man’s feelings may not be suppressed!” He eyed her hungrily. “Only give me the right to call you mine!” he invited.

“What, is that why you wanted to talk to me alone?” she exclaimed. “Of all the ridiculous starts—! I wish you will believe that when I say No, No is precisely what I mean! How can you be so absurd? I am more than six years older than you! Besides, you don’t really wish to marry me in the least!”

“N-not w-wish to marry you?” he stammered, thunderstruck.

Her eyes danced. “Of course you don’t! Only think what a bore it would be to be obliged to settle down as a respectably married man before you have had a great many adventures!”

He had never before looked at the matter in this light, and he could not help feeling secretly rather struck. However, he was too earnest in the pursuit of his calf-love to acknowledge the good sense of her observation. “I ask no greater felicity than to win you!” he assured her.

Her lips quivered irresistibly, but she managed to keep from laughing. Only if one was very cruel did one laugh at a boy in the throes of his first love. She said: “Well, it is excessively kind of you, Oswald, and indeed I am flattered, even if I can’t return your sentiments. Pray don’t talk about it any more! Tell me, is Lady Denny well? And your sisters?”

He ignored this, but said in a gloomy tone: “I shall say no more, except to beg you to believe that my devotion is unalterable. I didn’t come for that purpose, but to tell you that you may count upon me. I am not a consequential prig, like Yardley! I am not afraid of going against etiquette—in fact I don’t care a straw for such stuff, but then, I have seen more of the world than—”

“Oswald, what are you talking about?” Venetia interrupted. “If it is Edward who has put you in this passion—”

“That skirter!” he ejaculated, with awful contempt. “Let him busy himself with his roots, and his cattle: it is all he is fit for!”

“Well, you must own that he is very fit for that!” said Venetia reasonably. “I daresay his land is in better heart than any you would find in half a day’s journey. Even Powick, you know, doesn’t disdain his advice when it is a matter of farming.”

“I didn’t come to talk about Yardley!” said Oswald. “I merely mentioned—well, it’s no odds! Venetia, if that fellow should offer you an insult, send me word!”

“Edward offer me— Oh, good God, do you mean Damerel? You absurd creature, go home, and try if you can be interested in roots, or cattle, or anything you please as long as it is not me! Lord Damerel is our very good friend, and it vexes me very much to hear you talk in that foolish style about him.”

“You are too innocent, too divinely pure, to be able to read the mind of a man of his stamp,” he told her, his brow darkling. “He may deceive Yardley, but I knew him for what he is the instant I clapped eyes on him! A Man of the Town! It is a—a desecration to think of his so much as touching your hand! When I saw how he looked at you—By God, I was within ames-ace of planting him a facer!”

At that she did laugh. “I wish I might see you make the attempt! No, no, don’t make me any more protestations! What you have said, you know, is the outside of enough! Indeed, it is most improper! Lord Damerel is a gentleman, and if he were not, I am not so innocent that I’m not very well able to take care of myself. Besides, it’s all fustian! Your papa would say you were enacting a Cheltenham tragedy, and that’s precisely what you are doing! If you choose to play-act it is quite your own concern, but you shall not do so at my expense. Goodbye!—Give my fond love to Lady Denny, if you please, and tell her that Aubrey is going on so well that I hope Dr. Bentworth will say, when next he visits him, that I may take him home.”

With these bracing words, she nodded dismissal, and went back into the library before he could form any adequate answer.

He rode home to Ebbersley a prey to mixed emotions, his self-esteem so much wounded by Venetia’s parting speech that for at least a mile he was occupied with extensive plans for renouncing his allegiance, abjuring the society of her sex or perhaps cultivating it in a very cynical way, causing its members to attempt by every art known to them to discover what dark secret was hidden behind his marble front and sardonic sneer. This scheme, though not unattractive, was attended, however, by certain difficulties, chief amongst them being the degradingly conventional standard of behaviour prevailing at Ebbersley, and a marked tendency on Lady Denny’s part to press a Blue Pill on anyone suffering torment of the soul. Nor did the North Riding afford the right background for a mysterious and sinister stranger. For one thing, the country in which Ebbersley was situated was sparsely populated; and for another, he was too well-known to the gentry there, and even in York itself, to have the least hope of figuring as a stranger, much less a mysterious and sinister stranger. He would be obliged to attend the Assemblies, with his mama and his elder sister, because if he refused to go they would raise such a dust that the matter would come to Papa’s ears, and nothing was more certain than that Papa would command him to do as he was bid. As for standing romantically aloof at these functions, and declining all the offers of the Master of Ceremonies to present him to desirable partners, there was no hope of doing that either. The ballroom would be full of girls with whom he had been acquainted all his life, and if he did not ask them to stand up with him Mama would not only scold him for incivility but was quite capable of excusing his behaviour to her friends on the score that he was bilious, or had the toothache. In a better regulated world the father of any young gentleman no longer at school would be compelled to supply his son with an allowance sufficiently handsome to enable him to set up for himself in London, and cut a dash in the fashionable world; but the world was ill-regulated, and Sir John so unenlightened a parent that he thought (and stated) that after sending his heir on a visit to his uncle in Jamaica he had a right to expect him to settle down at home, and learn all the business of managing the considerable estate which would, in due course, be his own.

