As matters turned out she was heartily glad of it. It was Aubrey who first spoke of Damerel’s return, but as he had very little interest in his neighbours and none at all in a man he had never laid eyes on, he did so quite casually, saying as he sat down to dinner that day: “Oh, by the by! I heard in the village that Damerel’s back again—but without Paphians! Alone, in fact.”

“What, no scandal-broth brewing? That won’t please the quizzy ones! I wonder what brings him?”

“Business, I should think,” replied Aubrey indifferently. “High time he did look into his affairs here.”

She agreed, but did not pursue the topic. It was to be raised again, though not by Aubrey. Such an exciting piece of news naturally spread rapidly over the district, and before nightfall both Nurse and Mrs. Gurnard, forced into temporary alliance, had impressed upon Venetia the need for her to behave with the greatest circumspection. On no account must she step beyond the garden without an escort. There was no telling what might happen to her if she didn’t do as she was bid, said Nurse darkly.

Venetia soothed the alarms of these two well-wishers; but when Edward Yardley came to Undershaw on the following day she was never nearer losing her temper with him.

“I daresay he won’t remain at the Priory above a day or two, but while he is here it will be best for you to discontinue your solitary walks,” Edward said, with a calm assumption of authority which she found so irritating that she was obliged to choke down a hasty retort. “You know,” he added, with a wry smile, “that I have never liked that custom of yours.”

Oswald Denny visited her too, but the form his solicitude took was a dramatic assurance that if Damerel should dare to molest her he would know how to answer “the fellow”. The significant laying of his hand upon an imaginary sword-hilt was too much for Venetia’s gravity: she went into a peal of laughter, which provoked him to exclaim: “You laugh, but I’ve lived where they hold life cheap! I promise you I should have no compunction in calling this fellow out, were he to offer you the smallest affront!”

After this Venetia was not at all surprised when, two days later, the Dennys’ barouche-landau disgorged Lady Denny at Undershaw. But it soon transpired that her ladyship’s object was not so much to warn her young friend to beware of encountering a notorious rake as to enjoy a comfortable gossip about him. She had actually spoken to him! Well, more than that: Sir John, meeting him by chance, had seized the opportunity to try if he could not win his support over some matter of parish business; and finding him perfectly amiable, had brought him back to Ebbersley, further to discuss the affair, and had ended by inviting him to eat luncheon there.

“You may imagine my amazement when in they both walked! I must own, my love, that I was not quite pleased, for Clara and Emily were both sitting with me, and although Clara is not, I fancy, very likely to have her head turned, Emily is at just that age when girls fall in love with the most ineligible men. However, there’s no fear of that, as it turns out: the girls both declared there was never anything more disappointing, for he is quite old, and not at all handsome!”

“Old?” Venetia exclaimed involuntarily.

“Well, so he seemed to the girls,” Lady Denny explained. “He can’t be above forty, I suppose, if he’s as much as that. I am not perfectly sure—when he was a child he was scarcely ever at the Priory, you know, because Lady Damerel had the greatest dislike of Yorkshire, and never would come here, except when they had parties for the races. You wouldn’t remember, my dear, but she was a very proud, disagreeable woman—and I will say this for her son: he seems not to be at all top-lofty—not, of course, that he has the least occasion to hold up his nose! Except that the Damerels are a very old family, and this man’s father, though always perfectly civil, was said to have a great deal of self-consequence. There was nothing of that to be seen—indeed, I thought his lordship had too little particularity! I don’t mean to say that his manners gave me a disgust of him, but he has an odd, abrupt way that is a trifle too careless to please me! As for the girls, they rated him very cheap—though I daresay they would not if he had behaved more prettily to them. He hardly spoke above a dozen words to them—the merest commonplace, too!”

“How shabby!” said Venetia. “He is—I mean, he sounds to me quite odious!”

“Yes, but I was thankful for it!” said her ladyship earnestly. “Only think what my feelings must have been had he proved to be a man of insinuating address! And for Sir John to declare that dearest Clara has not enough beauty to engage the interest of such a man as Damerel is not at all to the point, besides being a most unnatural thing to say of his own daughter! He would have been well-served if Damerel had thrown out lures to Clara, bringing him in upon us as he did! But all he will say is that he doesn’t choose to live on bad terms with his neighbours, and that it is a great piece of nonsense in me to suppose that Damerel is so ramshackle as to behave improperly to any female in Clara’s situation. Very pretty talking, when everyone knows he didn’t scruple to seduce a lady under her husband’s very nose!”

