He looked regretful, and shook his head. “Can’t,” he said mournfully. “Excused myself to Mrs. Beading. Told her I had another engagement. Not the thing to go there after that. Pity!”
She smiled. “You cannot hoax me into believing that you think so! Confess! You dislike masquerades!”
“Not trying to hoax you: happy to escort you anywhere! Not but what it ain’t the sort of party I like. If I were you I’d cry off, because you won’t enjoy it. Not just in your style.”
“I declare, you are the stupidest creature, Felix!” Letty broke in. “Why shouldn’t we enjoy it? It will be rare mummery, for we are all to wear masks, and—”
“Yes, a vast rout of people, and rompings!” interrupted Mr. Hethersett, in a tone of deep disapproval. “You may enjoy it: I never said you wouldn’t. All I said was, Lady Cardross won’t. Do you want a piece of advice, cousin?”
“No,” said Letty crossly.
“Mistake,” he said, shaking his head. “Not saying that ain’t an elegant gown: it is. Not saying that hat don’t become you: it does.” He left an ominous pause, during which Letty eyed him uneasily. She might despise him for what she considered his antiquated notions of propriety, but no aspirant to high fashion could afford to ignore his pronouncements on all matters of sartorial taste. He delivered his verdict. “I don’t like those pink ribbons. Or the feather. Insipid.”
“Insipid?” she exclaimed indignantly. She cast a glance down at the double row of pink knots which ornamented her dress of delicate fawn-coloured muslin. They exactly matched the feather than hung down on one side of a little straw hat which was turned up on the other side, and worn at a dashing angle on her glossy black ringlets. French kid gloves of the same pink completed a toilet which she had thought to be, until this painful moment, in the first crack of the mode. Doubt now entered her soul; she turned her anxious gaze upon her cousin. “It isn’t! You are saying it to vex me!”
“No wish to vex you. Just thought you wanted to be up to the knocker.”
“I do—I’m up to the knocker!”
“Not with those pink bows,” said Mr. Hethersett firmly. “Quite pretty, but dashed commonplace! Ought to be cherry. Give you a new touch!”
With these words he made his bow to both ladies, and proceeded on his way, leaving his cousin torn between wrath and a growing conviction that he was right, and Nell a good deal amused.
“If Felix were not related to me I should cut his acquaintance!” said Letty, glaring vengefully after him. “He is prosy, and uncivil, besides placing himself on far too high a form! And now I come to think of it I didn’t above half like his waistcoat!” She transferred her gaze to Nell, as Mr. Hethersett’s exquisitely tailored person receded in the distance. “If he thinks my ribbons insipid I am astonished that he hadn’t the effrontery to say that your dress was commonplace! Depend upon it, he thinks you would look more becomingly in purple, or puce, or scarlet! Odious creature!”
“Oh, he couldn’t say that to me, when he told me weeks ago never to wear those strong colours!” said Nell, whose gown of Berlin silk was just the colour of her eyes. “That was when I was wearing that maroon pelisse. I promise you, he was quite as odious to me. Don’t regard it!”
“I never pay the least heed to a word he says,” replied Letty, in a lofty voice. She relapsed into thoughtful silence while the barouche proceeded on its way, but said after several minutes: “Do you think I should tell my woman to dye this feather, or purchase a new one?”
“Dye that one,” responded Nell. “And also the ribbons. I wish he might have gone with us to the masquerade: it would have been much more comfortable! I suppose . . .” She hesitated looking doubtfully at Letty. “I suppose you would not like to go to Merion with Cardross instead?”
“Nell!” almost shrieked Letty, an expression of scandalized dismay on her countenance. “Go to Merion in the middle of the season? You must be out of your senses! And if that is what Giles wishes us to do I think it is the shabbiest thing I ever heard of, when he promised I should go to the masquerade! Yes, and after fobbing me off with this, when I particularly wanted to go to the Covent Garden masquerade!” she added indignantly. “Saying it was not the thing, and we should go to the Beadings’ private masquerade instead! Just like him! I daresay, if I only knew—”
“It is not just like him, and I wish you will not fly into a pet for nothing!” said Nell, firing up. “If you only knew, he said not another word to persuade me to go with him to Merion when I reminded him that you particularly wished to go to the masquerade! And if Felix hadn’t failed—”
“But, Nell, it’s of no consequence!” Letty urged. “I am sure quite fifty of our friends are going to it, and even if we found ourselves amongst strangers it still wouldn’t signify, because Mrs. Beading is your cousin! I own, it would be more comfortable to take some gentleman along with us, but you may easily invite Westbury, or Sir George Marlow, or—”
“No!” said Nell emphatically. “Not to a masquerade!”
Letty uttered a tiny spurt of laughter. “Are you afraid they wouldn’t keep the line? For my part, I think it would be very good fun if they did flirt outrageously with us! But you are the oddest creature! Not up to snuff at all, in spite of having come out a whole year before I did. Why, at my very first ball—” She broke off, as Nell nipped her arm, directing her eyes to the servants on the box of the carriage. “Oh, stuff! No, don’t be cross: I won’t say a word, I promise! How would it be if we took Jeremy with us? I daresay he would be very glad to go, and you may be sure he would conduct himself with all the propriety in the world, because even Giles owns that he is perfectly the gentleman!”
“Don’t be so absurd!” begged Nell. “He told you himself that he hadn’t received an invitation, and I can readily believe that he has too much propriety to go to the party without one. Besides, you know very well I wouldn’t invite him when it is what Giles would particularly dislike.”
Letty accepted this rebuff philosophically, saying in a resigned tone: “No, I didn’t think you would. Well, what is to be done? Pray don’t say you cannot go if Giles does not, for of all the dowdy notions—!”
Nell flushed. “No such thing! I mean, I haven’t the remotest intention of saying such a thing! Only I can’t immediately think of any gentleman whom I—” She stopped, as her troubled gaze alighted on two horsemen, riding easily towards them. Her eyes brightened; she exclaimed: “Dysart!”
“The very man!” declared Letty enthusiastically. “Now you may be easy!”
This optimism, however, seemed for several minutes to have been ill-founded. The Viscount, who was bestriding a nervous young blood-chestnut few men would have cared to exercise in the Park at an hour when it was thronged with traffic, responded readily enough to his sister’s signal, bringing his reluctant mount up to the barouche, and holding it there with all the apparent ease of an accomplished horseman; but when she asked him if he had received an invitation to the Beadings’ masquerade, he replied: “Ay, but I don’t mean to go.”
“Oh, Dy, you didn’t refuse?” Nell said anxiously.
“No, I didn’t refuse precisely,” admitted Dysart, whose careless practice it was to leave all but a few favoured invitations unanswered. “Here, Corny! Don’t have to introduce you to my sister, do I? Or to Lady Letitia?”