“Well, so I would, but surely you can’t wish me to repeat to you a list of malicious nothings?”

“No: spare me! That fling at Aubrey was all?”

“It was enough! Damerel, if you knew what tortures of self-hatred have been endured—never mentioned, only to be guessed at!—the shrinking from strangers, the dread of pity or such revulsion as Charlotte tries to hide—”

He broke in on her agitation, saying: “I do know. I think it unlikely that this woman would sink so low, unless offered extraordinary provocation, but the boy is abnormally sensitive. Shall I take him off your hands? I’ve told him already that he may remove to the Priory whenever he chooses. His reply was inelegant, but certainly did him credit. He was much inclined to snap my nose off: demanded if I was in all seriousness inviting him to run sly, leaving you to stand the shock! It seemed scarcely the moment to suggest to him that the shock would be less if he did run sly, but I can still do so, and will, if you tell me to. The only difficulty will be to conceal from him the real cause, and I expect I could overcome that.”

She put out her hand, almost unconsciously, saying playfully, to hide her deeper feeling: “What a good friend you are, Wicked Baron! Where should we be in this pass without you? I know I might, if the worst came to the worst, send Aubrey to you. That thought, I promise you, saved me from distraction! In emergency I shouldn’t hesitate—were you ever before so scandalously imposed on?—but there’s no emergency yet—may never be, if Aubrey will but shut his ears to the things that are said merely to vex and sting. I don’t mean to impose on you unless I must!”

His hand had closed on hers, and he was still holding it, but in a clasp that struck her as being curiously rigid. She glanced enquiringly at him, and saw a strange look in his eyes, and about his mouth the bitter sneer that mocked himself. She must have betrayed bewilderment in her face, for the sneer vanished, he smiled, and said lightly, as he released her hand: “I defy anyone to impose on me! I should be glad to have Aubrey at the Priory. I like the boy, and certainly don’t consider him a charge, if that’s what’s in your mind. No one could accuse him of being a difficult guest to entertain! Let him come to me when you choose, and remain for as long as may suit you both!”

“Thus positively conferring a favour on you!” she said, laughing. “Thank you! It would not, I think, be for very long. Lady Denny tells me that Sir John has heard from Mr. Appersett that he means to return to us before the middle of next month. I suspect his cousin—who was so obliging as to offer to exchange with him after his illness—has no great fancy to spend the winter in Yorkshire! Mr. Appersett told me years ago that if ever I should wish to go away for a time he would readily give Aubrey house-room.”

“Then, Aubrey’s affairs being satisfactorily arranged, we will turn to your own, Admir’d Venetia! Are you serious when you talk of setting up your own establishment?”

“Yes, of course I am!”

“Then it is time someone took order to you!” he said grimly. “Leave nursery-dreams, and come to earth, my dear! It is not possible!”

“But it is perfectly possible! Don’t you know that I’m mistress of what Mr. Mytchett—he is our lawyer, and one of my trustees—calls a considerable independence?”

“I still tell you that it is not possible!”

“Good God, Damerel, you don’t mean to talk propriety to me, do you?” she exclaimed. “I warn you, you won’t easily convince me that the least impropriety attaches to a woman of my years choosing rather to live in her own house than in her brother’s! If I were a girl—”

“You are not only a girl, but a green girl!”

“Green I’ll allow, girl I will not! I’m five-and-twenty, my friend. I know it would be thought improper if I were to live alone, and though I think it nonsensical I don’t mean to outrage the conventions, I promise you. While Aubrey is at Cambridge I shall engage a chaperon. When he has taken his degree—well, I don’t know yet, of course, but I expect he will next become a Fellow, and remained fixed in Cambridge, in which event the likeliest chance is that I shall keep house for him there, for I shouldn’t think he would marry, should you?”

“God give me patience!” he ejaculated, spring up, and taking a hasty turn about the room. “Venetia, will you stop talking like a sapskull? Engage a chaperon! Keep house for Aubrey! Don’t forget to buy a stock of caps suitable for a dowager, or an ageing spinster, I do beg of you! Listen to me, you beautiful idiot! you’ve wasted six—seven—years of your life: don’t waste any more! What, for heaven’s sake, do you imagine would be the advantage in this house of yours? Who is to be your chaperon?”

