In this artless style the conversation was maintained until they came within sight of the house. As they approached the arched gateway through which Venetia had led Charlotte into the park they were met by Aubrey, and Charlotte’s confidences were at an end. She was absurdly nervous of Aubrey, and seemed to be embarrassed by his lameness, always looking away when he moved, in a manner too marked, Venetia knew, to escape his notice. His leg was dragging more than usual, as he came towards them, so it was to be inferred that his experimental ride had been premature.

He nodded at Charlotte, saying: “Puxton has just come back from York with your abigail, ma’am. No, I have that wrong: your dresser! You should have sent William Coachman in with the carriage, Venetia: she ain’t accustomed to driving in gigs with an undergroom.”

This threw Charlotte into a flutter of apprehension; and after assuring Venetia incoherently that Mama had engaged Miss Trossell in London but would be the first to depress such pretension, she excused herself and hurried away to the house.

“Of all the ridiculous starts!” Venetia exclaimed. “What can Mrs. Scorrier have imagined Charlotte would want with a dresser at Undershaw?” She looked up at Damerel, mischief in her face. “As for you, sir, with your milliners, whose prices—you have heard—areso extortionate, how you could have the effrontery—!”

“Or you the impropriety, ma’am, to betray your understanding of the circumstances through which I became acquainted with Mlle. Phanie—!” he retorted.

She laughed, but said: “Yes, of course, I ought to have appeared unconscious—and so I would have done had it been anyone but you. How skilfully you contrived to set my sister-in-law at her ease, by the way!”

“But of course!” he murmured provocatively.

“What did you think of her?” interrupted Aubrey.

“Oh, your Pope quotation hits her off! A dead bore, but without guile or malice: she won’t trouble your peace.”

“No. Nor, I fancy,” said Venetia thoughtfully, “was Conway obliged to marry her, though I did suspect it at the outset, when I heard she was breeding.”

“Yes, so did I,” remarked Aubrey. “But Nurse says she expects to be confined in May, so that don’t fit. Nothing smoky about that.”

“Well, don’t sound as if you had rather there had been!” said Damerel, a good deal amused. “Am I to be privileged to meet Mama, or would that be unwise?”

“I should rather suppose it might be, if she knows about you,” responded Venetia, seriously considering the matter. “Let us go into the library—though it may well be that she doesn’t know, because although she is not vulgar—”

“She is excessively vulgar,” interpolated Aubrey.

“Oh, she has a very vulgar mind!” agreed Venetia. “I meant that she is not underbred, in the style of poor Mrs. Huntspill, or that strange female I met when I visited Harrogate with Aunt Hendred, and who talked all the time of duchesses, and as if they had been her dearest friends, which my aunt assured me was not at all the case. Mrs. Scorrier doesn’t boast in that fashion, and though she is not sincere, and quite odiously overbearing, there is nothing in her manners to give one a disgust of her. But I don’t believe she’s a member of the ton.”

“If she’s the woman I rather fancy she must be, she’d the daughter of some small country squire,” said Damerel, following her into the library. “From what Aubrey tells me, I should say your sister-in-law must be Ned Scorrier’s daughter—in which event you need not blush for the marriage. The Scorriers are well enough: not tonnish, but of good stock: a Staffordshire family. Ned Scorrier was one of the younger sons, and was at Eton in my time, though senior to me by a couple of years. I know he became a military man, and made a bad match when he was only twenty, but what happened after that I don’t think I ever heard.”

“He died of fever, in the Peninsula,” said Venetia. “I should think he must be the same man, for Mrs. Scorrier did say something about her husband’s family living in Staffordshire. She quarrelled with them.” Her brow wrinkled. “At least, so I understood, from what Charlotte said, but it does seem an idiotish thing to have done, in her circumstances! She’s not very beforehand with the world, you know: doesn’t pretend to be; so one would have supposed that she would have taken care not to quarrel with her husband’s family.”

“One of the advantages of having led a sequestered life,” said Damerel, smiling, “is that you’ve not until now encountered the sort of woman who can’t refrain from quarrelling with all who cross her path. She is for ever suffering slights, and is so unfortunate as to make friends only with such illnatured persons as soon or late treat her abominably! No quarrel is ever of her seeking; she is the most amiable of created beings, and the most long-suffering. It is her confiding disposition which renders her a prey to the malevolent, who, from no cause whatsoever, invariably impose upon her, or offer her such intolerable insult that she is obliged to cut the connection. Have I hit the mark?”