“Who was she?” interrupted Venetia curiously. “What became of her?”

“I don’t know that, but she was one of the Rendlesham girls—there were three of them, and all great beauties, which was fortunate, because Rendlesham was as poor as a church mouse, and yetthey all made good marriages! Not that I mean to say that one prospered, and for my part I shouldn’t have liked it for one of my daughters, even if Sir John were as monstrously in the wind as they say Rendlesham was. Well, for one thing he had the most peculiar name: Vobster! I believe he came into the world hosed and shod, as the saying is, but his father was a shocking mushroom, and as for his grandfather I’m sure no one ever knew who he was! The on-dit was that he owned a two-to-one shop—at least, so my brother George was used to say!—but I daresay that was nothing but a Banbury story. At all events, Gregory Vobster was as rich as Midas, which was what made him acceptable to Lord Rendlesham. He was used to play off all the airs of an exquisite, I recall, but when the pinch came he was not at all up to the rig. Nothing would prevail upon him to consent to a divorce! He behaved very shabbily, just wishing to be revenged, you know, and if he hadn’t broken his neck, overturning his curricle on the Newmarket road, that wretched female would be still married to him! But the thing is, my dear, that that happened not three years after the break-up of the marriage, and though I don’t know why, I do know that she didn’t marry Damerel, which everyone expected she would, of course. Which gives me a very poor notion of him, and makes me excessively reluctant to receive him in my house! What’s more, if he hoped, by abandoning Lady Sophia, to become reconciled with his own family he was well-served, for they utterly cast him off, and it wasn’t until Lady Damerel died that he came back to England. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for his having inherited an independence from old Matthew Stone—he was his godfather, and what they call a chicken-nabob—I daresay he must have been reduced to absolute penury—let alone not being able to run off with Lady Sophia in the first place! Which all goes to show what folly it is to endow young men with fortunes.”

“Cast him off!” Venetia exclaimed. “They would have done better to have cast themselves off!”

“Cast themselves off?” repeated Lady Denny.

“Yes, for having done so ill by him as to let him make a cake of himself over this Lady Sophia! It happened when he was twenty-two, didn’t it? Well, then! I dare swear she was older than he, too. Was she?”

“She was a few years older, I fancy, but—”

“Then you may depend upon it that it was a great deal more her fault than his, ma’am! And although I suppose he ought to have married her in the end I can’t help thinking that she only came by her deserts when he didn’t. In fact, I begin to feel almost sorry for the Wicked Baron. Does he mean to make a long stay in Yorkshire? Shall we be obliged to recognize him?”

“I must do so, if we should chance to meet, but I am determined it shan’t go beyond a civil bow; and as for inviting him to dine with us in a formal way, I have begged Sir John not to ask it of me! ‘And, pray, which of our acquaintance would you have me invite to meet him?’ I said. ‘The Yardleys? the Traynes? Poor Mrs. Motcomb? Or have you our sweet Venetia in your mind?’ I am happy to say that he saw that it would be quite improper. It is a fortunate circumstance, since I don’t mean to be drawn into the slightest intimacy, that Damerel is a bachelor. If the gentlemen choose to visit him they may do so: he cannot invite ladies to his parties.”

On this triumphant conclusion Lady Denny departed, leaving her young friend to await events with such mixed feelings that she could not have told whether she wished Damerel to find some way of seeing her again, or whether she would be glad to know that he had left the Priory. It was certainly a bore to be confined within the bounds of the park, and that, she had decided, must be her fate, unless she rode with Aubrey, for however little heed she paid to Nurse’s dark warnings she was fully alive to the possibility of Damerel’s lying in wait for her, and had no doubt that if he were to find her walking by herself he would believe her to be courting his advances. On the whole, she thought, she would be glad to know that he had gone away. He was dangerous; his conduct had been inexcusable; and to meet him again might be demoralizing to one who had led so cloistered a life as hers had been.