“I don’t know: how should I? I had supposed that it must be possible to hire, as one would a governess, some lady in impoverished circumstances—a widow, perhaps—who would answer the purpose.”

“Then suppose it no longer! You might hire a score of widows, but not one to answer the purpose. I can picture this establishment! Where is it to be? In Kensington, I think, genteel and retired! Or perhaps in the wilds of Upper Grosvenor Place: just on the fringe of fashion! You will be dismally bored, my dear, I assure you!”

She looked a little amused. “Then I shall travel. I have always wanted to do that.”

“What, with an impoverished widow for escort, no acquaintance anywhere but in Yorkshire, and rather less knowledge of the world than a chit out of boarding-school? My poor innocent, when I think of the only friendships you would be likely to form under such circumstances I promise you my blood runs cold! It won’t do: believe me, I know what I’m talking about! To carry off such an existence as you propose you must needs be fabulously wealthy, and eccentric into the bargain! Wealth, my dear delight, would excuse your eccentricity, and open most doors to you. You might hire a mansion in the best part of town, furnish it with oriental magnificence, force yourself on the notice of the ton by indulging in expensive freaks, boldly send out invitation cards—you would meet with some rebuffs, and not a few cuts-direct, but—”

“Be quiet, you absurd creature!” she interrupted, laughing. “That’s not the life I want! How could you think I should?”

“I don’t think it. Are you going to tell me that you want the life you would most certainly lead under your own scheme? You will be more bored and more lonely than ever in your life, for I assure you, Venetia, without acquaintance, without the correct background, you had as well live on a desert island as in London!”

“Oh, dear! Then what am I to do?”

“Go to your Aunt Hendred!” he replied.

“I mean to do so—but not to stay. I shouldn’t like that— or she either, I fear. Nor would her house do for Aubrey.”

“Aubrey, Aubrey! Think for once of yourself!”

“Well, and so I do! You know, Damerel, I never thought I could bear to stay at Undershaw with another woman as its mistress, and now I’ve discovered that it would fret me very much to live under such conditions anywhere! And to live with my aunt and uncle, submitting to their decrees, as I should be obliged to do, recognizing their authority, would be unendurable, like finding myself back again in the nursery! I’ve been my own mistress for too long, dear friend.”

He looked at her, across the room, a wry smile on his lips. “You would not have to endure it for very long,” he said.

“Too long for me!” she said firmly. “It will be five years at least, I imagine, before Aubrey will be ready to set up in a house of his own, and perhaps by then he won’t wish it! Besides—”

“Greenhead! Oh, greenest of greenheads!” he said. “Go to your aunt, let her launch you into society—as she is well able to do!—and before Aubrey has gone up to Cambridge the notice of your engagement will be in the Gazette!”

She did not speak for a moment, but looked straitly at him, a little less colour in her cheeks, no lurking smile in her eyes. She could find no clue to his thoughts in his face, and was puzzled, but not alarmed. “No,” she said at last. “It won’t be. Did you think that my purpose in going to London was to find a husband?”

“Not your purpose. Your destiny—as it should be!”

“Ah! My aunt’s purpose will be1 to find a husband for me?” He answered only with a shrug, and she got up, saying: “I’m glad you’ve warned me: is it allowable for an unmarried female to put up at an hotel? if she has a maid with her?”

“Venetia— I”

She smiled, putting up her eyebrows. “My dear friend, you are too stoopid today! Why must you picture me moped to tears, pining for company, bored because I shall be leading the life I’m accustomed to? Why, no! a much more entertaining life! Here, I’ve had books, and my garden, and, since my father died, the estate, to occupy me. In London, there will be museums, and picture-galleries, the theatre, the opera—oh, so much that to you seems commonplace, I daresay! And I shall have Aubrey during his vacations, and since I have an aunt who won’t, I hope, cut my acquaintance, I don’t utterly despair of forming a few agreeable friendships!”

“No, my God, no!” he exclaimed, as though the words had been wrenched out of him, and crossed the room in two hasty strides. “Anything were better than that!” He grasped her by the shoulders, so roughly that she was startled into uttering a protest. He paid no heed to it, but said harshly: “Look at me!”

She obeyed unhesitatingly, and endured with tranquillity a fierce scrutiny as keenly searching as a surgeon’s lancet, only murmuring, a little mischievously: “I bruise very easily!”