Fortunately, before he had dwelled for long on his bleak prospects Oswald remembered that in one of the nobler ages that had preceded the present drab century knights and troubadours had apparently been inspired by scornful mistresses to perform heroic deeds. The more disdainful, not to say insulting, the ladies, the greater their devotion had been, and the greater their ultimate triumph when their exploits had convinced the favoured fair ones of their true qualities.

The vision thus conjured up of winning Venetia’s admiration was agreeable enough to make him abandon any immediate intention of becoming a misogynist, and brought him back to Ebbersley in a sunny mood, which lasted until the recollection that whatever glory the future might hold in store the present was overcast by the shadow of Lord Damerel unluckily coincided with a request from Sir John that he should change his Belcher handkerchief for a more seemly neckcloth before sitting down to dinner with his mother and sisters. These two circumstances naturally threw him back into gloom, and had it not been for the happy chance that had made Lady Denny order a turkey with truffles for dinner his low spirits would have made it impossible for him to fancy anything that was set before him. However, his fainting appetite revived at sight of the turkey, and he made a very good meal. A tendency to relapse into brooding melancholy was frustrated by Sir John, who challenged him to a game of billiards. He had no heart for such idle sport, but in the excitement of beating his father, running out with the longest break he had ever achieved, he forgot his troubles, and became animated and loquacious, particularly when describing his glorious victory to his mama and his sisters later in the evening. Such was his elation that he went up to bed much inclined to think that he had allowed himself to be needlessly disturbed by Lord Damerel’s menacing presence in the district. As soon as Aubrey returned to Undershaw his lordship would no doubt leave the Priory, and be no more seen in Yorkshire for at least a twelvemonth.

Two days later the welcome tidings that Aubrey was at home again came in a note from Venetia to Lady Denny; and, as though Providence had suddenly decided to bestow favours upon young Mr. Denny with a lavish hand, this was almost immediately followed by the news that Edward Yardley, who had been feeling poorly for several days, was in bed with the chicken-pox. Oswald, seeing his path clear of rivals, rode over to Undershaw to make good his opportunity, and arrived there to find Venetia walking in the shrubbery with Damerel.

It was a severe blow, and still worse was the discovery that Damerel had no immediate intention of leaving the Priory. His ostensible reason for prolonging his stay there might be, as his bailiff hoped, to repair some of the ravages which years of neglect had wrought upon his lands, but his real object was insolently patent: Venetia was his quarry, and he was hunting her remorselessly, intent, Oswald was persuaded, on nothing but the gratification of his own evanescent lust. Report credited him with hundreds of lovely victims, and Oswald saw no reason to doubt either its truth, or that no twinge of compunction and no respect for public opinion would check him in the pursuit of his desire. A man whose career had begun with the abduction of a married lady of quality, and included traffic with such trollops as had turned the Priory into a bordello only a year before, was capable of committing any infamy and Damerel had shown years ago how little he cared for public opinion. If his past actions had not betrayed him, one glance at him, Oswald thought, was enough to inform any but such clods as Edward Yardley that he was a reckless freebooter, who would not hesitate, if he could ensnare her in his toils, to bear Venetia off to foreign lands, just as he had borne off his first mistress; and later, when her sweetness no longer pleased his jaded palate, to abandon her. He had already more than half bewitched her; as those who talked comfortably of her calm good sense must surely realize if they did but see the look in her eyes when she raised them to his. Such smiling eyes they were, but never had they smiled so tenderly as they did now. For a disturbing moment Oswald felt that she had suddenly become quite a different person, and was reminded of some story, probably one of Aubrey’s, about a statue brought to life by some goddess or other. Not that Venetia had ever been at all like a statue, but underlying her liveliness she had been cool and rational, affectionate but never blinded by affection, regarding even Aubrey, whom she loved, with amusement, and offering to no one else more than friendliness. This temperate disposition pleased Edward Yardley, because he believed it to be a sign of modesty and good breeding; it had pleased Oswald too, but on quite another count: it transformed her from the prettiest lady in the district into a princess of fairyland whose hand could only be won by the bravest and noblest and most handsome of her many suitors. In his more romantic moments Oswald had frequently imagined himself in this role, either kindling love in her by wit and charm, or by rescuing her (while Edward Yardley stood by, not daring to risk his life in the attempt) from burning houses, runaway steeds, or brutal ravishers. In these dreams she at once fell passionately in love with him, Edward slunk away, shamed and discomfited, and all who had previously treated young Mr. Denny as though he had been a schoolboy thereafter looked up to him in awe, spoke of him with respect, and thought it an honour to entertain him at their parties. They were agreeable dreams, but only dreams. He had never expected them to come true. It was extremely unlikely that Venetia would be trapped in a blazing house, and still more unlikely that in such a contingency he would be at hand to rescue her; she was an accomplished horse-woman; and the sudden intrusion into the peaceful and law-abiding neighbourhood of a brutal ravisher had seemed, even in the dream, to be rather too far-fetched.