Emily wrung her hands. “They will make me do just as they say, then! I can’t—I can’t tell them I w-won’t, Gerard! Oh, do you think Mama and Lady Serena may be right, and it won’t be so very dreadful to be married to Lord Rotherham?”
“No,” said Gerard positively. “It would be far worse than you dream of! I tell you this, Emily, Rotherham is a tyrant! He will make you wholly subservient to his will. I have cause to know! You cannot yet have seen him in one of his rages, my poor darling! They are quite ungoverned! His servants are all terrified of him, and with good cause!” He saw that her face was perfectly white, and pressed home his advantage. “You must not meet him! All will be lost, if you come within reach of that—that ruthless despotism! Emily, we must elope!”
It was not to be expected that she would instantly perceive the advantages of this course. She was, in fact, shocked by such a suggestion, but by the time Gerard had regaled her with an account of his own sufferings at Rotherham’s hands, and some liberal prophecies of the horrors in store for her; and had declared himself to be incapable of imagining the extent or effects of the Marquis’s wrath, when he discovered—as discover he would—what had been going on in Bath, she was ready to consent to any measure that would rescue her from her Andromeda-like plight. People were beginning to leave the foyer; Gerard had only time, before Mrs Floore bore down upon them, to warn her not to breathe a word to her, but to meet him in Queen’s Square at ten o’clock on the following morning. “Leave everything to me!” he ordered. “Once in my care you are safe!”
These somewhat grandiloquent words were music to her ears. Naturally dependent, she was only too thankful to be able to cast her cares on to his shoulders; and now that he had ceased to counsel her to face her tyrants with resolution she began to think that she might like him very well as a husband. At least he was kind, and gentle, and loved her very much; and although he was not her ideal she supposed that they might live very contentedly together.
Her mind relieved of its paramount dread, she was able to listen to the rest of the play with tolerable enjoyment, but she did not recover her vivacity, her attitude being languid and listless enough to make Mrs Floore say, as soon as Mr Goring had escorted them home: “Now, Emma-love, you just tell Grandma what’s the matter, and no nonsense! If you’re looking like a drowned mouse all because your ma is coming to stay with me tomorrow, you’re a goosecap! Now, ain’t you?”
“I—I am afraid Mama means to take me away from you, Grandmama!” faltered Emily.
“Bless your sweet heart!” exclaimed Mrs Floore, planting a smacking kiss upon her cheek. “So you don’t want to leave your grandma! Well, I don’t deny I love to hear you say so, my pet, but there’s reason in all things, and I can’t say that I’m surprised your ma’s got to be a trifle impatient. I’ll be bound she’s got her head full of your bride-clothes by this time—and so will you have before you are very much older! Lord, how I do look forward to reading all about you when you’re a Marchioness! You think about what’s before you, pet, and never mind about your old grandma!”
This bracing speech, excellent in intention though it was, shut the door on confidence. Grandmama, as much as Mama, wished to see Emily a Marchioness. Emily kissed her, and went upstairs to bed, planning her escape on the morrow, praying that it might not be frustrated by the arrival of her betrothed, and wondering where Gerard meant to take her.
20
Serena, arriving in Beaufort Square at eleven o’clock on the following morning, mounted on her good-looking mare, and attended by her groom, was a little surprised not to see a livery horse waiting outside Mrs Floore’s house. Fully alive to the honour of being invited to ride with so noted a horsewoman, Emily had formed the practice, on these occasions, of ordering her hired hack to be brought round quite twenty minutes too soon, and of running out of the house, the instant she saw, from her lookout in the dining-room window, that neat figure rounding the corner of the square.
“You had better knock on the door, Fobbing,” Serena said, holding out her hand for his bridle.
He gave it to her, but before he had reached the front door, it opened, and Mr Goring stepped out. He came up to the mare, and, looking gravely into the beautiful face above him, said: “Lady Serena, Mrs Floore desires me to ask you if you will be so good as to come into the house for a moment.”
Her brows rose swiftly. “I will do so, certainly. Is anything amiss?”
“I am afraid—very much amiss,” he replied, in a heavy tone. He held up his hand. “May I assist you to—”
“No, I thank you.” One deft, practised movement, and her voluminous skirt was clear of the pommels. The next instant she was on the ground, and giving her bridle into Fobbing’s hand. She caught up her skirt, swinging it over her arm, and went with Mr Goring into the house. “Is Emily ill?” she asked.
“No, not ill. It will be better, I daresay, if you learn from Mrs Floore what has occurred. I myself arrived here only a short time ago, and—But I will take you up to Mrs Floore! I should warn you that you will find her in considerable distress, Lady Serena.”
“Good God, what can have happened?” she exclaimed, hurrying towards the stairs, her whip still in her hand.
He followed close on her booted heels, and on the first floor slid in front of her, to open the door into the drawing-room. Serena went in, with her free stride, but checked in astonished dismay at the spectacle that met her eyes. The redoubtable Mrs Floore, still attired in her dressing-gown, was lying back in a deep wing-chair, her housekeeper holding burnt feathers to her nose, and her maid kneeling before her and chafing her hands.
“My dear ma’am—! For heaven’s sake, what dreadful accident has befallen?” Serena demanded.
The housekeeper, shedding tears, sobbed: “It’s her poor heart, my lady! The shock gave her such palpitations as was like to have carried her off! Years ago, the doctor told me she should take care, and now see what’s come of it! Oh, my lady, what a serpent’s tooth she has nourished in her bosom!”
The maid, much moved, began to sob in sympathy. Mrs Floore, whose usually rubicund countenance Serena saw to have assumed an alarmingly grey tinge, opened her eyes, and said faintly: “Oh, my dear! What shall I do? Why didn’t she tell me? Oh, what a silly, blind fool I have been! I thought—What am I to do?”
Serena, casting her whip on to the table, and stripping off her elegant gauntlets, said, in her authoritative way: “You shall remain perfectly quiet, dear ma’am, until you are a little restored. Get up off the floor, woman, and fetch some hartshorn, or a cordial, to your mistress immediately! And take those feathers away, you idiot! Mr Goring, be so good as to help me move her on to the sofa!”
He was very willing, but a little doubtful, and said in a low voice: “I had better call up the butler: she is too heavy for you, ma’am!”
Serena, who had quickly arranged some cushions at the head of the sofa, merely replied briefly: “Take her shoulders, and do not talk nonsense!”
Once disposed at full length on the sofa, Mrs Floore moaned, but soon began to look less grey. She tried to speak, but Serena hushed her, saying: “Presently, ma’am!” When the maid came back, bearing a glass containing a dose of some cordial in her trembling hand, Serena took it from her, and, raising the sufferer’s head, obliged her to swallow it. In a very short space of time the colour began to come back into Mrs Floore’s cheeks, and her breathing became more regular. The housekeeper, bereft of her evil-smelling feathers, waved a vinaigrette about under her nose, and her maid, still much affected, fanned her with a copy of the Morning Post.