“Pretty well!” said Aubrey, grinning wryly.

“Add jealousy!” Venetia said. “Quite irrational, too! She took me in jealous dislike the instant she laid eyes on me, and I can’t discover why she should have done so, for indeed I don’t think I gave her cause!”

“But you give her great cause,” Damerel said, the smile lingering in his eyes. “Had you been a dark beauty the case would have been different, for you might have served as a foil to that insipid blonde of hers. But you are fair, my dear, and you shine that girl down. Believe me, the gold casts the flax into dismal eclipse, which Mrs. Scorrier very well knows!”

“By Jupiter, I believe you’re right!” exclaimed Aubrey, critically surveying his sister. “I suppose she is a remarkably handsome girl! People seem to think her so, at all events.”

“And even you allow her to be tolerable! There can be no doubt!”

“Thank you! I am very much obliged to you both!” said Venetia, laughing. “I daresay you know how much I delight in the ridiculous. You will at least do Charlotte the justice to own that she is a very pretty girl!”

“Certainly—in the style of a puppet, without countenance.”

“Well, I see nothing in her above the ordinary,” declared Aubrey. “And unless he was castaway at the time I’m dashed if I know why Conway offered for her!”

“But they will deal charmingly!” said Venetia. “I know exactly why he offered for her! She is pretty, and gentle, she admires him excessively—indeed, I believe she worships him!—she hasn’t two thoughts in her head to bother him, and she will always think he is as wise as he is handsome!”

“In that case he will become wholly insufferable,” said Aubrey, dragging himself out of his chair. “I must go and attend to Bess: she picked up a thorn in one pad.”

He limped out, and as the door closed behind him Damerel said: “I’ve no interest in the fair Charlotte, and less than none in her mama, but I own I have the liveliest curiosity in your brother Conway, my dear delight! What the devil’s the meaning of this freak? What kind of a man is he to have served you such a trick?”

Venetia considered her brother Conway. “Well, he is large, and very handsome,” she offered. “He looks as if he were strong-willed, but in fact he is excessively easy-going, and only now and then obstinate. He is kind, too, and I must say I think it a great virtue in him that he doesn’t take a pet when one roasts him. In fact whenever Aubrey says one of his cutting things to him he is quite proud to think that however puny the poor little fellow may be he has a devilish clever tongue.”

Damerel put up his brows. “But you are drawing the portrait of an estimable man, my dear!”

“So he is—in many ways,” replied Venetia cordially. “Only he is selfish, and indolent, and for all his amiability it is of no use to suppose that he might put himself out for anyone, because without being so disobliging as to refuse outright he would either forget, or discover some excellent reason why it would be much better for everyone if he didn’t bestir himself. He dislikes to be made uncomfortable, you see. And for the rest—oh, he is a bold rider to hounds, a first-rate fiddler, and a tolerable shot! He likes simple jokes, and laughs as heartily when he tells them for the tenth time as he did at the first.”

“Aubrey’s is not the only deadly tongue in the Lanyon family!” he remarked appreciatively. “Now, if you please, explain to me why this ease-loving fellow saddled himself with a termagant for his mama-in-law!”

“Oh, he wanted Charlotte, so he left the future to take care of itself! When Mrs. Scorrier made it uncomfortable for him at Cambray he got rid of her, I have no doubt at all, without a disagreeable scene, merely by encouraging Charlotte to fancy herself unwell, and then convincing her, and Mrs. Scorrier, and himself as well, that it was his duty to send her home to England. I daresay he would be glad if I would rid Undershaw of Mrs. Scorrier, and before he returns, but I doubt if I could, and, in any event, I don’t mean to make the attempt. He must do it himself. He will, too—which is something I fancy she doesn’t yet suspect!” Venetia gave a little chuckle. “Of course he would never quarrel with her at Cambray, where she would have made a great noise, and put him to the blush, but he won’t care a button what noise she makes here! And I shouldn’t wonder at it if he makes Charlotte tell her to go, and goes off hunting all day while she does it!”

Damerel laughed, but he said: “Meanwhile, she is cutting up your peace, confound her!”